WILL CARRY ON LA FOLLETTE PROGRAM

...Each within its scope constituted a practical effort to make government serve the people...

...In presenting their application they claimed that the Esch-Cummins law guaranteed them 5 3/4 %. Thus the railroads contradict Senator Lenroot, Who says that the Esch-Cummins law carried no guarantee...

...We will preserve the levels of our lakes and streams...

...The record of the past is a guide to future actions...

...I have been and am now engaged in an investigation of this problem...

...Wisconsin State government is the glory of that great struggle—efficient, clean, honest, fearless...

...Wisconsin will be represented in that case and as soon as we have a final decision we will be in a position to proceed more intelligently on these other problems...

...In every country where men and women have the form of self-government, that issue is ever the sa It is the issue that moved the Fathers to write the Declaration of Independence...

...Finally we must resist and defeat those enemies of democracy who would take out of the hands of the people the power of self-government, turn backward the hands of the political clock by destroying our primary election law and restoring the old, discredited and corrupt caucus and convention method of making nominations...

...Pittsburgh Plus WHEN I became attorney general, the manufacturers of this and other states were banded together to fight a practice of the steel trust known as Pittsburgh Plus...

...Railroad Freight Rate Increases IN 1925 the railroads made application to the Interstate Commerce Commission to increase their freight rates...

...It played a part in locating the great auto-mobile industry at Cleveland and Detroit— near to Pittsburgh, where the freight on steel from Pittsburgh was only $2.30...

...It is carrying as great a burden of taxation as it is possible for it to bear...

...As governor it will be my policy to secure the enactment of legislation providing for a sound, permanent forestry policy...

...This is vital alike to those who pay taxes on their farms and homes and to the counties and the municipalities which have entered upon programs of highway construction improvement on the basis of the present law...

...Our produc- ers are protected from unfair and fraudulent substitutes designed to drive wholesome dairy products from the market...

...During all those years of struggle and achievement in public life, as a member of the Assembly, Insurance Commissioner, Attorney General and in private life as a friend and counsellor, I labored with him and for those things in government that Robert M. La Follette gave his life to secure...

...A like law in Minnesota is now in the Supreme Court of that state and will go to the Supreme Court of the United States...

...This was cited as a concrete fact to prove that Progrescive legislation was ruining the state...

...Thus on steel made in Chicago as cheaply as at Pittsburgh, the manufacturer across the street would be...

...This is just...

...This must not bo permitted...

...Our fight is not alone to enact new legislation and administer new laws in accord with progressive principles, but we must have restored to the states those powers which, under the stress of war, vicious national legislation wrenched from the states...

...These manufacturers were making but little progress in their suit...

...Clearing Way for Waterway to Sea THE enormous amount of water taken unlawfully by Chicago out of Lake Michigan and poured into the Mississippi Valley to wash away Chicago's sewage is not generally appreciated...

...Law-fence waterway, which would bring ocean-going ships to our Great Lakes ports, This would make ocean ports on our Great Lakes more than equal in all respects to the great ports of the world...

...these states with Wisconsin joined in supporting the suit of the United States against the Sanitary District of Chicago, and now three of these states are helping to pay the expenses of the Wisconsin suit...

...This practice resulted in driving manufacturers using steel to locate their plants as near to Pittsburgh as possible...

...Reviews His Public Record IN MY earlier public service I was credited with having made some contribution to securing the primary election law, the railroad rate commission law, the revision of the insurance laws, the establishment of state insurance, the enactment of the civil service law, the strengthening of the dairy and food laws, the securing of the teachers' retirement laws, and with many other pieces of legislation which for more than twenty years have reflected great credit upon Wisconsin and have contributed to the happiness and well being of our people...

...and other important litigation...

...Every effort of those who would take from off the large incomes a portion of the taxes levied under the income tax law, or would write into our tax laws exemptions of a large volume of property from taxes without providing that the deficit in the tax revenues thus created should be secured by means other than a general property tax, is an advocate of raising the taxes upon the farms and homes of this state...

...I determined that a test would be made of this case to decide whether a man who lived in Wisconsin, made his money in Wisconsin, upon his death could evade our tax laws...

...We Protected Our Dairy Industry WE HAVE dealt with this practice successfully in the one case of dairy products...

...Our milk is and must continue to be produced under clean, healthful conditions...

...We will not surrender...

...In other words, it permits the grossest waste and extravagance in addition to extorting unconscionable profits...

...Many of the cases involved questions which are vital in this campaign...

...In that time the office has handled more important litigation than was handled ever before in a like period...

...Each should bear his proportionate share of construction and maintenance cost...

...The Beggs' Tax Case IN the attack to undermine and destroy the income tax and inheritance tax laws of this State during the 1923 legislative session, the stalwarts published a list of fifty wealthy men, who they claimed left Wisconsin because of these laws...

...Every attack by the food adulterators upon the protective provisions of the Wisconsin laws must be beaten back...

...The fight thus made has saved annually to the people of Wisconsin at least $16,-000,000 in freight rates...

...The selection should be made with the same scrupulous care as would be exercised if a manager for a farm or a superintendent of a factory was to be chosen...

...It is the issue that has come down through the whole history of the United States...

...and then the stalwart papers gleefully announced that Wisconsin would get no revenue from the more than $20,000,000 estate left by him...

...As soon as the barren wastes of blackened stumps can be supplanted and covered with a new timber growth the immediate draining off of the rainfall will stop...

...We stopped attempted discriminations by the Standard Oil Company of Indiana to give greatly reduced prices to large buyers consuming at many points scattered over a large territory...

...It is my purpose to see to it that all of the vital issues involved in the Beggs case and having to do with the sustaining of Wisconsin's inheritance and income tax laws shall be properly and ably presented to the courts...

...We employed Professor John R. Commons of the University of Wisconsin, Professor Frank Fetter of Princeton, and Professor W. Z. Ripley of Harvard, and departing from usual legal procedure demonstrated so thoroughly the great economic injustice and loss resulting from this practice that the Federal Trade Commission issued an order that the practice be abolished...

...We must have restored the power of our railroad commission to control rates and services within Wisconsin...

...There are 49 other wealthy men on the list...

...If I am chosen governor, this fight to protect the people of this state will continue...

...All through the years, 1 have been identified with that struggle...

...More than thirty years ago Robert M. La Follette began the fight to restore control of government to the people of this state...

...I favor enforcing vigorously those laws of our state which protect the dairy industry and continuous warfare against all efforts of powerful financial interests to undermine Wisconsin's high place in the dairy world...

...This company meets every cut of an independent filling station by cutting the price across the street, and without regard to the cost of production keeps the price down until the independent repents or is forced out of business, A loss of $50,000 to put an independent out of business makes little difference in the net annual profit of $30,000,000 to $50,000,000 made by the Standard Oil Company of Indiana...

...Monopoly Gasoline Prices IT MAY be asked why the independent producers of steel did not cut the steel corporation price and so destroy the Pittsburgh Plus practice...

...That service must be performed by officials authorized by law so to do...

...The Wisconsin highway law, worked out with great care to serve all interests in the state, promotes a program of highway construction that will not only provide adequate through trunk highways, but also, within a reasonable time, will bring a good hard surfaced road to the door of every farmer...

...Eternal vigilance is necessary to the maintenance of Wisconsin's dairy supremacy...

...The record of my years of service is submitted as assurance that as governor nothing would be left undone to secura enactment of the legislation promised, to administer all the departments of state government in keeping with the platform pledges and to achieve the aims of La Foilette...

...Included in the list was the late John I. Beggs...

...When the people of Wisconsin are in favor of doing anything within their power to promote conservation, they want this work to stand upon its own feet and not to be the beneficiary of any trust funds created for other purposes...

...A resourceful and unscrupulous lobby is constantly at work in the public and pile up enormous dividends for food profiteers...

...Importance of This Campaign THIS is the most important campaign since the first successes were won in Wisconsin twenty-six years ago...

...It is the issue repeated campaign after campaign in Wisconsin, namely, the right of the people to govern themselves, and to a government that shall be, as our state government is, an efficient instrument to promote the liberty, the happiness, the well being, and the prosperity of all its people...

...Yet these prices are charged uniformly almost without exception by independents and by the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, though the latter sells only about one-third of the gasoline in Wisconsin...

...All the subjects enumerated and others have one underlying principle...

...Because of my acquaintance with attorneys and public officials in other states, I was able to organize the attorneys general of thirty-two states to fight this practice in what Judge Gary of the Steel Trust has designated as 'the greatest law suit of the time...

...A close associate, a co-worker of the late Senator, I knew his aims and his program for the future...

...charged the price at Pittsburgh, plus $5.60 a ton freight from Pittsburgh...

...As a result we secured the co-operation of Minnesota, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York...

...In this campaign, the first for state offices we have faced without his leadership, I have been selected to be the spokesman of the men and women of Wisconsin who have determined to carry on, achieve those aims, effectuate that program, and to keep Wisconsin State government the great instrument of happiness and prosperity of all our people as was designed and achieved under La Follette...

...There was not only the increase in problems arising out of the growth of the state in population and wealth, but a great accumulation of problems from the war period...

...The Wisconsin Railroad Commission and the attorney general have thus far successfully opposed the granting of the increases asked for...

...We must sustain and never permit the props to be knocked from under the splendid financial program that has been worked out for the construction and maintenance of the Wisconsin highways—state, county, and town...

...In the first place it must be ascertained if the man under consideration knows the job and if he is equipped to do the work in the way it should be done to satisfy the desires and to safeguard the interests of the voters...

...The agricultural interests of Wisconsin can only be safe-guarded when the offices of Governor and Attorney General and Dairy and Food Commissioner and Commissioner of Markets and Commissioner of Agriculture are in the hands of men who know the Wisconsin farmer view point and are on guard to prevent undermining of our laws by insidious departmental rulings and by seemingly innocent amendments to the law...

...As a result of prompt action the state will collect several millions of dollars and without this prompt action it would not have been able to collect one cent...

...I am opposed to such a program...

...John S. Reynolds, Solomon Levitan and myself...

...The cost will be repaid a hundred fold...

...These discriminatory practices resulted in increased prices to the great mass of local and small buyers...

...We must meet and overcome every effort at undermining our state educational system, not only by resisting the corrupting power of great fortunes that seek to worm themselves into a position of domination in our higher institutions of learning, but also defeating every effort to have Wisconsin surrender control of its schools to a Federal bureau...

...The production of water power can be increased, thus benefitting industries and communities along our rivers...

...At present there is pending an important case, the purpose of which is to halt the process cheese manufacturers in the'ir efforts to exploit our milk producers...

...These men had a combined wealth of $150,000,000...

...We are fighting not only for opportunity to go forward with La Follette's program, but also to determine whether we shall retain that great body of progressive legislation which makes Wisconsin the foremost state of the Union...

...Promote Agricultural Industry AGRICULTURE is the great basic industry of Wisconsin...

...He was the first to die...

...Our highway financial program has been so arranged as to distribute fairly the cost between the property owner and the road users...

...By this practice Wisconsin was cheated of the opportunity to develop its factories as the demands of commerce and its favorite situation justified...

...In Favor of Conservation TWENTY-FIVE years ago, while I was in the legislature, I aided in passing the legislation to effectuate the wise forestry policy of Governor La Foilette...

...Laws must be administered in the spirit which caused their enactment...

...To determine those questions the voters must know something of the past performance of the candidates...

...It is not practical to review herein the Michigan Boundary case, the Milwaukee Road Receivership case, the fight for the women's hours of service act...

...I am unable, because of space limitations, to state all...

...The state administration must constantly battle through its departments and in the courts against attempts to break down the legal protection given to Wisconsin farmers...

...This causes a loss of at least 600 tons in the freight carrying capacity of the large boats for each trip, entailing an annual addition to the lake freights of at least $4,000,000...

...In 1923 we passed a law in Wisconsin to prohibit the use of discriminatory prices in the purchase or sale of dairy products, and by this means we have saved our farmers and local creameries and cheese factories from being gobbled up or destroyed by the great combination as was done in Kansas and Nebraska...

...It will increase opportunity for recreation...

...This month, we shall begin to take testimony before former Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes as special commissioner of the Supreme Court of the United States, and I believe that within another six months we shall have a final decision from the Supreme Court of the United States which will forever stop this steal...

...Many of these still live in the state for all purposes except that of the payment of taxes...

...Michigan has entered a separate suit, and Indiana and New York are also co-oporating...

...Dairying is the mainstay of Wisconsin agriculture...

...Our fight is to preserve and perpetuate the splendid democracy during thirty years of political struggle...

...It is estimated that the tourist traffic annually brings $100,000,000 to Wisconsin...

...The only way that these moneys could be replaced and the program continued would be by a general property tax...

...We have been bfore the Supreme Court of the United States twice, each time winning a decision in our favor...

...Hardly anything is more important than the preservation of our forests...

...Equalizing the flow of the stream protects the fish life and lessens the danger from pollution...

...No independent dealer dares cut the Standard Oil price...

...By threatening serious damage or destruction of the lake commerce it discourages further development and further commerce in the enormous Great Lakes commerce...

...Monopoly price practices result in piling up ex-cessive profits to the dominant organization in industry, and enable it to control absolutely the business, to determine the fate of its com-petitors and to ignore all questions of economy or efficiency in its operations...

...Such is the purpose pledged in the state platform signed by John J. Blaine, Henry Huber, Theodore Dammann...

...We must beat back the vicious propaganda which seeks to undermine and destroy our income tax and inheritance tax laws and to break down our Dairy and Food, Industrial, Marketing and other commissions and the legislation under which these bodies have rendered such splendid service to the state...

...The adoption of a sound, sane forestry and conservation program will increase by millions of dollars the annual revenue from these sources...

...Their effort is to foist upon the American public a Wisconsin cheese without butter fat...

...For State Highways AS Governor, I shall insist that there be no increase in general property taxes to defray highway expenditures and no abandonment of our present highway program...

...Most serious of all is this, the Chicago water steal is the one thing that really stands in the way of our immediately getting the St...

...Adequate provision must be made for the continuance of the fight to eradicate bovine tuberculosis from the cattle of this state until Wisconsin shall be the first state in the world to have all its cattle free of tuberculosis...

...Wisconsin's program insures to this state the most comprehensive system of good roads of any state upon the "pay-as-you-go" plan without the burden of a heavy load of interest paying debt...

...To defeat the state, on defiance of an order of the court, all the securities of the deceased were secretly removed from a vault in Milwaukee and taken to St...

...These increases were a flat increase upon all rates of 5%, and increases of varying amounts upon grain, cement, coal, gravel, and other materials...

...The railroads said they needed an average increase of 11% in order that they might Secure the 5 3/4 % net earnings which they claimed were guaranteed to them under the Esch-Cummins act...

...So I am opposed to taking any part of the license fee or of the gasoline tax money and using it for conservation purposes...

...I am opposed to such changes in this program as have been put forward in this campaign and which would mean not only the looting of the gasoline tax revenue of $500,000, but a diminution of the auto license fees of upward of $1,-500,000...

...Wisconsin was then fighting alone...

...Our state stands out among the democracies of the world—a challenge to plutocracy and to autocracy—a real government of the people, for the people and by the people...

...It is not practical for the isolated dairyman or farmer to protect himself...

...The benefits to be derived from this will be enormous...

...The issue in Wisconsin this year is age old...

...Once our people understood what was done they were not slow to revamp the constitution so as to make possible the restoration of our forests...

...It has greatly lowered the levels of the lakes...

...What we need is a repeal of the Esch-Cummins law, and the farmers, producers, and manufacturers of this state should unite and see to it that Wisconsin will have two men in the United States Senate to fight for such a repeal by sending to the Senate Governor John J. Blaine...

...I count it a signal honor to have been associated with La Follette, through his five years as Governor of this state and his nineteen years as United States Senator and to have played some part in his political battles...

...It must be preserved and safeguarded...

...It can be done...

...Will Carry on La Follette Program Co-worker For Thirty Years With Senator Cites Public Record as Guarantee For Future Action By HERMAN L. EKERN (Progressive Republican Candidate for Governor) I N THE primary election September 7, the voters will determine whether our State Government shall continue to be representative of all the people of this state or if that Government is to be turned over to an unholy political and commercial alliance to take the government of Wisconsin Out of the hands of its people...

...It is the issue that divided the Jefferson-ians from the Hamiltonians in the formative years of the republic and forced the bill of rights in the first ten amendments to the constitution...

...Louis so that no property remained in Wiscon-sin from which these taxes might be collected...

...We so thoroughly made the case that the steel corporation did not appeal, and this practice is now forever ended...

...H. A. Wagner, of Milwaukee, estimated that the ending of this practice would save the people of Wisconsin from $5,000,000 to $10,000,-000 annually in the price of steel alone...

...Firmly believing in economy, I assert that it is not economy to pit an overworked attorney general's staff against the best legal talent that wealth can command in a fight involving millions in taxes, and that true economy dictates that when vital interests of the state are at stake, the investment of a few thousand dollars to protect these interests is not only a good investment for the people, but is sound public policy...

...I undertook the organization of all the lake states, having common interests with Wisconsin in this fight...

...Manufacturing in Wisconsin and in adjoining states, not alone in the large cities, but also in the smaller cities and towns, has been encouraged and greatly extended...

...It equals the amount of water which flows from the Wisconsin into the Mississippi at Prairie du Chien...

...I called to the assistance of the state in this important litigation four of the best lawyers in Milwaukee with the result that at an expenditure of $23,000 in fees the State of Wisconsin now ha3 in escrow in Milwaukee $3,500,000 of Beggs' estate property and not one dollar of this can be touched by the Beggs heirs until this case has been determined...

...I shall review briefly some of the more important of these cases because of their bearing upon the issues to be decided in the primary and election...

...This practice consisted in charging for practically all steel sold in the United States the price at Pittsburgh, plus freight from Pittsburgh...

...When the Supreme Court set aside the forestry amendment, conservation received a knock-out blow in Wisconsin...

...That is my reason for calling attention to a few of the accomplishments of the public service I have given to Wisconsin...

...Four years ago I returned to public life and became attorney general...

...It was impossible for them to do so...

...We will fight on and we will compel all of these men, who have been aptly described as "tax dodgers from nowhere," who have made their money in Wisconsin, to contribute their just share to the cost of the government of Wisconsin...

...More factories mean more work and more working men...

...All the accounts of the deceased are being examined to ascertain the amount of back "income taxes with interest, and with the penalties that accrued for the years that Beggs evaded his income taxes...

...Chicago Water Steal ANOTHER case of greatest importance which I found on becoming attorney general was the suit of the state of Wisconsin to prevent the Chicago lake water steal...

...This is well illustrated by the situation as to gasoline prices...

...It benefits the farmer in furnishing a larger market near home with a resulting increase in prices and a saving in transportation costs...

...Wisconsin to hold its enviable position as the leading dairy community of the world must be known to produce her milk from healthy cows, and that her dairy products are handled and manufactured under the most sanitary and advanced methods...

...We will insure a longer summer flow of cur streams...

...As long as this steal continues neither we nor Canada can agree to a new treaty for the division of the water powers and the building of this canal...

...How a Governor Should Be Chosen THE voters of Wisconsin, under the constitution, in this year must select a man to be governor...

...It has caused and is causing enormous losses to harbors, docks, buildings, summer resorts, and other property...

...In Wisconsin gasoline sells about two cents above what is required for a fair margin of handling...

...The mere enactment of good laws is not sufficient...

...In making such selection every voter should understand the issue and realize the importance of maintaining the integrity and usefulness of the state government...

...As Governor I would continue the same watchful interest and activity that have marked my administration as Attorney General in protecting the interests of Wisconsin agriculture against the products of tha ''cocoanut cow'' and the ravages of those who would control the farmers' market by illegal and discriminatory practices...