TEN YEARS AGO AND TODAY
Elward, Rodney L.
Ten Years Ago and Today In the Wisconsin Legislature By RODNEY A. ELWARD AFTER ten years' absence from Madison, Wisconsin politics have an unreal appearance- The revolution which has taken place...
...That was possible because the orders regarding each measure were sent from the powers in Milwaukee, the members were told how to vote, they voted as told, and went home...
...Sometimes free bars were maintained in committee rooms in the capitol itself...
...They did things differently in the old days...
...They were generally men of limited knowledge of public affairs, often astonishingly ignorant...
...Ninety days used to be about the length of a session...
...Free drinks were nightly dispensed at the hotels in the rooms of these lobbyists, till the bar keepers of Madison complained that their trade was seriously hurt...
...Then each lobbyist had an extensive suite of rooms, and the legislative members were gotten into the furtherest and mcst secluded room, for strictly private "arguments" regarding legislation...
...Now the men elected to the legislature seem actually to run that body...
...There seem* to be no longer a "dirty dozen" in the Assembly...
...Bosses Lose Power AT THE end of this ten year absence from Madison, the legislature presented a striking contrast to those of th-e old days...
...Wisconsin,, through its remade legislature, is setting the pace in remedial legislation...
...The legislatures in tho-'-e days were run by outsiders, generally lobbyists or politicians working in the lob'.y-ists' interests...
...On asking for the reason for the length of the recent sessions of the legislature I was informed by one of the members, that it was because it was impossible to "line 'em up," on important measures, they were so independent...
...Gone are the wild nights, when at the evening sessions of the lower house, those who would not vote against a measure which was being killed by the lobbyists, were gotten as drunk as possible, so they could not know how their vote was being counted...
...At the last session a young lawyer, doing a little quiet lobbying for a great corporation, while sitting in the office of a Madison hotel, pointed out to a visitor from another state a certain member of the state Senate whom he desired to talk with privately about a certain bill, but did not dare to approach him for fear of the anti-lobby law...
...The membership was then generally of the tool type, men who were put up by the local bosses, because they could be managed...
...Railway passes used to be for sale at very low prices by the clerks about the legislature...
...This name was conferred in the session of 1897, as I remember, to a notable group of near statesmen in the lower house by a correspondent of one of the Milwaukee afternoon papers...
...For Wisconsin now leads in the development of economic legislation, as for a generation she has lead in educational evolution...
...Absent also are the artificial blondes from Chicago, Minneapolis, and other distant cities, who drifted about the corridors in droves, occupying places on the clerical payroll, and whose work was performed by other, and competent, clerks...
...Gone are most of the characteristics of the old days, when free bars were run in the rooms of the corporate lobbyists in the Madison hotels...
...Slowly other states, getting primary election laws as a means, are following its lead...
...The membership was composed of bright, intellectually active, and apparently independent men, largely graduates of the University...
...In times of emergency the local bosses who had m:nle them were brought to Madison on the easily obtained free parses to keep their creatures "in line...
...La Follettism, under whatever name you may call it, is spreading, like the abolition sentiment did a generation ago...
...No longer does the fat lobbyist for one of the great railway companies occupy a member's seat, vacated for his use by the member, and direct the deliberations of the Assembly by notes taken about the chamber for him by the pagec...
...Most of the lobby arguments were made that way...
...Only there were more than a dozen...
...It fitted, and it stuck...
...Ten years ago, corpulent, suave, and domineering men, employees of the railway, brewing, street railway, and other companies from Milwaukee, managed the legislature...
...A large proportion of the membership of the lower House could not understand the nature of the measures on which they were voting, and often were incapable of knowing what the parliamentary situation was, at the end of a debate...
...That the political sanitary measures adopted there during the past decade could have been so effective seems almost impossible...
...A New Order THE old order changeth, making way for the new...
...The whole nature of the legislatures has changed also to a remarkable degree...
...All this was possible under the convents n system...
...Inconceivable as it may seem to one who has been ten years gone, the very lobby itself has faded...
...Ten Years Ago and Today In the Wisconsin Legislature By RODNEY A. ELWARD AFTER ten years' absence from Madison, Wisconsin politics have an unreal appearance- The revolution which has taken place is incredible...
...It was taken as a matter of course...
...Kansas, Nebraska, and other Western states are slowly adopting the Wisconsin system...
...Nowhere in the world, I believe, can so clear an example of the political revolution which is slowly taking place in our country, be so clearly measured as in the Wisconsin legislatures of to-day compared with those of 1895-1900...
...This change in the nature of the Wisconsin legislatures, due of course to the "progressive program," means much, not alone to the state, but to the country at large...
Vol. 2 • June 1910 • No. 25
