BEGINNINGS OF PROGRESSIVE REPUBLICANISM

...staiting the forward movement When robert m. la follette locked up his law office, announced his candidacy for governor of wisconsin, and took the stump to state his views to the people, the old politicians indulged in derisive laughter and hardly took the trouble to fird out what he was saying or doing at the county fairs...

...in the school system of the state, in the guardianship of the natural resources of the state, in the moderation of railway charges, and in a reform system of public taxation...

...there are few chapters in our political history more instructive than the record of this man's activities during the years following...

...nearly everybody said that it was a hopeless fight...

...it appeared to hirn to forecast the end, if not of our form of government, at least of its spirit and substance...

...and behind their anger lay a question which they did not dare to ask: "what right has the public to know what is going on in the government of the united states"'—from ''the forward movement in the republican party...

...reading the roll call...

...he demanded the reform of the ancient system of nominations by caucus, and the substitution of the direct primary...

...IT MAY WELL be doubted whether the political movement now known everywhere as progressive republicanism could have been successfully inaugurated if it had not been for the long and desperate struggle to secure for the people the right to participate directly in the choice of candidates and to control the policy of political parties in states like wisconsin and iowa...

...thereupon senator la follette did the meanest thing in the history of political intrigue...

...the situation was intolerable to this eager student of popular institutions...

...he was not nominated, but he waked up wisconsin, and announced his purpose to renew his assault on the political rulers of the state...

...curiously enough, he made the old "congressional record," of which speaker reed used to say, "it is the safest place there is to put a thing," so explosive and destructive in its literary import that it has already begun to justify the expense of its publication...

...nobody in the senate resented this record of good work well done, yet he was received with an open hostility poorly disguised under the cover of contemptuous indifference...

...of what offense had he been guilty...

...in wisconsin a young man, born upon a farm near the capital of the state, educated in the public schools and in the state university, trained in the profession of the law, gifted as an orator, with a natural aptitude for the public service, and, above all, endowed with a courageous heart and a genius for labor and research, awoke to the fact that the whole political life of the state had become a mere agency of great business corporations, many of them non-residents, and that no man, however qualified to serve the community, had any chance to do so without an alliance with the political machine which they controlled...

...When he entered the senate, he found hardly a friend there, and those who sympathized with his work in wisconsin were so few in the senate that they could be counted upon the fingers of one hand...

...he brought the great railway systems doing business within the state, together with their attorneys and other dependents, to the bar of public opinion for judgment...

...yet he set out ¦ingle-handed to overthrow a political machine so completely intrenched that his task seemed impossible, if not ridiculous...

...he was among the first to discover that the permanence of the old political order rested upon the fact that the public takes it for granted that its representatives in washington, being engaged in a mysterious, far-off task, may be excused on party grounds if they obey the orders which are issued there without consulting either the public will or public rights...

...experienced legislators said, "what right has this man to tell people how we voted...

...and while bribery and the hardly less odious corruption of railway favors defeated him in the next state convention, he kept up the fight, enlisting under his standard thoughtful and intelligent citizens, and especially the young men, until at length he overpowered the oligarchy which for forty years had handed out the honors of a great political party with the compliments ot the private interests which directed the government of the state...

...he had behind him nearly ten years of constructive effort, the results of which could be seen on every hand...

...the men whose control he challenged were multi-millionaires, while he himself was without money or influential connections of any sort...

...he not only read the "congressional record" himself, but he went out into wisconsin and into nearly every state in the union, reading to the people the continued story of the yeas and nays...

...he dealt with the stern realities of their ease...