A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By Isable B. La Follette ALONG with a good many other citizens throughout our country, I am still meditating on the result of the Wisconsin Primary election. It followed the...
...Fight The Good Fight It is customary in times of stress to make cynical remarks about "the dear people," but I have come up in a school which regards them with real respect...
...Meaning Behind The Votes But the big upset in the Republican Primary was that Wendell Willkie should run at the bottom of the ticket...
...It was likewise understood that the Wisconsin Primary was a test for Willkie, and that if he did not "show" in Wisconsin and Nebraska, that the "Big Boys" were through with him, as has since been demonstrated by Mr...
...We have to look beneath the action itself and try to find out what causes people to act as they do...
...Douglas MacArthur was also a surprise to many, since no one knows the General's own position regarding his candidacy and the MacArthur slate in Wisconsin lacked, shall we call it, "ballast...
...I would emphasize to my young friend and to all of us who see the dark days ahead, that a fight like the utility fight we have just been through has its silver lining...
...MacArthur which appeared at the top of the ballot as a sort of straw-vote test of preference but without actual count-value, and then he checked the names of the Dewey delegates purely because, although he dislikes Dewey intensely, he considers him "the best bet to beat F. D. R." Former Gov...
...No one has it, and I guess we will just have to make up our minds to find it for ourselves...
...True that the Power Trust has gained another victory over a municipality blind to the issue involved, but on the other hand the fight brought forth unsuspected courage and leadership in every walk of our civic life...
...A Silver Lining It is obvious that we are in for a period of public reaction against everything associated with New Deal-ism, as the President himself has indicated he is well aware...
...how when next we went back these elements were fleeing the country or wringing their hands in self-accusation for having withdrawn from the fight when, in republican Germany, they could have made their voices heard...
...Willkie had the avowed support of many rank and file Republican leaders...
...Thomas E. Dewey received the bulk of the "regular" Republican vote plus the "beat Roosevelt at any cost" citizens...
...The vote of a politically astute Progressive neighbor illustrates the general sentiment...
...Only thus can we forge the cogs that will eventually give us power...
...It must be borne in mind that the Jews were but one element included in the Hitler liquidation of republican Germany...
...But as I urged upon my young friend, the thing we absolutely cannot afford to do is to "give up the ship...
...If the people are so stupid that they won't see what is for their own best interest, why should we kill ourselves for them...
...As a neighbor who had voted against public ownership expressed it, "The government has taken over so much power these days and is always at you from this and that direction, that I wanted to call a halt...
...Let's take a cinch in our belts and fight the good fight wherever each of us sees an opportunity...
...No matter what political course we take we are going to find ourselves with strange bedfellows...
...Harold Stassen of Minnesota received a surprisingly large support which stems, so the "experts" inform me, from a well-financed movement among the Scandinavian element in our North West states, the theory being that Stassen is a "comer" for four years hence if not now...
...Then it was too late for people like us...
...There were too many parties and none of them suited me...
...We foresaw the horrible cost not alone in suffering and life itself, but that a war-economy would inevitably postpone the solving of our own crying problems...
...He checked the name of Gen...
...Willkie attempted to lure the electorate...
...Of course this would have been municipal, local ownership, which is somewhat different, and maybe I was wrong in voting the way I did, but with all these war regulations and all, I don't want to see government get any more power...
...It followed the general pattern I had anticipated in that Gov...
...I told of Phil's and my experience of being in Berlin when Hitler came into power...
...At the end of our first long study trip to Europe where Phil had consulted experts everywhere on the problems that faced us and had longer faced them, he meditated to me, "1 have kept hoping that each great, mind I have consulted would be able to give me the 'answer' to the illness that grips our economy...
...Not only did a corps of leaders demonstrate their devotion to democracy in our little community, but the majority of Wisconsin voters turned down the money-bags and brash promises with which Mr...
...There is no doubt in my mind that we in America have the brains and courage to find our "answer...
...Like nature itself, "they" refuse to fit into our individual plans, and only by working with her and with them, can we progress...
...An analysis of the Wisconsin vote by population background would seem to bear this out...
...They" may not do what you or I think they should at a given time, but when given a chance to express it they have a remarkable sense of how much the country can "take...
...the money "flowed," according to those "in the know...
...The popular support for Gen...
...But while too many of us pursued this course, Hitler got his toe in the door by appealing to a disillusioned and miserable people...
...As Phil always used to say, "The folks aren't interested in John Jones or Phil La Follette as individuals—it's what they represent to them that concerns folks...
...he personally campaigned Wisconsin for nearly two weeks just previous to the primary...
...Those of us who fought so hard to prevent America taking on the battles of the whole world were only too aware of what such a course meant...
...I thought that the thing for me to do.was to take care of my job and things would right themselves...
...I sympathized with her but at the same time pointed out, "What is your alternative...
...But if, as we say we believe, democracy begins at home, I take courage from two aspects of our Primary election...
...how the progressive-liberal elements there were shocked but assured us (and themselves) that it could never last...
...As we listened to the returns coming in on the radio, a young woman who had worked hard in our public ownership fight exclaimed, "Ever since I've been of voting age we've been licked at every turn...
...I have yet to meet a Dewey supporter who feels warmly or even likes Dewey personally or who regards him as anything except the most likely foil to the President...
...Willkie's withdrawal from the Presidential race...
...Significant, too, as a straw in the wind, was the fight in our small city of Madison for the public acquisition of our electric power company in which we were defeated two to one...
...At not only cost of time and energy but at real business and professional risk, men and women arose to the test with a courage and spirit which inspired their fellow workers...
Vol. 8 • April 1944 • No. 16
