WHAT THE GREAT SENATOR DOLLIVER SAID

...so when the Interstate Commerce Commission repeatedly asked Congress to give them the power to fix railroad rates, and a good citizen of Milwaukee—Mr...

...What the Great Senator Dolliver Said In an Address in Milwaukee, Six Years Ago, August 30, 1910 "If this LA FOLLETTE of yours—fighting at the beginning singlehanded and at last winning for Wisconsin an efficient representative government—has ever in all these years betrayed any public interest, or turned aside from the path of public duty to follow the call of selfishness, or personal gain, there is no record of it—his enemies themselves being the judges...

...It is to the everlasting credit of Wisconsin that from the time he first became Governor of the state until this hour, he has had the confidence of the people and has been able to speak as one having behind him the authority of a great commonwealth, IT IS PROPOSED now to put an end to his career—to cancel his commission—to make an example of him, so that the young men of the United States in the future may perceive how much more comfortable it is—how much safer— how much more profitable to serve the impudent financial interests which are trying to capture the strongholds of the government, than it is to care for that scattered and unorganized constituency—the people of the United States...

...A political leader like Senator La Follettb never has had any difficulty in convincing those who have heard his message without bias, or those manifold preoccupations of mind and purpose which, in all generations have hindered the progress of truth and of righteousness...

...We were a little old-fashioned in our views...

...It is that which binds men to political parties and to old political leaderships—that makes it impossible to gain access to their judgment and reason even though the old leaders have taken the old parties and turned them into subsidiary companies with the controlling interest in the...

...THUS the best motives of human nature—the love of old associations—confidence in old friends, and even enthusiasm for the old flag, are put into an unconscious alliance with the forces hostile to good government...

...It is an encouraging thing, that while the Aldrich school has been closed— not for repairs, but permanently—the American people by the million are studying the ancient rule laid down by the apostle, with results so far reaching in their influence as to amount to a political revolution...

...and notwithstanding the fact that it was a party measure, recommended by a President who was somewhat more than a titular leader of the party, the Aldrich gang ordered Senator Tillman to make the report in order to insult the president and in the expectation of defeating the measure on the floor of the senate...

...We sometimes speak of the odium theologic as a hindrance to the spiritual progress of the world...

...It may be that he can afford to go back to the quiet and repose of private life, but if the state of Wisconsin,—yielding to the corrupt influences at this moment flowing in upon her from all directions— shall go back to the old form of government by political bosses, owing their allegiance to foreign corporations, it would be a calamity almost inconceivable in its disaster to you and to your children...

...I have come because so much of the good work of Senator La Follette in the early days was done without any sympathy or help from me or such as me, that I have felt a sort of duty to stand here among his people and offer to him, and to those who have been fighting with him a grateful tribute—none the less sincere because it is belated as to seem almost like an apology for the blindness and carelessness of other years...

...I was a member of the Interstate Commerce committee of the Senate and supposed that the bill would be promptly reported and promptly passed...

...but in our time that is as nothing compared to the odium politicum...

...I received a letter the other day from Dr...

...If this La Follette of yours—fighting at the beginning nngle-handed and at last winning for Wisconsin an efficient representative government, has •rer in all these years betrayed any public interest, or turned aside from the path of public duty to follow the call of selfishness, or personal gain, there is no record of it—his enemies themselves being the judges...

...1 The history of the world," said the venerable philosopher, "is a record of sleeping peoples and alert Private Interests...

...I never allow myself to speak unkindly of anybody who is governed by prejudice and finds it difficult to get out of the ruts in which he has been moving for a long time...

...I have not come here because I think such a misfortune is imminent, or even probable...

...In Wisconsin the people know what this fearless leader has accomplished...

...Fortunately men everywhere are waking up to the fact that there are limits to partisan zeal—a point somewhere at which the unity of the party becomes less important than its integrity...

...After we'd spent a year at taking evidence, we reported the bill, every Republican, except three, voting against it and every Democrat voting for it...

...the Aldrich school, which says, '' hold fast to all I give you,'' and the school of the apostle, who, in a single sentence, pointed out a plain road well suited to the progress of society-—"prove all things and hold fast to that which is good...

...Of "Standpatters," there are two schools...

...Your schools, your highways, your systems of taxation, your laws covering the incorporation of capital, and the control, by the public authority, of the instrumentalities of commerce, all bear witness to the creative and fruitful labors of this militant servant of the community...

...It is the finest sign of our times that while Private Interests are still alert, they no longer exult in the prospect of finding the public asleep, for there are strong evidences of life and vigor and unconquerable purpose on these unnumbered millions who are now engaged in taking possession in their own name of the political institutions which we have inherited from our fathers...

...I confess that I have had more than my share of them...

...I escaped by accident about five years ago...

...To my amazement the town filled up with the magnates of the rafl» way world and their hired men, and when it came to a showdown—with the exception af Senator Clapp and myself—the proposition had no friends on the Republican side of the committee...

...I am so thankful to have made my own escape from that situation that I look with great charity upon the shortcomings of other men...

...hands of invisible combinations, in which politics and business—one as rotten as the other1—are operated together from a central office...

...From that time I have listened with very poor patience to those political managers who are engaged in knocking the head of Democrats and Republicans together as we used to rub the noses of kittens in order to make them fight, while they are occupied in administering the real government of the United States from well known business offices in New York...

...Up to that time I supposed that all Republicans were not only good men, but so much better than all Democrats, Socialists, Populists and the like as to make everybody's duty perfectly plain...

...E. P. Bacon—came down to Washington with a petition signed by all the railroad commissioners in the country and nearly all the shippers, it never occurred to me that a syndicate of railroad lawyers had to pass on it before Congress would dare to take up the question at all...

...For that reason I have never allowed myself to speak harshly of "Standpatters," or the "Old Guard," or that numerous company of good men -who are so intent on being life-long Republicans that they do not see with what sinister cheerfulness the promoters and lobbyists of our politics are counting on their fidelity and loyalty to party as the chief ,,jasset in the nefarious enterprises with which they are associated...

...Lyman Abbott, one of the prophets and sages of our time, which contained a sentence which read to me like a genuine proverb...

...The public servant has less at stake than the people in whose services he has poured out the re-resources of his extraordinary energy...

...He may, therefore, be properly sainted as the pioneer of a political reformation now nationwide in its' activities and almost revolutionary...

...Therefore, the state of Wisconsin, and not Senator La Follette, is at the bar of universal public opinion on trial for its good name...

...IF THERE is any doubt about the issue—if those who are now engaged in buying a controlling interest in Wisconsin—have any hope of success, it is because they count with certainty on an old maxim of our politics, based upon the notion that popular interest in public affairs— owing to the infirmities of human nature—is commonly intermittent and ineffective...

...We thought that when a thing was right, it was the business of Congress to carry out the wish of the people whom they were supposed to represent...

...in its moral significance...

...THE FLRST among Republican political leaders to comprehend the character of the irrepressible conflict within the party between the public interests and the present day organizations of private business, was Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin...

...I never dreamed that the, railroad corporations of the United States had more to do with the action of Congress than the chosen representatives of the people in the two houses had...