A ROOM OF OUR OWN
Follette, Isabel B. La
A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. Lafollette's WE are all inclined to face a New Year with hope. Usually this hope is more or less personal, but the events of the past few years have relatively...
...Upon our protest he exploded, "I paid for entertainment, not propaganda...
...I would appeal to them along the interests of each group and get them to have confidence in me personally," he declared...
...Candidates tend more and more to 'give the public what it wants,' but I think this is really an insult to the folks...
...Where we should have outstanding leaders elucidating and fighting on a fundamental program there appears to be chaos...
...As political candidates come forward, let us measure them not alone by their "stand" affecting our personal interests as farmers, merchants, teachers, and so on, but demand to see our setting in the larger picture as they see it...
...ANOTHER of the group asked the visitor, "If . were running for the U. S. Senate from the state of Idaho, what would you tell the voters about the sugar industry and the tariff...
...We Progressives took our lickings and our victories but we always had our main line to hew to...
...When Phil was active in politics before the war, this was always the burden of his refrain, that the welfare of each of us is dependent on the welfare of all of us, and he gave graphic examples...
...Once I went to a performance in New York where an entertainer sang thinly-veiled Communist songs...
...Isn't that the trouble with Congress today...
...Being quick-witted and having had successful local political experience he replied briskly, "I'd get myself an old car and travel the state to get personally acquainted with the voters...
...Not a bad thought for the coming election year...
...To be brutally frank," I pressed, "what difference is there, except in degree, in the campaign you outline and the Hill-Billy Band type campaign...
...Usually this hope is more or less personal, but the events of the past few years have relatively dwarfed cur own desires as we look into the future...
...We have a thousand and one experts in all these specific fields, but no one is giving us the related total picture...
...Our visitor's brow became furrowed...
...From here the conversation branched off into passing the buck between Congress and the Administration, with ultimate bemoaning of wartime 'administrative techniques.' As I see it, one of the great political tragedies of war is the assumption of power by the executive whereby people must fall in line and keep quiet "for the good of our country.' This can become a dangerous habit...
...THIS coming year holds a Congressional election...
...Doggone it, you may get to be governor or senator, but you don't lead by avoiding the real issues...
...Naturally people are concerned with their own specific problems but they must be made to see that they are a part of something bigger...
...Let's not confine ourselves to being "pressure groups," but rather be American citizens...
...I don't hear that kind of line being sounded in public life today and I am wondering where the faulj lies...
...In this mood I recently put a question to a "visiting fireman" come to investigate Wisconsin polities, "What would you do if you wanted to get yourself elected governor of your state...
...pRANKLY," I went on, "that is what I miss in politics today...
...While you or I may not be running for office, therein " a political New Year's resolution I believe we should make...
...What would you talk to them about...
...I continued...
...There is constant complaint about 'lack of intelligent public interest' on the part of the voter, but what is he being offered to lift his eyes to a broader horizon...
...I'll take my politics straight...
...I wouldn't talk about it," he replied with commendable honesty...
...I don't mean all these glamorous one-world generalities, but real cause and effect...
...I'm doubtless old-fashioned, but in our Progressive tradition we always have taken the issues to the people...
...While it is true that Robert M. La Follette, Sr., covered the state's highways and byways year after year so that his personal friends were legion and followed him through thick and thin, he always gave them meaty talks two to three hours long in which he demonstrated the fundamental economic and political issues in terms the folks understood...
...People are deeply worried about the future—not so much the atomic bomb as the questions of strikes, full employment, farm labor and prices, cost of food, and so on...
...What worries me is that a situation like this is ripe for some Hitleresque or Huey Long type to come along with some over-simplified 'answer' which will sweep him into power...
...Before most of us were wise to this, one of our group rose to leave...
...I quer-ried, "that it contains too many members who don't talk about the really tough issues...
...No doubt that valuable work is being done tending to the trees, but no one seems to be looking at the forest so far as we in the hinterland can see...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 52
