The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, January 21, 1918, Page 5

' e f'ma.chlne ‘one. bu 3 volved the collection of several hundred thousand ‘dollars of interest due the state on state deposits. La Folleite, without being told what was wanted, was summoned to a Milwaukee hotel by political leaders. and was offered $500, $1000, or any sum . he cared to name, to influénce his brother-in-law, to decide the case in favor of the politicians, from whom the state was trying to collect the money. La Follette refused. He made public the bribe offer. He was a marked man from that instant with the Republican bosses. They denied that they had tried to bribe La Follette or to get La Follette to bribe the judge. But having failed in this attempt at bribery they uncovered their hand by going be- fore the next legislature and getting that body to pass laws by which the state surrendered its claim to more than a quarter of a million dollars of the money stolen by the politicians. The governor signed these infamous bills. Now La Follette is a fighter. It is written in the way his pompadoured hair stands up, in the way his jaw sticks out, Short, but robust and rugged, he soon won the title that fits him best—the “little giant.” DEFEAT DOES NOT DISCOURAGE PROGRESSIVES La Follette's fighting blood was up. A few others felt the same way. They determined to try to capture the Re- publican convention and choose a governor and legislators who would serve ‘the state and the people—not the politicians and the railroads. They put up a man named Nils Haugen as their candidate for governor. They made their fight in the 1894 conven- tion—and lost. N They were not discouraged. They made their fight again, in 1896, with La Follette as their candidate for governor. More headway was made; on the eve of the ¢onvention La Fol- i lette had more delegates than any o other one candidate. But the machine ¢ candidates combined. Some of the La Follette dele- gates deserted. One La Follette man was offered $700 to transfer his delegates from La Follette to the machine candidates. He refused, but others were won over. When the vote was taken La Fol- lette was defeated. But he was still in the fight and he had a new jssue for the next campaign. - It was the direct primary—to let the people make the nominations instead of having them made by a boss-ridden, machine-controlled convention. The movement gained strength. It had suffered through lack of any favorable publicity, but at about this time Léa Follette and his associates obtained a paper which they named “The State,” at Madison. La Follette carried his fight to the farmers. He had invitations to speak at a number of county fairs. Instead of delivering platitudes, La Follette hit out from the shoulder and told the farmers the facts about the railroad ownership of the state government- of Wis- consin. .The fair managers in some cases tried to shut him off. In one case they tried to start a horse race just as La Follette was starting his speech, but La Follette moved a wagon right on the race track, got up in it and announced that he would delay the races all afternoon unless he were glven - a chance. He got the chance. Some other things had happened in the mean- time. At the 1896 Republican convention, Hall, through an over- sight, was given the floor and at once introduced his anti-pass resolution, which had been chloroform- ° ed without being given a hearing at previous con- ventions.. Before the bosses got a chance to kill it off Hall demanded a vote. The convention did not dare to vote openly against it and the resolu- tion was adopted.: But the 1897 legislature, which followed, repudiated the resolution and refused to pass an anti-pass law. “ONE COW CRATED” STARTS THE TROUBLE At about this time, however, La Follette’s paper, The State, got hold of some records of free express shipments - made by Governor Scofield under “frank.” This list of free shipments, all by express and not by freight, ‘included these items on difter. ent dates in 1897: r Two boxes, twg ‘barrels, three barrels, one hox, two boxes, two 'barrels two' boxes; barrel potatoes, one Hall had been keeping up his fight against _ free passes and for fair railroad taxation. ‘one ' sewing . cow (crated). It was the “one cow (crated)” that caught the people’s eye. “It raised a storm of mingled ridicule and resent- ment,” La Follette says in his autobiography. “Scofield’s cow became famous, her picture appear- ed in the newspapers and she came to be known in every home in the state.” It resulted in 1899 in forcing the legislature to pass Hall's anti-pass bill. Meantime La Follette had made another fight in 1898. The people’s cause was getting stronger all the time. La Follette, old-time politicians say, would have been nominated on the first ballot but for the lavish use of money. On the night before balloting began, it is told, $8300 was spent by the bosses in “handling delegates.” La Follette was again defeated but all the planks that he had been demanding were forced inlo the state platform. However, that didn’t bother the 1899 legislature. With the exception of the anti-pass law, the legis- ~ Supreme court room, Wisconsin state capitol at Madison lature failed to carry out the platform. And with resentment continually growing, with the people becoming better informed all the time of the fight being made in their behalf, La Follette was nomi- nated and triumphantly elected in 1900. But the fight wasn’t over yet. While the bosses had not been able to prevent La Follette’s election, they had succeedéd in getting a lot of their own men into the legislature. When the assembly or lower house had passed a direct primary bill and it went to the senate, the old gang senators Kkilled it. They passed instead a ‘“fake” primary bill, just as the North Dakota senators in -1917 passed a “fake” terminal elevators bill, and La TFollette vetoed it, just as Governor Frazier of North Dakota later vetoed the fake elevator bill. They also beat the Dbill for higher railroad taxation. Railroad lobby- ists swarmed around Madison. “They were lavish with money; they maintained headquarters that looked like million dollar bar rooms. But they didn’t depend solely upon bribes and liquor; they used threats also. Business men who were mem- bers of the legislature were told that if they voted for the railroad taxation bill their business would be ruined. PEOPLE AT LAST GET FAVORABLE LEGISLATURE The railroads were safe in making this threat. By granting better freight rates or secret rebates to a competitor, the railroads could easily have driven any business to the wall in short order. La Follette saw this, He saw that either the state must exert its power to control the railroads or the railroads would con- tinue to control the state. He pro- posed a railroad commission that would have power to regulate railroad rates and prevent unfair practices. In the next campaign of 1902 La Follette not only had to fight for re- election but also for a favorable legisla- ture, especially the senate. He got a better one than he had before—one that passed a real direct primary law to be submitted to the people and a law insuring fair railroad taxation, but he failed to get the.law that was needed still more—to create a railroad commission to regulate the railroads. But in 1904 La Follette went out to the people again. This time the fight of ten years bore fruit. He was re- elected with a plurality of 50,000 votes, the primary law carried by about the same vote and a legislature, thorough- ly in sympathy with the people in both its branches, came into power. The railroad commission law and much other legislation needed by the people were passed. It seemed that the last hold of the hosses had been broken—that the people had won a perma- nent victory. In 1905 La Follette was at the height of his popu- larity. He was elected to the United States senate that year, for the first time, by an overwhelming vote, while still governor. He held onto his posi- tion as governor until the 1905 session of congress opened, and when he went to Washington, J. O. Davidson, the lieutenant-governor, became governor. But while the people’s movement was at its height the seeds of reaction had been sown. Davidson, for instance, did not prove a real progressive in the eyes of the La Follette men. When the 1906 election came around the La Follette forces backed Lenroot for governor in place of Davidson but Davidson had been able to build up his own fences - while in office. Many of the people considered him as progressive as Lenroot, and La Follette’s man was defeated. GREAT CAMPAIGN FUND FLOODS THE STATE But worse was to come. another senatorial election. candidates. Two were progressives—McGovern and Hatton. Another, “Ike” Stephenson, a million- aire lumberman, had followed La Follette for a time and had pretended to be a progressive, but his real ambition was -for office, in any way and at any price. The fourth man was an out-and-out stand- patter. McGovern, who was developing into a 1eade1 only second in importance to La Follette, seemed to be the choice of many of the progressives. McGovern had first made his reputation as district attorney in Milwaukee. On account of his fearless enforce- ment of the law he had secured the bitter opposi- tion of the old -line politicians, who threatened to prevent his re-election as district attorney until La Follette, in 1904, took the field personally for McGovern and enabled him to win. But McGovern, had no better claims to being progressive than Hat- ton. There was no organization to decide whether progressive support should go to McGovern, Hatton or Stephenson, who also posed as a progressive. In addition Stephenson turned loose a campaign fund such as never has been seen in Wisconsin, before nor since. ‘When the election had: been held it was. found that Stephenson, who admitted the expenditure of more-than $100,000, had won by a small plurality, His money, added to the d!vlsion __(Continued on page 21) R AT e T In 1908 there was There were four