Progressives at Madison

Progressives at Madison

In 1854, in Ripon, Wis., a group composed of abolitionists and nationalists met to form the Republican Party, which, though it has elected 13 Presidents, is the only U. S. third party which ever elected even one.

Last week, University of Wisconsin's tanbark-floored livestock pavilion at Madison was the scene of a mass meeting which may or may not become retrospectively as important to U. S. history as the convention in Ripon. Into the pavilion swarmed some 5,000 invited guests, for whose benefit its interior had been deodorized, its gallery strung with U. S. and Wisconsin flags and with banners bearing the strange device of a cross within a circle, a new American shibboleth. Ushers were Wisconsin football players wearing red sweaters with huge white Ws. Originator, organizer and chief speaker at the meeting was Wisconsin's bespectacled 41-year-old Governor Philip Fox La Follette, whose supporters last spring ousted from the University's presidency Mr. Glenn Frank, the man who is now engaged in preparing a new charter for the Republican Party. Governor La Follette's purpose was to launch a national political organization with the definite political objective of electing a bloc of Congressmen this fall, with the probable objective of electing himself President in 1940. His means were: 1) a two-hour speech broadcast all over the U. S., and 2) a manifesto of the new National Progressive Party of America's principles.

Father & Sons. In the brief and not particularly glorious record of U. S. third parties since the War, the La Follette family has played a big part. Wisconsin's famed, white-maned Senator Robert Marion La Follette Sr. ran for President on an independent Progressive ticket in 1924, polled nearly 5,000,000 votes. Since his death in 1925, La Follette Progressivism has been ably carried on by his two sons-- conscientious dapper "Young Bob," 43, who went to the U. S. Senate in 1925 to fill the unexpired term of his father, and Philip, who has been elected Wisconsin's Governor in 1930, 1934 and 1938.

In Washington, Bob La Follette quickly developed from "the Peter Pan of the Senate" into an eminently capable political technician. As an energetic member of the Senate Finance Committee, he has worked for higher income, estate and business profits taxes, Government ownership of banks and utilities. As head of the Senate Civil Liberties Committee, he conducted its spectacular investigation of violence in steel strikes, industrial espionage and vigilante groups. In 1932, he broke with the Republican Party, of which his father's Progressive movement had been a wing, supported Franklin Roosevelt so vigorously that as recently as last summer not a few observers got the impression that "Young Bob" was likely to be the President's personal choice as his successor. Meanwhile, in Madison, Phil La Follette made Wisconsin a testing ground for the reforms his brother was pushing nationally. Wisconsin passed the first State Unemployment Insurance Act during his first term. Defeated by former Governor Walter Kohler in 1932, Phil won back his Governorship in 1934, proceeded to give Wisconsin a State Labor Relations Act, Home and Farm Credit Administration, public power system. Together the La Follettes have made an impressive political team, kept their father's old party in power with 48 out of 100 seats in the State Assembly, 16 out of 33 in the State Senate. Bob, who stayed in Washington last week to fight the Big Navy Bill, is the more polished and socially adroit of the pair. Phil, who came back from Sweden in 1936 talking vaguely but enthusiastically about the "middle way," still looks and thinks a little like a provincial pedagogue --which, as a University of Wisconsin lecturer, he used to be. Both brothers are married. Both have two children. Phil likes playing bridge or chess, Bob likes watching big-league baseball games. Both enjoy polite but informal evening entertainment, enjoy casual stops at night clubs when visiting in New York.

National relaunching of La Follette Progressivism last week was neither a surprise nor an improvisation like Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party in 1912. It was the culmination of a series of carefully planned preliminary moves, the preface to a series of equally carefully planned steps designed to make Wisconsin Progressivism a real factor in the 1940 campaign.

This spring, in Madison, Phil La Follette began conducting a series of 17 informal lunch-table conferences to which came a total of 1,200 men and women--mostly political, pedagogical and journalistic folk, first from Wisconsin, later from all over the U. S. At a recent conference were: Leon Green, dean of Northwestern University Law School; Paul Hutchinson, managing editor of the Christian Century; Carl D. Thompson, director of the Public Ownership League of America; Ellis S. Hillner, president of the Swedish National Society; Morris Bialis, manager of the Chicago board of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union; Don Harris, Des Moines C. I. O. organizer; John F. Wirds of the United Farmers of America, Professor Robert Morss Lovett of the University of Chicago, Arthur Harlow and Arthur P. McNulty of the American Labor Party.

At these meetings, Wisconsin's slim, serious young Governor talked in significantly vague terms about his own future and the nation's. Conferees and the press, to whom Phil La Follette maintained an air of tantalizing secrecy, were led to believe that something significant was afoot. The belief was substantiated last fortnight when the Governor delivered four voluminous radio speeches on successive nights. Gist of last fortnight's radio speeches was: 1) that both La Follettes had broken with Franklin Roosevelt when he hopefully cut down on spending a year ago, and 2) that a message of first national importance would be forthcoming at last week's meeting in Madison.

An immediate impression which many an observer got from the animadversions at Madison was that they were characterized by a refreshing and appealing amateurism. To this sort of audience, Governor La Follette's five-point manifesto and 9,000-word speech, apparently a family collaboration, failed to present even a pretense of a formal body of policy for progressives or anyone else to unite on. But they indicated a thorough awareness that "for ten years the Republicans and Democrats have been fumbling the ball," that the rest of the world was even worse off, and gave evidence that if Phil La Follette could not come up with a polished orchestration of what to do about it, he was supremely confident that he could play his way out by ear.

Manifesto on which the La Follette Progressive Party proposed to unite was summarized in five points which called for: 1) public "ownership and control of money and credit"; 2) restoring "to every American the absolute right to earn his living by the sweat of his brow"; 3) granting "the Executive branch power to get things done . . . with ample guarantees against . . . abuse of such power"; 4) security for "those who work on the farm and in the city . . . measured by ... contribution"; 5) no more "coddling or spoon-feeding . . . restore to every American the opportunity to help himself. After that, he can sink or swim."

Phil La Follette's points obviously did not add up to a clear-cut set of governmental principles. His one pass at an economic technicality, the brief proposal of Government control of credit, was nowhere amplified. At very least it would mean nationalization of the Federal Reserve banks. At most, it would mean nationalization of the entire banking system. But when he waded into his speech, Phil La Follette spread himself enthusiastically and, to many a listener, compellingly over half the isms in the social and political dictionaries.

Capitalism. Governor La Follette decided right off that "Socialism" is not a way out: "We refer to a socialist philosophy that proposes to reward work and achievement on the same basis regardless of individual contribution. Experience demonstrates the dangers of giving 'to each according to his needs' rather than to each according to his contribution. . . . There is a vast difference between a socialist theory of absolute equality and the American principle of equality of opportunity." Of fascism and communism he observed: "Both are founded not on something new, but on the ancient principle that a chosen few, whether from the top or the bottom of the economic ladder, shall make the decisions and rule by force."

Governor La Follette placed an almost unhedged bet on democratic capitalism. "Capitalism, as most of us have defined it, developed very naturally. . . . when an unexplored frontier was always beckoning. . . . The passing of the old frontier marked the end of the old capitalism. . . .

"Private capital and private business must be afforded opportunities to go to work. When people spend their own money, they are careful to get their money's worth."

Freedom & Abundance. Once private capital was flowing freely--in physically improving the railroads, for instance, suggests Governor La Follette, and in a housing boom--the simple frontier rule of work for everyone, and no work no eat, would apparently then apply. (There would be no place for mere "collectors.")

"We have spent so much time squabbling over sharing our wealth that we have lost sight of the essential fact that we can not share wealth unless we have first produced enough real wealth to share. We have tried to give the farmer high prices by restricting agricultural production. We have tried to give industry high prices by restricting the production of the factory and the shop.

"All this has been based upon a mistaken theory of overproduction. Millions of people 'ill fed, ill clothed and ill housed' --millions of people, with only the bare necessities of life, millions of people without enough clothes--so we produced less cotton and less wool; millions of people without adequate food, so we produced less wheat, less hogs, less beef, less corn-- less produce of the farm; millions of people without enough shoes, clothing, paint, shingles, wire, houses--billions upon billions of man-hours of work waiting to be done and yet we decided to produce less, and to work less.

"American freedom is rooted in American abundance. . . . Let me emphasize the statement that no free nation can remain half at work and half idle. . . . The only way out is by putting and keeping all our able-bodied people at wealth-producing work. Thus, and thus alone, can we be free and prosperous."

Symbolism. At the end of an hour and a half Governor La Follette's hair was in his eyes, his coat disarrayed, but his Madison audience was still very much with him. He then undertook to explain the symbolism on the bunting around him. The X inside a circle signified no less than five things in the following order, 1) It suggested the cross the voter makes on a paper ballot. 2) The ballot mark suggested the equality of U. S. citizens. 3) As a multiplication symbol, the X showed that "the only way out is by multiplying and increasing the total production of real wealth." 4) Again through the ballot cross association, it "personifies organized action." 5) The circle "symbolizes the uniting of our people under principles in which we believe."

Of Spiritualism there was a fine big corn-fed helping at the end; square in the great tradition of all Midwestern political evangels from Lincoln to Bryan to La Follette the Elder to Henry Agard Wallace. Having quoted his father, Franklin Roosevelt and his good friend Maritime Labor Leader Andrew Furuseth, who died this year at the age of 83, Governor La Follette declared that "in its best sense this new crusade is a religious cause. Any movement that expresses the deep spiritual needs of man enlists his religious aspirations." He urged his followers to "use the gifts the Creator gave us" and to "fight for our cause until death." He wound up with a quote from the Disciple James: "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only."

Who's In? Anybody can launch a political party. The importance of the party will be determined by who joins it. As of last week the National Progressive Party of Phil La Follette could probably count on some 570,000 Wisconsin Progressives, who have returned his family to office more or less regularly for 27 years. La Follette is a national name, less understood than Roosevelt, but not so vaguely fearsome as it was in Old Bob's day. How many of the recent lunchers in Madison could be counted on for support was anyone's guess. Most noted listener in the Madison livestock pavilion last week was Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle, there as a representative of New York's Fusion Mayor LaGuardia, it seemed, rather than the Roosevelt Administration.

But the great political oddity about the La Follette bandwagon was that there appeared to be no steps by which practical professional groups could climb on. Governor La Follette had quite evidently deliberately planned it so. "This is no popular front," said he, "no conglomeration of conflicting, opposing forces huddled together for temporary expediency. . . . This is no trading expedition."

Result was that to a professional like New York's John O'Connor--who stopped Reorganization in the House but was making peace with the Administration last week (see p. 10)--Mr. La Follette's third party suggested comparison with a third bathtub. Other politicos, figuring 1940 is a long way off, sat tight, kept mum. But, with Phil La Follette off to Iowa to see who wanted to join him on his "adventure" on his own terms, at least one thoughtful and articulate commentator, ex-Socialist Walter Lippmann gave tongue:

"It is, I believe, an accurate description of post-War progessivism, as made articulate in The Nation and The New Republic, in the speeches of men like Mr. Tugwell and even in certain of the President's speeches, to say that it accepts the Marxian idea that social progress is the outcome of class conflict. The practical consequence of this idea has been the alignment of the progressive intellectuals in support of almost any demand made by a pressure group among the farmers or workers. . . . They have tried to make a progressive movement by catering to pressure groups, and they have justified their course by telling themselves that in a class struggle the unity of the discontented is more important than the justice or the wisdom of measures. . . . And under such intellectual leadership as this American progressivism has become sterile, complaining, impotent and to a shocking degree vindictive.

"Governor La Follette is most refreshingly free of these preconceptions ... a man who has come unscathed through most of the illusions and delusions of the post-War period, and is not confused by ideologies imported from European countries, where the conditions of life are radically different from our own. As yet there are, of course, only words. But for the first time in more than a decade the words are not a mere reflection of the manifestoes of the British Labor party and of idealized reports of the Russian planned economy.

"For the first time in a decade a recognized American progressive has realized and said with the utmost emphasis that in this country the primary problem is not the distribution of income, but the production of wealth on a scale commensurate with our exceptional opportunities. For the first time in many years. . . ."

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