cc >> Ellen Pincus: Hello again. Welcome again to the Wisconsin Historical Museum and today's
History Sandwiched In program. To let you know, this program is in conjunction with our major new exhibit on our fourth floor,
which is called "Wisconsin Innovations: From the Iconic to the Unexpected." If you have not had a chance to
see the exhibit, I highly recommend you do so. It's a wonderful exhibit and I think you'll enjoy yourself.
Today's History Sandwiched In is "Wisconsin: The Laboratory of Democracy." And without further ado, it's
presented by Jonathan Kasparek. He is the Assistant Professor of History at the UW-Waukesha. He is also the author of several
articles and books on Wisconsin history including this one right here from the Wisconsin Historical Press, which is
"Fighting Son: A Biography of Philip F. La Follette." So please welcome Jonathan Kasparek.
[APPLAUSE] >> Jonathan Kasparek: Thank you. Thank you and thank all of you for coming and spending
your lunch hour with me. It is always a treat to come to Madison, and particularly to come to Madison and be invited
to speak on something that I've spent a lot of my life studying and find endlessly fascinating, and find increasingly relevant
and important. The title of my talk, "The Laboratory of Democracy," at first glance, that seems
like a really odd metaphor. Why do we need a laboratory for democracy? Do we not know how democracy
worked? Didn't the Constitution get it right? Didn't all those guys in the
wigs get this figured out right away? Well, no they didn't and that's why we need the laboratory,
and that's exactly what Robert La Follette believed. Robert La Follette, for the few people who may not know Robert
La Follette, ran for president in 1924 basically on the idea of the amount of change that was needed in the United States to
really guarantee democracy. And he believed, very firmly, that although the Constitution was a wonderful start, times had
changed, and he reminded his listeners again and again that America is not made, it's in the making.
It's a continual process. And every generation needs to try and update democracy to make it fit current conditions.
This metaphor of a laboratory for democracy has become a bit of a cliché. And I wanted to really track
down and figure out where did this idea come from, the phrase "laboratory of democracy." It's used a lot and it shows up
a lot. And as best I can see, Theodore Roosevelt, one of La Follette's reform colleagues, later rival
for the presidential nomination, also believed in this idea of a laboratory of democracy. And it looks like Theodore
Roosevelt really used this idea when he was addressing the Ohio Constitutional Convention. It's February 1912, Theodore
Roosevelt is back from Africa and he now is hunting for the presidential nomination. So he's looking for any
opportunity to talk and sort of share his ideas of politics. The Ohio Constitutional Convention is meeting.
They're going to write a new Constitution for the state and they invite Theodore Roosevelt. Would you come share your ideas,
tell us what democracy ought to look like. And Roosevelt, perhaps a bit to the chagrin of those Buckeyes,
said, you know, you ought to look at Wisconsin. Senator La Follette, and those that follow him, have turned
that state into an experimental laboratory of wise governmental action in aid of social and industrial justice.
If you want to see what democracy looks like, take a look at what La Follette's state has done and what it continues
to do. That idea has also come up in Supreme Court cases as well. Another one of La Follette's
very close friends, Louis Brandeis, the associate justice of the Supreme Court, was a progressive reformer.
Very close friends with the La Follette family. Believed that the federal government or state governments
had the right, had really the ability and should experiment. They should try new things. And in one of the famous Supreme
Court cases of the early 1930s he wrote a very scathing dissent. The issue was an ice company.
And the state of Oklahoma had passed regulations on ice, and the idea was that something as critical as ice, that sounds odd
for us today but this is before mechanical refrigeration was widespread and ice was really pretty important, especially in
Oklahoma I imagine, something that important needed to be regulated to make sure that it was doing what it was supposed
to be doing, that it was operating in the public good. So there's a state law regulating the production of ice
for commercial use. A state company filed a lawsuit and said the state had no right to regulate private business.
And the Supreme Court in a 6-2 decision agreed. So, Brandeis lost, but in his dissent he said something very
critical. He's one of two justices that dissented from this decision. And he said rather than
discouraging this kind of experimentation and this kind of trial and error at the state level, the United States federal
government really should encourage it. He said he called it a happy accident.
It's one of the happy accidents of our federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a
laboratory and try novel, social, and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.
If they make a mistake, they make a mistake. It's not going to affect anybody else.
This idea of experimentation was very, very powerful in the progressive era and into the 1930s.
And I think it's important to understand why, during those periods of time, it was so important to have a laboratory.
Why was a laboratory necessary at the time? And it really shows you how much things had changed in the United
States in the 1800s. The Constitution, perhaps, worked very well early on, the first few decades of American
history, but things changed. And the big changes were industrialization and urbanization.
And those two things had profound effects on the United States. They not only created a new
industrial economy, but they changed the way Americans interacted with one another. And in some ways this was very
good. Economically, industrialization produced great wealth. Suddenly consumer goods were
available at lower cost. There was an expansion of economic development. New factories are opening.
It's creating jobs and we're always excited when factories open and create jobs. That's a good thing.
But there are some negatives that went along with that. And in the 1870s and 1880s as industrialization is increasing
its pace, Americans are very, very aware of the negative consequences of industrialization.
First of all, industrialization certainly did bring economic growth and economic development. There was more money being made,
but it was kind of a bumpy ride. Industrial capitalism turned out to be very instable, unstable. And if you look at the economic
picture of the 18th century you see a series, about every 20 years or so there's a major depression.
There's a depression in the 1850s, there's one in 1973 that's a major depression, 1893 there's one that's even worse,
1913 there's a small recession, and 1933, of course, is the big one. There are these periods of boom
and bust cycles. Economic expansion and then recession. That made it really hard to keep
a job. It brought instability and uncertainty to people's lives. If you could get a job you
probably weren't making as much as you might have earlier. These new industrial jobs increasingly were low wage jobs.
They were de-skilling the industrial process. Instead of learning a craft and spending years developing your
skills and learning it, you were simply working in a factory. You were a cog in this giant machine.
As workers were making less and less, some people were making more and more. Along with the instability
there's also a maldistribution of wealth. Some people, like Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller,
railroad tycoons, they made fortunes. Lumber barons in Wisconsin made fortunes.
Lumberjacks did not. Factory workers did not. Oil workers did not. And Americans were uncomfortable
with this disparity of wealth. Was it fair that some people should work as hard as they were and not getting a share of the
profit that they were making. In addition to these economic uncertainties, there are environmental problems as well.
And we forget, I think, as much as we complain about pollution now, it was a lot worse in the 1880s when people burned coal
and wood to heat their homes. There was no regulation on what factories put in water. The Fox River Valley was badly
damaged during industrialization in the 1800s. The Menomonee River Valley in Milwaukee is another case of
massive pollution. This continued because there was no regulation. Private property was private
property, and it was beyond the scope of the federal government or the state government or even the local government to do a lot
about it. This was especially dangerous for children. And the number of children who
died, not only from industrial accidents because children worked in factories and mines, but from impure foods, patent
medicines that were sold that contained things like heroin and opium and cocaine and other things that were miracle cures.
They died from pollution and disease and other things brought about by industrialization and overcrowding of cities.
If democracy worked, people could look at these negative consequences and expect their elected officials, their
government, to do something about it. And this is the point in American history where suddenly
there's an awareness, my gosh, there's corruption in politics. Now clearly corruption has existed long before
industrialization, but industrialization brought new opportunities for political corruption and a whole new
agenda. Businesses that wanted to resist regulation, to resist any efforts to curtail their profit
or their practices found that for a few thousand dollars they could buy the state Senate or the governor.
And in fact, in one famous case of political corruption from Wisconsin in the 1850s, a major railroad corporation had a whole
price schedule. This is what a senator cost. This is what a governor cost. This is what a member of the
Assembly cost. It's almost like going to a fast food restaurant and ordering some of each.
The upshot of all of this change was that it really seemed that individuals no longer had the opportunities that they once
did. And the solution was we need to act together. That the people collectively
need to balance those few very powerful narrow interests. And that was particularly important because of what was
going on in Europe. Looking at newspapers in the 1870s and 1880s, it's remarkable how frightened Americans were of
radical change. Particularly Communism and anarchism. In 1870, the Paris commune
was formed. Communists took over the city of Paris and tried to transform that into a commune for years.
That terrified Americans. Could that happen in Chicago? Could that happen in Milwaukee? Could that happen in New York?
At the same time they are uncomfortable with these radical alternatives, they were also uncomfortable with the status
quo. Do we want railroad magnates or oil magnates or Andrew Carnegie or other industrialists or
bankers running our country? If they continue to do so, we're going to see radical violence. And every time there's any
instance of labor violence in the United States, immediately Americans start to panic. We see that in the Haymarket
Affair in Chicago. We see that in the Pullman Strike. We see that in the Great
Railroad Strike. There's this fear of radical alternatives. The American middle-class was
getting squished between these two undesirable alternatives. Well, the solution was to reform.
Try and change things. And La Follette is usually given credit as being one of the earliest reformers in the state,
but he's building on some earlier ideas that I think is fun to sort of think about and perhaps see some parallels to
issues that we face today. One of these in the 1870s was the power of the railroads. That was the big industry in
Wisconsin in the 1800s. Railroads had a great deal of economic influence, they had a great deal of political
influence well by bribing state elected officials, and it was particularly critical for farmers.
Farmers who grew wheat and later who grew other products, dairy products somewhat, for export were dependent upon railroads.
It's not that railroads were one of many alternatives; they were the only alternative. If you wanted to produce wheat
in western Waukesha County and ship it to Milwaukee to be ground into flour and sold, you had to use the railroads.
Railroads didn't like to compete with one another because was inefficient and intended to drive down profits.
So often railroads would collude with one another. They would say we'll operate in this part of the state, you
operate over there, and we'll stay out of each other's way. Rather than getting in price wars them they would negotiate
and say what is a reasonable charge. Let's all agree on what we're going to charge our customers.
And particularly, they would offer discounts to larger shippers. That seems like a reasonable
thing to do, but the result of that is that it made shipping for small farmers much more expensive.
They couldn't afford it anymore. So merchants and farmers angered over railroad control, they're angered at shipping rates,
they're angry at the charges that railroads are charging them to store their produce. They demand on collective
action. Farmers start to found co-ops, a cooperative movement where they can purchase machinery and
purchase storage space collectively. Begins to translate into political action.
And interestingly it coalesces around this man. This is William Taylor, pictured in the middle.
If you know anything about Wisconsin politics at this time, you know that the democrats often don't do well.
Republicans basically control the state government from the Civil War all the way through the Great Depression with a
couple of exceptions. Here's the first of these. Every time that the democrat elected governor, something big
has happened. And in this case there is a frustration with the practices of railroads.
William Taylor is a native of Dane County. He is part of the Grange movement.
The Grangers were an agricultural organization. The Patrons of Husbandry or the Grangers as they were usually
called. He is elected governor and he calls for some kind of way to control the railroads, to
regulate them, to make sure that these businesses are operating in the interest of the people. The democrats introduce several
bills and ironically the one that gets passed is known as the Potter Law. It was introduced by Senator
Robert Potter of Wautoma. He was a republican. And he never actually intended for this thing to pass.
I thought he would introduce a bill that was so radical and so extreme even reform-minded democrats would say that's too
far. He regretted his actions shortly after. The Potter Law is passed by both
houses of the legislature and William Taylor, sticking to his guns and the need for railroad reform, signs it.
What the Potter Law does is it establishes the first state railroad commission. A three-man commission who had
the power to reduce rates. If they thought a railroad was charging it customers too much, they would take the prices down.
Maximum rates for railroad passengers and for freights were established. And the commission required
railroads to cough up the evidence. They required regular financial reports detailing specifically
how much they were charging their customers, how much they were making, what their profit margin was to show that this
kind of regulation was not, in fact, hurting business. This was an important stand. It was upheld by the Supreme
Court, in fact. Immediately after Taylor signs this law, within days railroad companies announced they're
going to challenge this in the State Supreme Court as unconstitutional, the state can not regulate
private business. They had very bad timing. Just before this case went to court the chief justice retired
and William Taylor got to appoint his successor. Edward Ryan. Edward Ryan was a democrat.
He was famous for giving an address that Robert La Follette heard as a young man. That there was new looming,
powerful interest that were going to dominate the state and people had to choose sides. Ryan, in short, was in favor of
this measure. The Supreme Court upholds the law in 1875 and the principle stands.
The state can regulate railroads or other businesses in the public interest. Republicans kind of got the last
laugh, I guess. The law was repealed in 1876. The principle stood though. The Supreme Court said that it
was constitutional. Republicans took back the governorship. They took back the state
legislature in 1876, and things kind of went back to normal. Or as normal as things could be after an incident like this.
The conservative republicans, the republican party of Wisconsin was the establishment. That was only really functioning
political party. There were democrats and they would elect a few members to the assembly, maybe a state senator
once in a while, but they were not a particularly powerful political party. The republicans controlled
pretty much everything. And during this period of time they form a very strong alliance between industrialists.
Railroad owners, utility owners, lumber barons, and the two things are really closely linked, republican party and
industry. The leaders of the republican party at this period of time was a lumber baron, United States
senator Philetus Sawyer from Oshkosh; two corporate lawyers, John C. Spooner, also a U.S. senator, and Henry Clay Payne,
a railroad executive. These republican leaders and their subordinates controlled patronage, jobs, and rewards
that flowed from the federal administration or from the state government to reward loyal republican supporters.
They controlled the nominations. Every two years the party convention, or every year rather, than the party
convention met, and these were the guys who dictated whose term was it to serve as governor. And they used bribery to make
sure their chosen official won. Their overall goal was to promote business. They believed that promoting
business would result in the well-being of the state. They believed that protecting private property and free
enterprise was the most important thing for them to do. Beginning in the 1890s some republicans started to question
that. And this is where La Follette enters the stage. Robert La Follette, up until
this point, had been a fairly conventional republican politician. He served three terms in
Congress, representing the Second District. He loses his election in 1890, as does Philetus Sawyer.
And then something extraordinary happens. La Follette sees firsthand how politics can be corrupted by big
business. He travels to Milwaukee to the Pfister Hotel to meet with Philetus Sawyer, and Sawyer
offers him a bribe to take care of a legal case in Madison. Some republican office holders were being sued by the new state
treasurer. The judge in the case was La Follette's brother-in-law. Pretty straightforward, right?
Offering a bribe. Take care of the case. We don't want this to go to court because we're going to
wind up looking bad. For La Follette this was an extraordinary moment. He had believed in republicanism
his whole life but know he sees corruption. And this really leads him in the determination he needs to break
the power of the machines. So he and other like-minded reformers, he's not the only one.
Nils Haugen from northwestern Wisconsin, Albert Hall is a reformer, they start to see really that the state has become
too corrupt. So they want to end the power of these political bosses. They want to fight for fair
taxation. Railroads should have to pay the same taxes as everyone else. And what La Follette really sees
as the key to victory is a primary election. If we let political bosses continue to control the
nomination process, nothing will ever change. We need to let the people know what's going on.
The people need to be informed. The people need to take charge. Primary elections were the idea of letting voters decide who the
nominees would be, which would allow La Follette eventually to become elected governor in 1900. La Follette spends much of the
1890s campaigning against these stalwarts. By the way, stalwarts was what the republicans called
themselves. They were the stalwarts, the reliable people, the honest, upright people.
They called La Follette and his followers half-breeds. They weren't real republicans. And a wonderful example of
seizing the language away from the enemy, La Follette and his reformers started calling themselves progressives because
we believe in progress but progress requires change. They take that term half-breed and turn it around and into one
of their most effective weapons. We are the progressives. One big triumph for La Follette is demonstrating to the people
and as he travels around the state talking to people, he shows how much this corruption is costing them.
The governor at the time, Edward Schofield, lived in Oconto, and when he was elected governor the railroads paid not only for his
train fare, but for him to ship all of his goods down to Madison. Robert La Follette got a hold of
the invoice showing how many goods these railroads were shipping to the governor for free, including one cow that was
crated up and put on a boxcar. This became the most famous cow in Wisconsin. La Follette also made a very
important argument. Loopholes in the tax laws or businesses fudging the books or getting out of paying their
taxes, effectively that meant that was a tax hike for the rest of us. If you cut taxes for one group,
someone else's taxes are going to have to go up. And he was very effective in making that argument that
corruption was costing people money. What he was able to do, he gets the republican nomination in
1900 and serves as governor for six years, or five years, excuse me. He's reelected twice.
And launches a whole series of reforms. I don't want to spend a lot of time going each and every one of
these but some of the basic principles are really critical. Primary elections is central. Let the people decide who should
be the republican nominee and who should be the democrat. Take the power away from the bosses.
Tax reform was a major process. Railroads didn't pay taxes based on the value of their property, they paid taxes based on their
reported earnings. We all remember the Enron scandal, the Arthur Andersen scandal, accountants are very
good at hiding profits. And on paper these were the most unprofitable businesses ever. La Follette had a law passed and
signed a law where railroads paid taxes on their property at the same rate as everyone else. It's an issue of tax fairness.
Progressives in the legislature established a railroad commission. Finally, again after all those
years, a new railroad commission that could investigate, review, and revise rates. It couldn't set maximum rates
but it could publicize. And that was its biggest weapons, to publicize. It could also be an appeal.
And eventually the railroad commission becomes so significant it evolves into something we're much more
familiar with now: the Public Service Commission. It is the same agency and this is the branch of government that
is responsible for regulating all of those private businesses like utilities, communications, power, transportation that are
private businesses but we all depend on. They operate for the public good.
La Follette gets regulation. Civil service is critical, too. Qualified government workers to remove a source of patronage.
Rather than giving your supporters jobs as rewards, you get people who are qualified. La Follette getting railroad
commission established and the Civil Service Act passed in 1905 goes on to the US Senate. And his reputation as a reformer
is nationwide. He becomes a national figure and Wisconsin, this is the point that Wisconsin becomes known as
the laboratory of democracy. You can see the before and after picture. La Follette is the magician on
the stage. There is the state entangled up in this octopus with a top hat, the universal sign of monopoly
and corporate power, transformed into a model state with good laws. This was the reputation
La Follette had acquired. And Wisconsin continues to innovate even without La Follette.
1911, the state legislature passed laws and Governor Francis McGovern signed a whole series of measures that really
transform Wisconsin and make it a model for other states. 1911 we could spend hours talking about all
the accomplishments, but a few key ones. The idea that workers have rights is recognized.
So McGovern establishes an industrial commission in 1911 to regulate workplace safety, and particularly to administer a new
program, Workers' Comp, Workers' Compensation. Workers' Compensation was really the brain child of a university
Wisconsin economist named John Commons. Commons' task was to figure out a way to provide some humane
relief to people who were injured on the job and could no longer work. It didn't seem right that they
and their families would have to starve or lose their home. We should do something to help them.
We should also do something to make workplaces safer. So the solution that is ultimately enacted in Workman's
Compensation is that it requires employers to pay into an insurance fund. And when workers are injured
they draw from that fund to tide them over until they can go back to work, but if that fund, if that reserve reaches a certain
level, factories and businesses can stop paying into it. They now have a financial incentive to clean up their
workplaces and make them safer. It's in their own economic interest. And in fact, that's what
happened. Workplaces all over the state become safer. The number of people injured on
the job plummets. This is a brilliant piece of progressive legislation, it's a brilliant experiment that works.
And of course, this has been adopted nationwide as well. One final thing I wanted to mention to you: taxation, since
tax is always an issue. Wisconsin passes the first income tax, constitutional income tax, in 1911.
This is another old progressive idea. The taxes that you pay should be based on your ability to pay
them. People might own lots of property and I think we all experience this recently with
the housing bubble. My house value went way up for nothing that I did and certainly my income didn't go up to match
that. So I saw my property tax rising but not my ability to pay them. Tax should be based on income.
If you have income, you should pay a percentage of that as the cost of living in this kind of a society.
While La Follette is doing this on a state level, and as well Francis McGovern is doing this on a state level, there's some
other people we should talk about too. Socialism has become such a bad word lately, and I think mostly
because no one quite understands what it is, and few people understand that in some cases socialism works quite well.
These are the so-called sewer socialists from Milwaukee. That's Victor Berger, of course, on the right, and the first
socialist mayor of Milwaukee, Emil Seidel, on the left. Emil Seidel was elected in 1910. They become a significant force
in Milwaukee politics, mostly as a reaction against the incumbent mayor David Rose. David Rose was a fun guy, and as
corrupt as they came. Between 1901 and 1905 the city attorney and grand jury handed down 276 indictments for
corruption in just five years. 276 indictments. So in part the election of socialists in 1910 is a reaction
against this kind of corruption. Much as La Follette's triumph is a reaction against republican corruption.
Socialists, however, had to prove that they weren't radical. They weren't dangerous. They weren't going to throw
bombs at people. They weren't going to do anything dangerous. They weren't radical.
They were simply those who believed that those things in the public interest needed to be controlled by the public.
That's at heart what socialism is. The public ownership of the means of production.
What Victor Berger was very good at doing is making this seem reasonable and palatable and understandable.
The revolution, Berger said, isn't necessary. It may be necessary in Europe but we live in a democracy.
We can do this peacefully and we're going to show you how good it can work. And that's where Milwaukee,
within the laboratory of democracy, becomes sort of another laboratory of democracy. The socialists start working in
Milwaukee in 1910. They demonstrate, first of all, how fiscally responsible they are.
They trim the budget and rationalize the budget and enact efficiencies, simple things like centralized purchasing, that
streamline everything. The city of Milwaukee was run much more efficiently at a much lower cost.
These were penny-pinchers. They also advocated things like health inspections, using the city to promote vaccination and
education to track down possible tainted water or tainted soil. Their vaccination program was particularly impressive.
They vaccinate children for all sorts of infectious diseases, and the life expectancy of Milwaukee soars.
In 1900, the life expectancy in Milwaukee was only 27.6 years. By 1932 it was 52.6 years. In large part due to these
changes that the socialists brought advocating public health. Increasing city services like
sewage. This is why they're called sewer socialists. They didn't want to sit down and
argue about ideology and Marxism, they wanted to make sure the toilets flushed properly.
And they did. Milwaukee builds a sewer treatment plant and provides new sources of water.
That improves public health. Things like zoning, making sure that new buildings were constructed to code, had uniform
heights, had uniform setbacks. You would no longer have to live next to a tannery. Tanneries and factories couldn't
move into residential areas. Public housing, the largest public housing at this time, the first municipally-sponsored
public housing project in the United States is established in 1921 at a development called Garden Homes on the west side of
Milwaukee. 93 new houses designed for working people. The socialists did a wonderful
job. I am particularly entertained by their fiscal responsibility. They had this whole system
established. Milwaukee was going to be completely debt free by 1930. That was the plan and they had
this all planned out. Of course, the Great Depression intervenes. I don't think Milwaukee has ever
quite been debt free since then. But this leads to another series of reforms. The Great Depression was another
example of how things change, and old ways of doing things no longer work. It's a wonderful parallel.
Just as there was a Theodore Roosevelt in the White House and a La Follette in Wisconsin doing interesting things, there's now
another Roosevelt in the White House and another La Follette in Wisconsin doing interesting things.
This is Philip La Follette, Fighting Bob's son. He is elected governor as a republican in 1930 and begins to
argue for the need for a state efforts to deal with the depression and the crisis in unemployment.
He's innovative as well. In 1931 he establishes a public works program called Grade Crossing Elimination.
Railroads crossing highways is a bad thing and lots of people were getting killed. So he sits down with railroad
owners and says, look, let's split the cost, let's put people to work, let's resolve this safety problem, and suddenly
people are out in the country building overpasses over railroads. You've probably been over them
and didn't realize it. But it's a way of solving a problem cooperatively with big business and putting people to
work. The Emergency Relief Act, similar things. Using state money to provide
jobs, to provide assistance for people who needed it. And Unemployment Compensation, another big one.
In 1932, the first Unemployment Compensation program in the nation. A model for what would come
after in the Social Security program. Unemployment Compensation, again, was a measure not only to
provide humane aid to those who needed it who lost their jobs through no fault of their own but as also a way of trying to
keep employment levels going up. It worked very much like Workman's Compensation did. Different industries paid into
an insurance fund, and if they laid workers off, workers started collecting unemployment checks from that fund.
If the fund reached one level, employers could stop putting as much money in. When it reached another level,
they stopped putting money in all together. The idea was to make it economically better for the
companies to keep people on payroll so that they could continue to buy and to continue to engage the economy, to
continue to purchase things. Farmers supported Unemployment Compensation. They were exempted from it but
as one farmer said during legislative hearings on the bill, I support this bill, it won't benefit me but I support
it because if they're not losing their jobs they can buy my cheese and milk. It was that simple.
We have to keep people engaged and employed. This has long shadows, and a lot of national programs that we
think of get their start in Wisconsin. The Social Security program, programs like Medicare and
Medicaid really can be traced back to this idea in Wisconsin as a laboratory. And I think this raises a really
important question that, do we still need a laboratory? Well, I think if we were to ask La Follette, absolutely.
This is one of the things that makes, I think, political life a little bit daunting because we're never going to get it
completely right. Democracy, as La Follette said, is a continual struggle. It is a way of life.
The moment you solve all of the problems, new problems are going to come along and you're going to have to do something new.
It requires this endless, innovative process designed to try and preserve these ideals of democracy.
It's sad that we'll never be done but I think exciting that there will always be opportunities to try and fix
democracy, to pick up right where the founders started it all those years ago. Thank you very much.
I have enjoyed having the opportunity to talk. [APPLAUSE]