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>> 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."
presented by Jonathan Kasparek. He is the Assistant Professor of History at the UW-Waukesha. And without further ado, it's
articles and books on Wisconsin history including this one He is also the author of several
"Fighting Son: A Biography right here from the Wisconsin Historical Press, which is
of Philip F. La Follette." So please welcome Jonathan Kasparek.
[APPLAUSE]
>> Jonathan Kasparek: Thank you. Thank you and thank all of you
your lunch hour with me. for coming and spending
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?
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.
La Follette, ran for president Robert La Follette, for the few people who may not know Robert
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
changed, and he reminded his was a wonderful start, times had
listeners again and again that America is not made, it's in the
It's a continual process. And every generation needs to try and update democracy to make making.
This metaphor of a laboratory for democracy has become a bit it fit current conditions.
of a cliché. And I wanted to really track
down and figure out where did this idea come from, the phrase "laboratory of democracy."
a lot. It's used a lot and it shows up
for the presidential nomination, And as best I can see, Theodore Roosevelt, one of La Follette's reform colleagues, later rival
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.
Roosevelt is back from Africa and he now is hunting for the presidential nomination. It's February 1912, Theodore
opportunity to talk and sort of share his ideas of politics. So he's looking for any
They're going to write a new The Ohio Constitutional Convention is meeting.
Constitution for the state and they invite Theodore Roosevelt. Would you come share your ideas,
tell us what democracy ought to look like.
said, you know, you ought to And Roosevelt, perhaps a bit to the chagrin of those Buckeyes,
look at Wisconsin. Senator La Follette, and those
that state into an experimental laboratory of wise governmental action in aid of social and thatindustrial justice.urned
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.
Court cases of the early 1930s They should try new things. And in one of the famous Supreme
he wrote a very scathing dissent.
And the state of Oklahoma had passed regulations on ice, and The issue was an ice company.
the idea was that something as critical as ice, that sounds odd
for us today but this is before mechanical refrigeration was
Oklahoma I imagine, something that important needed to be regulated to make sure that it pretty important, especially in
to be doing, that it was was doing what it was supposed
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
laboratory and try novel, social, and economic experiments single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a
If they make a mistake, they without risk to the rest of the country.
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
And I think it's important to understand why, during those 1930s.
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
States in the 1800s. things had changed in the United
The Constitution, perhaps, worked very well early on, the
history, but things changed. first few decades of American
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.
available at lower cost. Suddenly consumer goods were
It's creating jobs and we're There was an expansion of economic development. New factories are opening.
But there are some negatives always excited when factories open and create jobs. That's a good thing.
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
First of all, industrialization certainly did bring economic consequences of industrialization.
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.
picture of the 18th century you see a series, about every 20 years or so there's a major And if you look at the economic
There's a depression in the 1850s, there's one in 1973 depression.
1913 there's a small recession, and 1933, of course, is the big that's a majorone.ression, 1893 there's one that's even worse,
and bust cycles. There are these periods of boom
Economic expansion and then recession. That made it really hard to keep
a job.
It brought instability and uncertainty to people's lives.
probably weren't making as much as you might have earlier. If you could get a job you
They were de-skilling the industrial process. Instead of learning a craft and ispending years developing your.
skills and learning it, you were
simply working in a factory. You were a cog in this giant
As workers were making less and less, some people were making more and more. machine.
there's also a maldistribution Along with the instability
of wealth. Some people, like Andrew
railroad tycoons, they made fortunes. Lumber barons in Wisconsin made Carnegie orfortunes.Rockefeller,
Lumberjacks did not.
Factory workers did not. Oil workers did not.
with this disparity of wealth. And Americans were uncomfortable
Was it fair that some people should work as hard as they were
profit that they were making. In addition to these economic uncertainties, there are and not getting a share of the
And we forget, I think, as much as we complain about pollution environmental problems as well.
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
massive pollution. in the 1800s. The Menomonee River Valley in Milwaukee is another case of
This continued because there was no regulation.
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,
medicines that were sold that contained things like heroin and but from impure foods, patent
They died from pollution and opium and cocaine and other things that were miracle cures.
disease and other things brought about by industrialization and
If democracy worked, people could look at these negative overcrowding of cities.
government, to do something about it. conAnd this is the point inir elected officials, their
there's an awareness, my gosh, American history where suddenly
there's corruption in politics. Now clearly corruption has existed long before
industrialization, but
agenda. Businesses that wanted to resist opportunities for political corruption and a whole new
or their practices found that for a few thousand dollars they could buy the state Senate or efforts tthe governor.ir profit
And in fact, in one famous case of political corruption from
price schedule. This is what a senator cost. Wisconsin in the 1850s, a major railroad corporation had a whole
Assembly cost. This is what a governor cost. This is what a member of the
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.
need to balance those few very And the solution was we need to act together. That the people collectively
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.
bankers running our country? Do we want railroad magnates or oil magnates or Andrew Carnegie or other industrialists or
If they continue to do so, we're going to see radical violence.
instance of labor violence in the United States, immediately And every time there's any
Affair in Chicago. Americans start to panic. We see that in the Haymarket
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
Try and change things. two undesirable alternatives. Well, the solution was to reform.
And La Follette is usually given credit as being one of the
but he's building on some earlier ideas that I think is fun to sort of think about and earliest reformers in the state,
issues that we face today. perhaps see some parallels to
Wisconsin in the 1800s. Railroads had a great deal of economic influence, they had a That was the big industry in
influence well by bribing state elected officials, and it was particularly critical for great defarmers.litical
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
in western Waukesha County and of many alternatives; they were the only alternative. If you wanted to produce wheat
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
operate over there, and we'll stay out of each other's way. ThRather than getting in pricen this part of the state, you
and say what is a reasonable wars them they would negotiate
And particularly, they would charge. Let's all agree on what we're going to charge our customers.
thing to do, but the result of offer discounts to larger shippers. That seems like a reasonable
They couldn't afford it anymore. that is that it made shipping for small farmers much more expensive.
So merchants and farmers angered over railroad control, they're
they're angry at the charges angered at shipping rates,
that railroads are charging them to store their produce. They demand on collective
action. Farmers start to found co-ops, a
purchase storage space cooperative movement where they can purchase machinery and
collectively. Begins to translate into political action.
And interestingly it coalesces
around this man. This is William Taylor, pictured
If you know anything about in the middle.
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
William Taylor is a native of Dane County. of railroads.
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.
bills and ironically the one The democrats introduce several
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.
houses of the legislature and William Taylor, sticking to his guns and the need for railroad The Potter Law is passed by both
What the Potter Law does is it reform, signs 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.
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.
laugh, I guess. The law was repealed in 1876. The principle stood though. RThe Supreme Court said that itt
was constitutional. Republicans took back the governorship. They took back the state
legislature in 1876, and things kind of went back to normal.
The conservative republicans, the republican party of Wisconsin was the establishment. after an incident like this.
political party. That was only really functioning
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
senator Philetus Sawyer from a lumber baron, United States
Oshkosh; two corporate lawyers, John C. Spooner, also a U.S. senator, and Henry Clay Payne,
a railroad executive. These republican leaders and
that flowed from the federal their subordinates controlled patronage, jobs, and rewards
administration or from the state government to reward loyal
They controlled the nominations. republican supporters.
convention met, and these were Every two years the party convention, or every year rather, than the party
the guys who dictated whose term was it to serve as governor.
sure their chosen official won. Their overall goal was to promote business. AThey 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,
And then something extraordinary as does Philetus Sawyer.
happens. La Follette sees firsthand how
business. He travels to Milwaukee to the politics can be corrupted by big
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
treasurer. were being sued by the new state
Offering a bribe. ThTake care of the case.s La Follette's brother-in-law. Pretty straightforward, right?
wind up looking bad. We don't want this to go to court because we're going to
his whole life but know he sees For La Fcorruption.s was an And this really leads him in the He had believed in republicanism
the power of the machines. determination he needs to break
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
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
crated up and put on a boxcar. free, including one cow that was
important argument. ThLoopholes in the tax laws orw in Wisconsin. La Follette also made a very
taxes, effectively that meant that was a tax hike for the rest businesses fudging the books or getting out of paying their
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.
1900 and serves as governor for six years, or five years, What he wasexcuse me.o, he gets the republican nomination in
And launches a whole series of He's reelected twice.
reforms. I don't want to spend a lot 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
Tax reform was a major process. Railroads didn't pay taxes based bosses.
reported earnings. on the value of their property, they paid taxes based on their
We all remember the Enron scandal, the Arthur Andersen scandal, accountants are very
good at hiding profits. And on paper these were the most
signed a law where railroads unprofitable businesses ever. La Follette had a law passed and
Progressives in the legislature paid established a railroady at the same rate as everyone else. It's an issue of tax fairness.
years, a new railroad commission commission. Finally, again after all those
but it could publicize. thatAnd that was its biggestew, and revise rates. It couldn't set maximum rates
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 responsible for regulating all of those private businesses like utilities, communications, ipower, transportation that aret
private businesses but we all depend on.
La Follette gets regulation. They operate for the public good.
Rather than giving your supporters jobs as rewards, you Qget people who are qualified.o rLa 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
the laboratory of democracy. that Wisconsin becomes known as
You can see the before and after picture.
the stage. La Follette is the magician on
and corporate power, transformed There is the state entangled up in this octopus with a top hat, the universal sign of monopoly
into a model state with good laws. This was the reputation
La Follette had acquired. And Wisconsin continues to innovate even without
1911, the state legislature passed laws and Governor Francis La Follette.
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
program, Workers' Comp, Workers' particularly to administer a new
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.
and their families would have to It didn't seem right that they
starve or lose their home. We should do something to help
We should also do something to them.
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.
workplaces and make them safer. It's in their own economic They now have a financial incentive to clean up their
happened. Workplaces all over the state become safer. The number of people injured on
the job plummets. This is a brilliant piece of
And of course, this has been progressive legislation, it's a brilliant experiment that works.
tax is always an issue. aWisconsin passes the first One final thing I wanted to mention to you: taxation, since
income tax, constitutional income tax, in 1911.
This is another old progressive idea. The taxes that you pay should be
them. People might own lots of based on your ability to pay
the housing bubble. My house value went way up for property and I think we all experience this recently with
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
other people we should talk about too. on a state level, there's some
because no one quite understands Socialism has become such a bad word lately, and I think mostly
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.
in Milwaukee politics, mostly as They become a significant force
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
against this kind of corruption. socialists in 1910 is a reaction
Much as La Follette's triumph is a reaction against republican corruption.
Socialists, however, had to prove that they weren't radical.
bombs at people. They weren't dangerous. They weren't going to throw
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
What Victor Berger was very good is. The public ownership of the means of production.
at doing is making this seem reasonable and palatable and
The revolution, Berger said, understandable.
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.
Milwaukee in 1910. The socialists start working in
They trim the budget and They demonstrate, first of all, how fiscally responsible they are.
rationalize the budget and enact efficiencies, simple things like
streamline everything. centralized purchasing, that
These were penny-pinchers. The city of Milwaukee was run much more efficiently at a much lower cost.
education to track down possible They also advocated things like health inspections, using the city to promote vaccination and
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
In 1900, the life expectancy in Milwaukee was only 27.6 years. Milwaukee soars.
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
argue about ideology and sewer socialists. They didn't want to sit down and
Marxism, they wanted to make sure the toilets flushed
And they did. Milwaukee builds a sewer properly.
treatment plant and provides new sources of water.
That improves public health.
heights, had uniform setbacks. Things like zoning, making sure that new buildings were constructed to code, had uniform
You would no longer have to live next to a tannery.
move into residential areas. Tanneries and factories couldn't
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
Milwaukee. Garden Homes on the west side of
93 new houses designed for working people. The socialists did a wonderful
job.
I am particularly entertained by their fiscal responsibility.
established. They had this whole system
this all planned out. Of course, the Great Depression completelintervenes. by 1930. 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.
Just as there was a Theodore It's a wonderful parallel.
Roosevelt in the White House and a La Follette in Wisconsin doing
another Roosevelt in the White interesting things, there's now
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
He's innovative as well. unemployment.
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.
owners and says, look, let's So he sits down with railroad
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,
In 1932, the first Unemployment Compensation program in the nation. A model for what would come
after in the Social Security
program. Unemployment Compensation,
provide humane aid to those who needed it who lost their jobs through no fault of their own abut as also a way of trying too
keep employment levels going up.
It worked very much like Workman's Compensation did. Different industries paid into
an insurance fund, and if they
If the fund reached one level, laid workers off, workers started collecting unemployment checks from that fund.
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 purchase things. continue to buy and to continue to engage the economy, to
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.
We have to keep people engaged It was that simple.
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.
The moment you solve all of the problems, new problems are going It is a way of life.
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
democracy, to pick up right where the founders started it all those years ago. opportunities to try and fix
I have enjoyed having the opportunity to talk. Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]