Wisconsin Stories is a partnership
of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin
and Wisconsin Public Television.
♪ ♪
Over 150 years,
Wisconsin's political character formed
in the heat and pressure of continuous debate.
It began when Wisconsin's constitutional conventions
set down the rules about our rights
and responsibilities.
Rules debated and challenged as soon as the ink was dry.
Who should have rights? What is fair?
What do we owe each other and what are we entitled to?
What role should the government play in our lives?
- Political history is much more in the story of who wins elections.
It's really about our relationships to each other.
What is the relationship between
an individual and the government?
What is the relationship of groups to each other?
[Music]
- We are who we are because of our past,
because of the actions of those who came before us,
because of monumental debates over human rights,
because of an openness to new ideas,
a support for third parties and the voices of dissent,
because of powerful reform movements that swept the state,
movements that would lead to
pioneering changes in government structure
and groundbreaking legislation to protect the public interest,
innovations that would establish
Wisconsin's reputation nationwide
as a laboratory of democracy.
[Music]
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And now,Wisconsin Stories.
In 1846, a constitutional convention began in Madison.
There, the delegates argued out the hot-button issues of the day.
In a spirit of reform,
they voted to include an article
that would extend to married women
the right to own their own property.
- Under the common law, when she got married,
her husband controlled all of her property.
He controlled anything
that she might have inherited during the marriage
or earned during the marriage.
- David Giddings offered another amendment
to remove the word "white" from the Constitution
and extend suffrage or the right to vote
to all men regardless of race.
Despite a great campaign to convince them,
Wisconsin voters soundly defeated
the reform-minded constitution of 1846.
Two years later a second convention was called.
This time delegates created a more conservative document
dropping the right of married women to own property
and the right of black males to vote.
- That convention knew what the hot-button items were.
And to a large extent
what they did was they avoided them.
By saying, "Let the legislature take care of it later."
And then brought forth a general document
that was a constitution of framework
that could last until this day.
Although it's been amended,
it is the constitution of 1848 which governs this state.
- The Constitution of 1848 began Wisconsin's journey as a state
and set the stage for a continuous debate.
Who should "We the People" be in Wisconsin?
Who should have rights and a voice in government?
What roles should the state play
in controlling and protecting people's lives.
When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,
many Wisconsin citizens were outraged at the growing power
of the Southern slaveholding states.
The federal law denied
alleged runaways captured in Wisconsin
the right to a jury trial
or even a hearing before a judge.
- It stripped blacks of all protection
against unjust imprisonment and possible re-enslavement.
And at the same time was a violation in many people's minds
of the rights of whites who could be called upon
to aid in the recapture of slaves against their will.
And if they resisted,
the call of a commissioner to aid in such recapture,
they can suffer under heavy penalties.
- In Milwaukee,
free blacks feared kidnapping by slave catchers.
Many fled to Canada.
Sherman Booth, the fiery abolitionist editor
of theMilwaukee Free Democrat,
wrote that the city's blacks are armed to the teeth
and go armed about their daily work.
The first kidnapper who lays hands on one of them,
we expect will be shot dead.
- Sherman Booth arrives in Wisconsin
in May of 1848, just 10 days before statehood.
He's a New York native and a longtime abolitionist.
He helped establish the Liberty Party in Connecticut.
The Liberty Party being the first active political organization
established specifically to overthrow slavery.
[Suspenseful music]
- In early March 1854, in a cabin outside Racine,
an event took place that would once again provoke outrage
over the hated Fugitive Slave Law.
- On the evening of March 10, 1854,
Joshua Glover, a runaway from Missouri,
who had been living on the outskirts of Racine,
for about two years,
sitting around with a couple of friends of his,
both of them were black, and playing cards,
probably drinking a little bit of whiskey,
just having a good time after a long day's work.
Unbeknownst to Glover one of those friends of his
had betrayed his whereabouts to Glover's owner,
one Bennami Garland, who was in a neighborhood
and accompanied by a federal marshal
and a couple of deputies, set out to capture Glover.
- A deputy U.S. Marshal stepped in and bludgeoned Glover.
A desperate violent struggle ensued.
Glover was thrown, shackled and bleeding,
into a wagon and sped to the county jail in Milwaukee.
There, Federal District Judge Andrew Miller
would decide without trial or appeal
whether Glover is a fugitive.
News of the capture stirred Racine.
A public gathering at the courthouse
called the largest meeting of citizens ever assembled
passed several resolutions.
They condemned the brutality of the arrest,
demanded a fair trial by jury
and declared the slave catching law of 1850 disgraceful
and also repealed.
A delegation of 100 left by boat for Milwaukee.
In Milwaukee, the abolitionist Sherman Booth
received a telegram describing the capture.
He announced that he had business on hand,
that he must get a horse right after dinner
and ride the town.
- Booth gets on his horse and starts riding
through the streets of Milwaukee
yelling out that slave catchers are in town
and that they should hold the protest meeting
later that day, at two o'clock in the afternoon
on the grounds at the Milwaukee courthouse.
- A crowd of 5,000 formed at the courthouse.
The mass meeting passed a resolution
demanding a trial for Glover in Wisconsin's courts.
Federal judge Andrew Miller,
dutifully enforcing the federal law, responded,
stating that no power on earth could take Glover
from his jurisdiction.
- Well, the day wears on and about five o'clock
the crowd starting to get restive.
- Sherman Booth, while counseling non-violence,
delivered a fiery speech to the mob,
which then took a battering ram to the door of the jail.
Glover shouting, "Glory hallelujah!" was carried away.
That night Glover boarded a schooner for Canada and freedom.
- I might add, as he's going through the downtown Milwaukee,
that these streets are thronged with crowds
who are supposedly throwing hats up in the air
and quite jubilant that Wisconsin
has actually done this.
- For his role in freeing Joshua Glover,
federal marshals arrested Sherman Booth
and held him in the Customs House in Milwaukee.
Out on bail and riding a wave of popularity,
Sherman Booth called for a mass meeting in Madison
to form a new political party
dedicated to the overthrow of slavery.
"The time has come" he wrote, "for the union of all free men."
[Music]
In July of 1854, a thousand delegates
chosen at meetings statewide
arrived at the Capitol in Madison
and voted to form the new anti-slavery party.
They call themselves Republicans.
The Wisconsin Republicans met instant success.
They won a majority in the legislature,
elected a U.S. senator,
and the first Republican governor.
Within seven years a Republican, Abraham Lincoln,
would be elected president.
[Music]
[Train bell clanging]
The coming of the railroads
created a new prosperity for Wisconsin farms and towns.
Speeding goods to new markets
and connecting the frontier with the rest of the nation.
[Steam whistle trumpeting]
But for Wisconsin politics, it was a mixed blessing.
A new entity, the railroad corporation, now held
an unchecked, corrupting grip on political power.
Wisconsin citizens felt a disturbing loss of control
over their lives and their government.
- Railroads made major donations to the political parties.
They provided free railroad passes for political operatives.
- To secure a federal land grant in 1858,
Byron Kilbourn, president of the La Crosse
and Milwaukee Railroad
authorized the payout in stocks and bonds
of nearly a million dollars in bribes.
The Wisconsin Legislature, later investigated
in detail, the payoffs.
A list from the railroad documented the trail of money.
Assemblyman got $5,000.
State senators, $10,000.
The governor, $50,000,
in addition to payments to newspaper editors and many others.
- What you're really talking about some people become more equal than others.
The power that industrialists had, the railroad had,
that lumber magnates had, increases dramatically.
- In 1873, as Wisconsin farmers
looked forward to the profits from a record wheat harvest,
the railroad suddenly raised their shipping rates.
S.S. Maier, general manager of the Milwaukee Road,
told a reporter that the increase had come at that time
because the companies wanted to make more money.
Many farmers had already joined
the anti-railroad Granger movement
claiming that the railroads, built with public money,
on public lands, operating without competition,
conducted their business without any regard to the public.
The backlash against railroads would soon trigger
stormy political battles
and unleash a wave of reform, giving new power to the people
and changing forever the role of Wisconsin's government.
In 1879 at the University of Wisconsin in Madison,
Edward Ryan, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
gave an address about the growing
corporate control over politics,
"There is looming up a new and dark power.
"For the first time really in our politics
"money is taking the field as an organized power.
"The question will arise and arise in your day.
"Which shall rule, wealth or man?
"Which shall lead, money or intellect?
"Who shall fill the public stations:
"educated and patriotic free man
"or the feudal serfs of corporate capital.
"Edward Ryan."
- In the audience was a young man,
who twenty years later, would launch
a relentless fight for government reform
and lead a political revolution.
His name was Bob La Follette.
A highly sociable young man,
La Follette was one of the most popular in his class.
Though poorly prepared for the rigid academic life,
La Follette excelled in the theatrical.
In an era when speaking ability was highly prized,
La Follette caused a sensation
when he entered the Interstate Oratorical Contest
and was judged the best speaker
out of 10,000 Midwestern students.
- When he won the contest,
there was a crowd down at the Madison railroad station to meet him.
And he was carried on the shoulders of the crowd
to the campus and there was a bonfire and a rally.
And the next night there was a meeting at the State Capitol
and he had to repeat the oration.
There are other orations.
It was the kind of celebration you get nowadays,
I suppose when Wisconsin wins the Rose Bowl. [Laughter]
- La Follette decided to study law
and began his career by running
for District Attorney of Dane County.
With the enthusiastic help of his friends from the university,
he was elected by 93 votes.
- The next thing he does, again, he jumps over everybody else.
Three years later he gets himself elected to Congress.
And he gets to Washington
and he's pretty conventional ordinary young Republican.
- In Washington, Senator Philetus Sawyer,
the head of Wisconsin's Republican Party
showed the new congressman around.
Sawyer had built sawmills
and made millions of dollars
speculating in timberland and railroads.
In the 1880s, Senator Sawyer
guided Wisconsin's Republican Party
which handed out money and government jobs
to make sure the right candidates were selected
in local caucuses and the state convention.
- La Follette, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson:
these are the first generation of politicians
who really come of age, when the great power,
the power in the American economy,
has passed over to big businesses.
- In 1890, a rare Democratic landslide
retired La Follette to private law practice in Madison.
He soon received a request from Senator Sawyer
to meet him at the Plankinton Hotel in Milwaukee.
There Sawyer confided to him
that the Democrats, now in power,
were threatening him with personal disaster.
- Sawyer was a financial bondsman
for the series of Republican state treasurers.
And the treasurer had enjoyed a small graft
during preceding Republican administrations.
They would put state funds in banks of their choosing
and then the banks would give them the interest,
which they would pocket.
And when the Democrats came in, they sued these state treasurers
for recovery of the money and the money would have had to come out of the pockets
of their backers, meaning Sawyer.
- The problem was, the judge who would be deciding the case
was La Follett's brother-in-law.
And as La Follette listened to Senator Sawyer,
it seemed to him that this man was offering him a bribe.
- According to La Follette, Sawyer said, "Now La Follette,
I don't want you to go into court,
but I want these cases to come out right.
Here is 50 dollars and when the cases come out right, there's more money.
And La Follette leaped to his feet,
according his own story, and said,
"You could not insult me more if you'd struck me in the face."
- La Follette told his brother-in-law, Robert C. Becker,
of the attempted bribe.
The judge excused himself from the case
without explanation.
The press, smelling trouble, soon printed provocative stories
that raised questions about someone
attempting to influence the case.
Sawyer issued a statement denying the rumors.
- Sawyer denied it and at that point La Follette
becomes persona non grata of the Republican Party.
In other words, the former golden boy,
or the young man in a hurry, is now a pariah and is shunned
and made a kind of non-person among Republicans.
And it's at that point
as he writes about it in his autobiography
that La Follette says he began to get the light.
He began to see what was wrong,
that there was a pattern of corruption.
- La Follette wrote of the experience,
"Nothing else ever came into my life
"that exerted such a powerful influence on me as that affair.
"It was the turning point, in a way, of my career.
"I determined that the power of this corrupt influence
"which was undermining and destroying every semblance
"of representative government in Wisconsin
"should be broken."
By the time La Follette entered the 1894 state convention,
backing Nils Haugen for governor,
he had become "Fighting Bob."
- "Bob La Follette struck the Pfister like a young cyclone today
"and if he has only done half what rumor credits him with
"he must be about as pleasant company for the bosses
"as a wildcat would be at a picnic.
"The reason why the Sawyer men fight La Follette is obvious.
"He refused a bribe and is therefore considered
"a dangerous lunatic by the sawdust contingent.
"Milwaukee Journal July 24, 1894."
- And meanwhile, what La Follette is doing
is he's organizing; he's travelling around the state;
and he'll start talking to people.
And he'll find out who's a sympathizer with him,
with his point of view.
The other thing he does is he goes around and speaks
and he will talk at any County Fair, any local organization.
If you need a speaker, get Bob La Follette.
- La Follette ran for governor twice
and was beaten by what he called the political machine.
He continued to take his case to the people,
speaking at county fairs throughout the state.
- He would get up in the bed of an empty wagon
[Laughter] and just spellbind away, you know. [Laughs]
- Here the former farm boy was in his element
standing in a wagon speaking for two to three hours.
The dramatic La Follette attacked the state's political leaders.
Warned of the threat of a new unchecked corporate power.
He held huge crowds spellbound.
- "All the passions of man he paints in strong words,
"and still stronger gestures.
"He never wearies, and he will not allow his audience to weary.
"And while he may not possess the finish
"as some of the noted auditors of the day
"he certainly does possess their force.
"Milwaukee Journal October 2, 1897."
- He starts to emphasize certain issues.
He emphasizes railroad taxation, railroad regulation,
and the direct primary.
And the direct primary is the way
that the parties can be opened up.
The nomination process can be opened up.
You can make government more popular,
more accountable to the people, at an earlier stage.
- By 1900, La Follette's relentless efforts had paid off
and he received the nomination for governor.
He won in a landslide victory.
- Once he's got it,
he then organizes his legislative program.
Railroad taxation is the first thing he pushes.
The next one that he puts through his railroad regulation.
He pushes that issue, but by this time,
the interests are fighting back and what happens then is,
there's basically a kind of civil war within the Republican Party.
[Music]
- In February of 1904, the State Capitol caught fire.
The east and west wings were almost totally destroyed.
In the aftermath, La Follette saw progress on two fronts.
The legislature finally passed a bill
taxing railroads on their property.
In November, voters would decide in a referendum
on the open primary law.
La Follette vowed to wage yet another fight.
This time to gain a majority in the legislature.
He traveled into the districts of his political enemies,
campaigning against members of his own party
who opposed him.
- By 1904,
he has effectively made intra-Republican politics,
the real political division in Wisconsin.
It's not Republicans versus Democrats.
It's La Follette's faction versus the old guard.
The names they call themselves are interesting too.
His group call themselves Progressives.
And this is the first time that that word begins to be used.
That will go on to become the national word for reform.
- In 1904, Wisconsin voters re-elected La Follette
and passed the nation's first open primary referendum,
abolishing a corrupt caucus and convention system.
The legislature, now the Progressive majority,
created a Railroad Commission to regulate rates.
The State Capitol Commission was expanded
to begin construction of a new building.
The legislature strengthened the Corrupt Practices Act
and placed restrictions on lobbyists.
[Music]
The University of Wisconsin,
located only one mile from the State Capitol,
provided La Follette with experts to help solve
the state's increasingly complex problems.
The university's service to the state
would come to be known nationwide
as the Wisconsin Idea.
La Follette called on economics professor John R. Commons
to design a stringent civil service system,
providing state jobs based on merit,
instead of political connections.
La Follette created the Legislative Reference Bureau
to assist lawmakers in writing complex legislation
without the need to turn to lobbyists for help.
- Once La Follette really gets going
and begins putting his programs through
these become models then, that other states follow.
- Progressives could look and say, "Hey, this works."
"Look, it's working in Wisconsin."
Here is somebody who's doing it,
who's putting our ideas into effect.
And the state is prospering, which it did,
and the state is doing very well.
- In 1905, La Follette was elected to the U.S. Senate.
He left Wisconsin and fought for the rest of his life
in bitter and often lonely battles for economic
and social reforms, in a place
he called, "the dear old rotten Senate."
25 years after his death,
La Follette would be honored in Congress
as one of the five greatest Senators of all time.
[Music]
In Milwaukee, industrial workers found
that the progressive reforms of the state government
did little to improve their daily lives.
Since the 1870s, workers had put in
10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week.
Work was dangerous, and if workers were injured on the job
they had to sue their employer to receive compensation.
Many in Milwaukee's early labor unions
turned to a growing socialist movement
to gain a voice in Wisconsin's government.
The Social Democratic Party was led by Victor Berger,
publisher of a German newspaper.
Berger's long-term goal was a conservative socialism
in which big business would eventually
be bought out by the public and controlled democratically.
He organized the Social Democrats,
in their first local elections in 1898,
offering a detailed platform of reforms
to improve housing, public health,
public education and working conditions.
- The early movement was a surprisingly visionary
and altruistic movement.
These people said what they believed
and believed what they said
and that they expected that they could make life better
for a large percentage of the population.
And you felt a certain sense of this.
They've seen the kingdom and they mean to bring it about.
- Opposing the idealistic socialists
was Milwaukee's mayor, David Rose, who presided
over a wide-open and fun-loving city.
- He said, "It's a wide-open city."
"Everyone has fun here."
But he was also mired as deeply as he could be
in this pattern of corruption.
- Vice was rampant in the city,
but mostly there was bribery.
Bribery from the power company.
Bribery from the streetcar company.
Bribery from various businesses.
Bribery of the contractors.
- By 1900, the corruption and incompetence
of the Rose administration became clear to many voters.
- When they had grand juries,
between 1903 and 1909,
they brought in indictments
and it was against just about every alderman
and every supervisor, county supervisor,
that was around at that time.
- With Victor Berger at the helm, the Social Democrats were
prepared to take full advantage of popular discontent.
"The Social Democrats," he said, "aim at higher things
"than simply not to steal while they are in office."
The Socialists first won seats on the city council in 1904.
And developed a reputation
for honest and competent public service.
Because of their dedication
to solving pressing city problems,
Milwaukee's Social Democrats earned the nickname,
"Sewer Socialists."
The Milwaukee Socialists weren't considered
good enough theoreticians in socialism.
They were interested in clean water
and cleaning the sewage and clean streets
and decent housing and decent working conditions.
- On April 6, 1910,
the Socialists scored an almost complete sweep.
Emil Seidel was elected mayor
and the entire ticket was victorious.
Mayor Seidel and Victor Berger recruited
University of Wisconsin professor John Commons
to design a modern cost accounting system for the city.
- And the Socialists went after such simple things
as centralized purchasing, audits.
They tried to make government competent
and this is all to set the stage
for trusting government with more elements.
In the fall of 1910, Burger ran for Congress
and became the first Socialist sent to Washington.
There he attracted great attention for introducing
the first old-age pension legislation.
But it was the Social Democrats
elected to the Wisconsin Legislature
that would have more of an impact
on the state and the nation.
In 1911, as construction continued
on the new State Capitol, lawmakers cooperating with
experts from University of Wisconsin
took part in the most productive legislative session
in Wisconsin history.
- In 1911, there was a sense that the times were changing.
That was an era when they were ready to build something new.
- In his address to the legislature,
Governor Francis McGovern declared that
few legislatures have convened in Wisconsin
with equal opportunity for doing good.
He urged them to move beyond the reforms of Bob La Follette.
- And when he gives his address to the 1911 Legislature,
he lays out one of the most ambitious programs for change
that any Wisconsin governor has ever laid out.
- The Legislature responded and created what came to be
Wisconsin's system of vocational and technical education.
They established the nation's first state income tax,
with rates based on a taxpayer's ability to pay.
They passed laws to preserve forest lands
and started a forestry commission,
funded roadbuilding, and began a state highway commission,
passed laws encouraging the formation
of cooperatives for marketing farm products.
They passed a Corrupt Practices Act
limiting spending by candidates for office
with heavy penalties, including imprisonment,
for violations.
The 12 Social Democratic Assemblyman from Milwaukee
living together in a boarding house
were mostly working men, including machinists,
cigar makers and a paper hanger.
They voted as a block
with progressive Republicans and Democrats
to improve the conditions of workers.
The legislature passed the nation's first
workers compensation plan to encourage workplace safety
and put an end to courtroom battles
of the worker deaths and injuries.
Drafting a piece of legislation
described as nothing less than a work of genius,
University of Wisconsin economics professor,
John R. Commons, created the nation's first
Industrial Commission,
what he called a fourth branch of government
dedicated to the welfare of workers and their families.
The Commission would tie together
all the laws on factory safety, unemployment,
on the labor of women and children,
and encourage labor and management to settle disputes.
[Music]
A new vision of government began to emerge in 1911,
with a new role for the state
and an expanding responsibility for the public interest,
of the state intervening to protect the weak
and taking an active role in solving social
and economic problems.
- Newspapers and magazines pointed to Wisconsin as a place
that would innovate, that would try things
that could be adopted,
and eventually, were adopted elsewhere,
throughout the nation.
- Former President Theodore Roosevelt wrote that
Wisconsin had become literally a laboratory
for wise experimental legislation,
aiming to secure the social and political betterment
of the people as a whole.
In the 1911 Legislature, Reverend Olympia Brown of Racine
convinced a state senator to introduce a bill
granting Wisconsin women the right to vote.
At age 77, Brown had devoted nearly 50 years of her life
to women's suffrage, but her low-profile methods
failed to attract much enthusiasm for the cause.
- There had been a suffrage movement of sorts in Wisconsin
since the middle of the 19th century,
but in the early years of the 20th century,
it had really fallen on hard times.
But a new generation of young spirited activists
came along at about that time.
- The younger women turned to Ada James to lead a new group,
they called the Political Equality League.
James had grown up attending woman suffrage meetings
with her mother in Richland Center.
And her keen political judgment and devotion to the cause
quickly attracted some of the most capable women in the state.
They lobbied the referendum bill through the legislature.
The next problem was to reach the men of Wisconsin
and convince them to give women the right to vote.
Abandoning ladylike measures,
James led the activists to the street
in a whirlwind campaign, staging a startling display
of publicity and public relations.
At a time when Wisconsin had only a few thousand cars,
many were drawn to the sight of a woman standing
in a mud-splattered car wrapped with yellow banners
and pleading for her political rights.
- Many considered suffrage extremely controversial,
because it meant asking men to share power
with the women in their families.
And that meant upsetting
the basic web of rights and responsibilities
within the family, in which women
had been economically dependent and politically voiceless
in this family unit, that was considered
the irreducible building block of political society.
The male represented the family in the public arena.
So if the family was the essence of social order,
then giving women an equal voice was an omen
for social chaos to many.
- At the peak of the Progressive movement in Wisconsin
the referendum for women's voting rights
was defeated by almost 2 to 1.
One frustrated campaigner concluded,
"The last thing a man becomes progressive about
"is the activities of his own wife."
Defeated after one term in Congress,
Victor Berger returned to Milwaukee
to edit his new daily socialist newspaper,
The Milwaukee Leader.
But rumbling on the horizon was an issue
that would destroy the Socialist Party, World War I.
Berger and the Social Democrats
opposed all but defensive wars.
He remained convinced the people wanted peace.
"Who howls for war!" he wrote,
"The international bankers, brokers, and munitions makers,
"the manufacturers and speculators who profit from the war?
"Why should America wish to break into that hellish turmoil?"
But once Congress declared war
an almost hysterical conformity took hold.
The government pressured all citizens
to pledge total commitment to victory.
For those who questioned the causes or purposes of the war,
there was no sanctuary.
Vigilantes harass people of German heritage.
Many were forced to buy Liberty Bonds,
under threat of violence.
The government passed new laws
restricting freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
- During the First World War,
Congress passed a law called the Espionage Act
but the title is very misleading,
because it has nothing to do with spying or espionage.
What it did, was restrict anti-war statements
on the part of speakers, newspapers, anyone
who might have said anything
that would have subverted the war effort.
- Victor Berger, who openly opposed the war,
bore the brunt of government pressure.
The post office declared that TheMilwaukee Leader
had violated the Espionage Act
and revoked its second-class mailing permit.
- Starting in the summer of 1918,
the federal government opened Victor Berger's mail
and reviewed it.
And then in August of 1918, it stopped delivering any mail
toThe Milwaukee Leader, to Victor Berger's offices.
That in effect would cripple any newspaper,
because they couldn't receive payments from subscribers.
They couldn't receive payments from advertisers.
News couldn't come in to them through the mail.
- In March of 1918,
Berger ran as a protest candidate for U.S. Senate,
vowing to work for an immediate, general and lasting peace,
and advocating the confiscation of all war profits.
- Berger couldn't use the mails at this time
to distribute his campaign literature.
He wasn't permitted to rent halls outside of Milwaukee.
His posters were defaced.
Yet, there was a concern that Berger would have
a tremendously positive showing.
Approximately a week to ten days
before the primary for the United States Senate,
the federal government indicted Berger
and several other Socialists under the Espionage Act,
indicted him for writing and publishing
what was viewed as seditious editorials.
Berger made a very good showing in the primary
and in the general election that took place a month later.
He received 26 percent of the vote in the state,
over 110,000 people voted for Victor Berger
for the United States Senate.
- Though beaten in the Senate race,
Victor Berger continued to press his case
by running for the House of Representatives in 1918.
Just before the election, the federal government issued
more indictments against him,
but this time Milwaukee voters elected Berger to Congress.
- Here we have a situation where a Congressman-elect
is under indictment for criticizing the war effort.
So he wins the election, but he has to face trial.
Trial not in Milwaukee,
where he probably would have found a sympathetic jury,
but in Chicago.
- Berger and his four co-defendants
began their courtroom battle under the stern and watchful eye
of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis
who would later achieve fame as commissioner of baseball.
Landis had already made public
his feelings against radicals and German Americans.
- Berger's attorneys claimed that Landis was prejudiced
against Berger.
Berger would not be able to get a fair trial
and they appealed for a change of venue.
They've requested a different judge.
Landis ruled on that claim of prejudice.
Ruled that he himself was not prejudiced
and that the trial was to continue under his direction.
- The jury found the defendants guilty.
Judge Landis handed down the maximum punishment,
20 years in Leavenworth.
While appealing his case, Berger traveled to Washington
to claim his seat in Congress.
- He shows up at the Capitol
and asks to take the oath as a member.
Immediately, a member calls for a point of order
and objects to Berger being seated.
Finally in late 1919, the House of Representatives votes
with only one dissenting vote to exclude Victor Berger
from his seat in the House of Representatives.
- Berger was permitted to speak.
"Remember gentlemen," he warned, "you may exclude me once.
"You may exclude me twice,
"but the 5th District of Wisconsin cannot permit you
to dictate what kind of man is to represent it.
Berger returned to Milwaukee
where he easily won a special election
for the vacant seat in Congress.
He travelled once again to Washington
to take the oath of office.
- Victor Berger probably was not
the most popular politician in Milwaukee,
but there was no way that the people of that city
and of the state, were going to abide by
outside interference by outsiders telling them
who they could send to Congress and who they couldn't.
- In Washington. Wisconsin representative Edward Voigt
was the only man in Congress who rose to defend Berger.
"You may say Victor Berger is a traitor," he said,
"but if you do, you've got to say
"that there are 25,000 traders
"in the 5th District of Wisconsin."
To which another House member cried, "There are!"
Congress excluded Victor Berger once again,
on a vote of 330 to 6.
Milwaukee's independent voters remained unrepresented
until the next election.
Fighting Bob La Follette died in 1925,
four days after his 70th birthday.
His death marked the end
of a long chapter in Wisconsin politics
and threw progressive Republicans into confusion.
They turned to La Follette's two sons, Bob Jr. and Phil,
to carry the Progressive movement into a new era,
a role they had been groomed for since early childhood.
Voters would send 30-year-old Bob La Follette, Jr.
to take over his father's seat in the U.S. Senate.
After the stock market crash in 1929,
The Great Depression hit Wisconsin hard.
Heavy industry suffered heavy losses.
In four years, 138,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared.
In 1933, Wisconsin's dairy farmers went on strike
and dumped milk to protest drastic declines in income.
People were gripped by a sense of helplessness
in the face of an overwhelming economic catastrophe.
In Washington, young Bob La Follette called for
heavy federal outlays to feed and shelter
the growing numbers of the unemployed.
- He was the earliest and most persistent advocate,
a bold government action to combat The Depression:
federal relief for the unemployed,
expansion of public works,
modest degree of national economic planning.
1930, he was advocating those sorts of programs
long before most anybody else was.
- In Wisconsin, Phil La Follette seized the moment
and ran for governor.
Using his father's campaign stock,
he appealed to ordinary citizens,
farmers, small business owners and workers,
to back him in a fight against powerful business interests.
- "The chip off the old block," if I heard that said once,
it was said a thousand times. And he was.
His personality was fitted to traveling
around the state and talking to people
and persuading them and running for office.
- In 1930, Wisconsin elected Phil La Follette governor
and at age 33, he became the most powerful
and controversial political figure in the state.
- These were politicians, Phil and Bob,
who thought of politics as a mission.
Underlying it all-- The central underlying theme
of Progressivism, of course, was that
government can work for the good of the people.
"The people" defined as farmers, workers and small businessmen.
As the economy worsened, La Follette continued
Wisconsin's tradition of innovative government action.
He convinced the legislature to pass public works projects
and the nation's first unemployment compensation law,
programs that would appear later
as part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
In Washington, Republican Senator Bob La Follette
supported the programs of the newly elected
Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt.
- It's hard to find a major New Deal measure
that doesn't somewhere or other carry La Follette's imprint.
- When President Roosevelt visited Green Bay in 1934,
he gave little support to the Democrat opposing La Follette
in the next election.
- The Democrats were furious after Roosevelt left the state
and wished that he had never come here.
Roosevelt was a Progressive. He was a Liberal.
He was in the same tradition as old Bob, and Phil and Bob.
The problem of course was that Roosevelt was a Democrat
and they were Republicans.
And the logic of events should have led them to switch parties,
become New Deal Democrats and be done with it.
Well, the Democrats are still dominated by Conservatives.
It's still a very Conservative-tinged party.
So what alternative does that leave you?
That leaves you going the third-party route.
Yet, the possibility of ever getting
a third party off the ground is so small
that it has almost never happened in American history.
- Phil La Follette patched together a third-party coalition
of Progressive Republicans and farm and labor organizations.
The new Wisconsin Progressive Party
ran a full slate of candidates in 1934.
- Everything was in flux
and the Progressives just took the chance in 1934
and won one of the most spectacular third-party victories
that has ever occurred in American history.
- On election night, the La Follette brothers heard the good news.
The Progressive Party carried the state,
returning Bob to the Senate,
Phil back to the governor's seat,
electing 7 out of 10 congressional representatives
and a block of state legislators.
- They were before the Kennedys.
The most famous brother act in all of American politics.
Looked like they were going to be the wave of the future.
Phil set to work promoting a new program
to combat The Depression that he called Wisconsin Works.
It included soil conservation projects,
fish and game management,
tree planting and forestry, urban renewal,
and highway construction.
- Phil had his Wisconsin Works plan all figured out.
He had a deal with Roosevelt
that the national government would let the state implement
their own program with federal money.
But then the legislature,
which the Progressives didn't dominate at that time,
was unable to pass it.
- The defeat marked a turning point for the state.
In an age of big government and huge national problems,
Wisconsin would no longer create its own solutions,
but would instead carry out the New Deal programs
originating in Washington.
By 1938, Phil La Follette became dissatisfied
with the progress of the New Deal
and concluded that The Great Depression
could only be solved by a bold effort
to assist all Americans to produce more wealth.
He decided to challenge Roosevelt
by launching a national Progressive Party.
- ...to restore to every American
the real opportunity to help himself.
After that, he can sink or swim.
- Well, he had a pretty good speech if you read it. It's pretty intelligent.
But by that time, Phil had gotten
kind of carried away with the theatrics of politics,
and so that night at the Stock Pavilion,
he comes up on a stage
that's surrounded with floodlights
and it's got this flag in the background
with an X in the center of a circle
and what some pundits called a "circumcised swastika."
- The other thing of course that was standing in his way,
and this was just as important as the hokey symbolism,
was the simple fact that Franklin Roosevelt
was the leader of the Liberals in America
and if Phil La Follette was going to try
to start another liberal bandwagon,
he was bumping up against this,
and if you stood for Roosevelt,
you couldn't stand for La Follette.
- La Follette had taken a huge gamble and lost.
In the next election, he experienced a shattering defeat.
Progressivism, with its faith and grassroots democracy,
in the ordinary citizen, in the little guy,
would soon be swept away by the forces of big business,
big government, big labor unions and World War II.
- And so it was downhill, '38, '40, '42, '44.
One election was worse than the one before.
- By 1946, the Progressive Party, in its convention,
decided to disband.
Senator La Follette, Bob, Jr., was up for re-election that year
and he moved back into the Republican Party.
- Facing La Follette in the Republican primary
was a circuit judge named, Joe McCarthy.
- McCarthy waged a campaign in 1946,
the likes of which Wisconsinites had not seen
since the last days of old Bob
or maybe the heyday of Phil La Follette.
I mean, he did just canvas the state,
handshaking his way through every beauty parlor
and tavern and barber shop in the state.
- La Follette spent just eight days campaigning in Wisconsin.
It was not enough.
Wisconsin voters turned over the Senate seat,
occupied by a La Follette for forty years,
to a victorious Joe McCarthy.
After the defeat of Bob La Follette Jr.
many of the Progressives
who had followed him into the Republican Party
found themselves without a political future.
- I ran in that race in Polk County
as a Progressive-Republican supporting the La Follette slate
and was defeated in the primary.
- Many of the Progressives decided to become Democrats
and revitalize a weak party
that had held power only a few times in Wisconsin history.
- Wisconsin was a one-party state,
from the Civil War, well into the 20th century, the Republican Party.
You had two factions within the party
particularly when Robert La Follette came along
in the early 20th century.
The La Follette Progressives on the one hand
and the stalwart Conservatives on the other.
In the 1930s, the Republican Party formally split apart
when Governor Phil La Follette and Senator Bob Jr.
organized the Wisconsin Progressive Party.
Their main rivals were the Republicans.
The third largest political party or faction in the state,
then and earlier, was the Socialist Party in Milwaukee.
The Democrats were a weak fourth.
They settled for occasional post masterships,
and that's about it.
- The New Democrats began a grassroots political movement
organizing county by county and recruiting candidates
in counties where Republicans often ran uncontested.
William Proxmire ran in three losing campaigns
for governor in the 1950s,
visiting counties where voters
had never seen the Democratic candidate.
He spoke at farm field days, over fences,
in pursuit of the farm vote
which had been solidly Republican
for almost a hundred years.
When Joe McCarthy died in 1957,
Proxmire won a special election for his Senate seat
giving Wisconsin Democrats a breakthrough victory.
The next year, another Democrat, Gaylord Nelson,
captured the governor's office.
- Once we won the governorship
and Bill Proxmire was re-elected in 1958,
we were established.
That gave us credibility.
- Wisconsin politics came into what we think of as
more normal political structure
of Republicans and Democrats,
about equal with one another, and ideologically
in tune with the national parties
which had never been the case in the state before.
♪ ♪
- As Wisconsin joined the mainstream of American politics,
the names of the parties changed
but the debate over rights and responsibilities continued,
drawing on the traditions of a rich political history...
...a tradition of taking on unpopular causes,
and a concern for basic human rights.
An openness to new ideas,
to pioneering reforms of government,
and of our economic system.
A tolerance for the voices of dissent.
A willingness to hear a variety of opinions.
A readiness to vote for the maverick political candidate.
And an expectation of honesty and efficiency in government.
These traditions, rooted firmly in our past,
remain alive and well in Wisconsin.
- Whether we're talking about the early debates
when Wisconsin was formed.
Over whether its property rights or black suffrage.
Or whether we're talking railroad regulation,
the direct primary, Progressive era reforms.
Wisconsin has constantly been on the cutting edge,
trying new things.
Some of them work; some of them don't,
but that's been at the core
of Wisconsin's political history.
♪ ♪
Major funding forWisconsin Storieswas provided by:
AT&T, providing business and residential
long distance service throughout Wisconsin;
S.C. Johnson Wax, a Wisconsin manufacturer
of home cleaning and home storage products;
the Credit Unions of Wisconsin, serving the financial needs
of two million Wisconsinites and their families;
and the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Commission,
celebrating 150 years of Wisconsin statehood.
Funding also provided by:
Firstar Corporation,
Harley-Davidson, Incorporated,
Marshall and Illsley Corporation,
the Outdoor Advertising Association,
the Philip Morris Companies,
W.H. Brady Company,
Weber Stephen Products Company,
and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.