The Long Memory Remembers The Wisconsin Idea

On Sunday, 6 March 2011, Michael Moore went to Wisconsin to give his America is not broke speech to those occupying the state legislature, and while it was inspiring, he made no mention of The Wisconsin Idea and the role that it played in the Progressive Movement that culminated in FDR’s “New Deal” during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

But Moore wasn’t the only one to overlook the history of the Progressive Movement when addressing Scott Walker’s attack on labour in Wisconsin. I couldn’t find anyone talking about it all until a recent episode of The Real News asked Why Wisconsin?

Why indeed? What keeps us from asking these obvious questions? Folk singer and hobo tramp, Bruce “Utah” Phillips, claims that the fear-mongering of the Cold War put a hole in the American memory that you could “float the Queen Mary through.”

To help remedy that situation, Utah’s son Duncan has set-up an online archive of his father’s legacy called The Long Memory, which includes podcasts for 38 episodes of his father’s radio show, Loafer’s Glory.

I present a taste of The Long Memory here with some notes on the Progressive Movement from The Wisconsin Historical Society, along with 3 episodes from Loafer’s Glory called:

The Progressive Movement – part 1
The Progressive Movement – part 2
The Progressive Movement – part 3

The Birth of the Labor Movement

Wisconsin’s workers and reformers made significant contributions to the history of labor in the United States, helping to enact legislation such as workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance that served as models for similar laws in other states. The study of labor history itself also began in Wisconsin when University of Wisconsin economist John R. Commons set out to document the history of work and labor in America at the turn of the twentieth century. Commons and his associates also joined labor leaders, the business community, and politicians to bring about some of Wisconsin’s groundbreaking social policies.

The evolution of Wisconsin’s economy, like that of the rest of the nation, contributed to the rise of organized labor in the nineteenth century. The industrialization of agriculture, as well as the development of the mining and lumbering industries, coupled with the growth of manufacturing changed the nature of work in Wisconsin. Workers began to view themselves as a distinct group within society, and unions became a means for working people to participate in politics and society.

Wisconsin’s working people generally pursued a somewhat independent path within the national labor movement, pushing aggressively for state legislation rather than coercion through economic actions such as strikes and boycotts. The Wisconsin movement also organized workers by industry, without regard for their particular skills. This differed from the national movement’s attempts to unionize workers by skill, which often left less-skilled workers without representation. Additionally, while many national labor unions counseled political nonpartisanship, Wisconsin labor formed a close alliance with the Socialist Party and its humanitarian ideals.

Wisconsin’s first unions were formed in Milwaukee, the bricklayers in 1847 and the carpenters in 1848. Building trades were essential to the expansion of the city because the construction of housing, docks, warehouses, and shops depended upon workers in the building trades. Other early unions developed in trades connected to transportation, clothing, and printing. Shoemakers founded the Knights of St. Crispin in 1867, Wisconsin’s first national trade union organization, which quickly grew to be the largest union in the nation. The Ship Carpenters and Caulkers Association called the first successful strike in 1848, though strikes would remain fairly infrequent and relatively small-scale until the later part of the century.

These early strikes were over issues such as low wages, the withholding of pay or irregular payment, and the hiring of unskilled labor to manage new technology. Employers used women, African Americans, and immigrants as cheap sources of labor, successfully manipulating the prejudices of white male workers. In 1863, for example, Milwaukee Typographical Union Number 23 went on strike when women were first hired as compositors at the Milwaukee Sentinel. The strike was unsuccessful and the women kept their jobs, though at wages only slightly more than half than their male predecessors had received. Workers, male and female, both lost.

Overall, Wisconsin workers fared comparatively well during the Civil War years, gaining leverage in industries tied to the war economy. As the war came to an end though, prices fell drastically and workers faced renewed challenges to their wages and benefits. Wisconsin workers began to form larger labor associations with national ties and more active political engagement.

As talk of reducing daily work to eight hours intensified across the nation in the 1880s, workers in Milwaukee formed the Milwaukee Labor Reform Association (later the Eight-Hour League) to agitate for the eight-hour day that we now take for granted. Milwaukee workers mounted extensive efforts around this issue, especially among the more militant members of the Knights of Labor under Robert Schilling. A two-year campaign to urge all employers to adopt a standard eight-hour day culminated on May 1st, 1886, when all workers not yet on the system were to cease work until their employers met the demand. Eight-hour day marches and strikes were strongest in industrial cities like Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, and Milwaukee. Striking workers shut down industrial plants in Milwaukee during the first five days of May, 1886, except for one: the North Chicago Railroad Rolling Mills Steel Foundry in Bay View. On May 5, a crowd of demonstrators who had sought to call out the workers still inside the huge Bay View factory was attacked by troops called out by Governor Jeremiah Rusk. Five people were killed and four wounded. While the massacre at Bay View did not end the agitation, the shots fired dampened momentum for the movement and Governor Rusk became celebrated as a national hero, assumed to have saved Milwaukee from anarchy.

As the nineteenth century ended, Wisconsin labor found its political outlet in a new socialist movement built by Milwaukee’s Victor Berger and, during the first decade of the 20th century, in the support of Robert La Follette’s Progressive movement. Factories were dangerous places for workers, and accidents killed or maimed thousands of Wisconsin citizens every year. In 1911, the first Workmens’ Compensation law was passed, requiring employers to provide medical attention and compensation for loss of life and limb. After World War I, labor unions began to agitate for unemployment compensation, which finally passed in 1932, and in 1937, the Wisconsin Employment Relations Act added critical state support to the right of workers to organize.

[Source: The History of Wisconsin vol. 3 and 4 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin); Kasparek, Jon, Bobbie Malone and Erica Schock. Wisconsin History Highlights: Delving into the Past (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2004); Holter, Darryl. Workers and Unions in Wisconsin (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1999); Gara, Larry. A Short History of Wisconsin. (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1962)]

The Career of Robert M. La Follette

Robert La Follette developed his fierce opposition to corporate power and political corruption as a young man. Affiliated with the Republican Party for almost his entire career, La Follette embarked on a political path that would take him to Congress, the governorship of Wisconsin, and the U.S. Senate. His support for progressive reforms, rousing oratory, and frequent clashes with party leaders earned him the nickname “Fighting Bob.”

Born in Primrose township, Dane County, in 1855, La Follette worked as a farm laborer before entering the University of Wisconsin in 1875. After graduating in 1879, La Follette launched his political career as district attorney the following year. Elected to Congress in 1884, La Follette was defeated in 1890 by Democrat Allen Bushnell. While for some people a defeat might have signaled the end of a political career, for La Follette it marked the beginning of a lifelong fight for political reform.

La Follette’s career as a reformer began in earnest a few months later when the state Republican leader, Senator Philetus Sawyer, offered him a bribe to fix a court case against several former state officials. Furious that Sawyer would try to use money to influence the legal system, La Follette refused the bribe, angrily denouncing the use of money to shut out the voice of the people. For nearly ten years, La Follette traveled around the state speaking out against the influence of crooked politicians and the powerful lumber barons and railroad interests that dominated his own party. Elected governor in 1900, La Follette pledged to institute his own form of political reform.

Until that time, the candidates whose names appeared on ballots were selected by party leaders in private caucuses. Drawing on the ideas of other reformers to make politics more democratic, La Follette successfully pushed the legislature to pass measures instituting direct primary elections, which gave voters the right to choose their own candidates for office. He supported measures that doubled the taxes on the railroads, broke up monopolies, preserved the state’s forests, protected workers’ rights, defended small farmers, and regulated lobbying to end patronage politics. La Follette worked closely with professors from the University of Wisconsin to help the state become “a laboratory of democracy.” By the time he joined the U.S. Senate in 1906, La Follette had become a national figure.

In Washington, La Follette pushed for the same kind of reforms he had promoted in Wisconsin. He often spoke at length on the corruption of government and the abuse of industrial workers. Arguing that the entire nation’s economy was dominated by fewer than one hundred corporate leaders, La Follette supported the growth of unions as a check on the power of large corporations. In 1909, La Follette and his wife, Belle, founded “La Follette’s Weekly Magazine,” a journal that campaigned for woman suffrage, racial equality, and other progressive causes.

Though La Follette supported Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential election, he adamantly opposed U.S. entry into World War I, believing that disputes should be solved peacefully. Although he was accused of being unpatriotic, La Follette believed that American’s involvement in the war would end democratic reforms at home. Though critics declared that his opposition to the war was political suicide, La Follette was re-elected to the Senate in 1922. In 1924, he ran for president on the Progressive ticket and received almost 5 million votes, losing to Republican Calvin Coolidge. La Follette died the following year.

[Source: The History of Wisconsin vol. 3 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin); Kasparek, Jon, Bobbie Malone and Erica Schock. Wisconsin History Highlights: Delving into the Past (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2004); "Robert Marion La Follette" Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress (online at http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=L000004); Unger, Nancy C. Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000)]

Progressivism and the Wisconsin Idea

In the first quarter of the twentieth century, Wisconsin leaders began to seek new answers to problems caused by an increasingly industrial and technological society. To a people born and raised mostly on farms, the explosive growth of cities, rising importance of large-scale industry, transformation of the workforce by new immigrants and rigid class stratification, and the overall speed of daily life brought uncertainty and confusion. In other states social movements such as the Greenback Party and Populist Party tried to address these changes, but little was accomplished in Wisconsin until after the year 1900 when “Progressives” gained control of the Republican Party.

The Republicans were the party of Lincoln and the Union Army, and in the decades following the Civil War, they held a virtual monopoly on state government by organizing and satisfying the needs of Civil War veterans. Until the 1890s, a few party leaders tightly controlled Wisconsin’s legislative agenda. At the same time, the rise of big business after 1870 had concentrated economic power in the hands of a few privileged individuals. These two groups, party leaders and business leaders, often overlapped, personally and pragmatically, as the interests and actions of government and business converged.

Progressive Republicans, in contrast, believed that the business of government was to serve the people. They sought to restrict the power of corporations when it interfered with the needs of individual citizens. The Progressive Movement appealed to citizens who wanted honest government and moderate economic reforms that would expand democracy and improve public morality. In their crusade for reform on a state and national level, Progressive Republicans were led by Robert La Follette, Wisconsin’s governor from 1901 to 1906, and U.S. Senator from 1906 to 1925.

In Wisconsin, La Follette developed the techniques and ideas that made him a nationwide symbol of Progressive reform and made the state an emblem of progressive experimentation. The Wisconsin Idea, as it came to be called, was that efficient government required control of institutions by the voters rather than special interests, and that the involvement of specialists in law, economics, and social and natural sciences would produce the most effective government.

Faculty from the University of Wisconsin, therefore, played a significant part in Progressive reform efforts, helping legislators draft laws and serving as experts on governmental commissions. While advocating for more scientific and efficient government, many of these specialists were equally persistent in their efforts to expand educational opportunities. University President Charles Van Hise, for example, sought to extend the services of the University throughout the state by means of a new Extension Division. The state’s Legislative Reference Library, led by Charles McCarthy, was a similar product of the impulse toward educational opportunity and access. Created in 1901, the Legislative Reference Bureau (or LRB, as it came to be known) assisted legislators in their search for facts on which to which to base improved laws. Providing legislators with fast service from trained research talent, McCarthy’s LRB added a bill-drafting service in 1907 that was emulated in countries around the globe.

Although he was widely associated with the Progressive Movement, by no means were all of Wisconsin’s progressive achievements the work of La Follette himself. Wisconsin’s Progressive movement began as a small faction within the Republican Party that grew in strength by drawing support from a variety of constituencies. There were even factions within factions, each with leaders who were influential in enlisting different groups of citizens to Progressive causes. The complex program associated with Wisconsin progressive reform therefore required the efforts and support of many politicians and interest groups. Germans and organized labor, who had not supported the Progressive movement in its early years, became important later as the composition of the movement changed.

What did the Progressive Movement accomplish in Wisconsin? During James Davidson’s terms as governor, from 1906 to 1911, considerable progressive legislation was enacted, including laws proving for state control of corporation stock issues, an extension of the power of the railroad commission to regulate transportation, a fixing of railroad fares, and stricter regulation of insurance companies. The most important and influential progressive legislation, however, was passed during the next (1911) session, under the governorship of Francis McGovern. The 1911 legislature created the nation’s first effective workers’ compensation program to protect people injured on the job. It passed laws to regulate factory safety, encouraged the formation of cooperatives, established a state income tax, formed a state life insurance fund, limited working hours for women and children, and passed forest and waterpower conservation acts.

While La Follette was the most powerful Progressive political leader in Wisconsin, he was never able to gain complete control over the state’s Republican Party or even Wisconsin Progressives. The opening decades of the 20th century were a time of contentious political strife and debate, and not everyone agreed about the goals and strategies of the Progressive program. Progressivism appealed to voters who favored orderly change, rather than a fundamental shift in the economic and social order. Many of the reforms were moderate and thus acceptable to a large number of people who might not otherwise have supported the movement, such as businessmen. Other Wisconsin citizens viewed Progressive reforms as excessive state interference, while many others wanted more sweeping changes such as those advocated by the Socialist Party.

By the 1930s, when depression and unemployment dominated American public life, the assumptions of the Wisconsin Progressives had penetrated deeply into national politics. Much of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation was drafted by Wisconsin citizens, such as Edwin Witte (author of the 1935 Social Security act), who had been trained by Progressive Wisconsin economics professor John R. Commons. In fact, the momentum of La Follette and his allies rippled down through the decades into John Kennedy’s “New Frontier” and Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs.

[Source: The History of Wisconsin vol. 4 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin); Kasparek, Jon, Bobbie Malone and Erica Schock. Wisconsin History Highlights: Delving into the Past (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2004); McCarthy, Charles. The Wisconsin Idea. Wisconsin Electronic Reader (online at http://www.library.wisc.edu/etext/WIReader/Contents/Idea.html)]