The Danger Threatening Representative Government

Speech

By: Robert M. La Follette Sr.

Date: 1897

Source: Wisconsin Historical Society. "Excerpts from Robert M. LaFollette's speech: 'The Danger Threatening Representative Government.'" <http://www. wisconsinhistory.org/teachers/lessons/lafollette/pdfs/ lfspeech.pdf> (accessed May 28, 2006).

About the Author: Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) was a nineteenth- and twentieth-century politician from Wisconsin. With his wife, an active feminist, he championed populist causes, founding the Progressive Party in 1924 and running for U.S. president. La Follette served in the U.S. House of Representatives, as governor of Wisconson, and in the U.S. Senate.

INTRODUCTION

Robert M. La Follette Sr. was born in Wisconsin in 1855. He attended the University of Wisconsin and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1885. Returning to Wisconsin in 1891, he staked out a strongly populist platform and ran for various positions, ultimately reaching the governor's office in 1900. During his term as governor he was instrumental in reforming Wisconsin politics. He also adopted radical new political techniques, such as taking private political disputes to the general public in order to force a compromise.

La Follette was an unabashedly progressive politician best characterized as a populist. Populism is a political movement primarily concerned with the rights of individuals. Populists generally take the perspective that individuals are broadly mistreated by powerful forces within society, including the wealthy, the government, and corporations. Populists advocate the use of government authority to reduce the influence of these elite groups. Populism as a philosophy has enjoyed recurring popularity throughout U.S. history, though the short-lived Populist Party vanished during the nineteenth century.

Following his election to the U.S. Senate in 1906, La Follette retained his seat until his death in 1825. Although a populist, La Follette initially aligned himself with the Republican Party, achieving significant political reforms in his home state of Wisconsin. In 1924, a platform dispute convinced La Follette that his goals would not be achieved with the Republicans, and he left their ranks to launch the League for Progressive Political Action, better known as the Progressive Party. La Follette entered the 1924 presidential race as the Progressive candidate, garnering thirteen electoral votes.

La Follette was a vigorous reformer, tirelessly articulating populist doctrines in numerous speeches. Among his targets, corporations were frequently vilified as stealing the labor of the poor in order to expand the estates of the wealthy.

PRIMARY SOURCE

What is it then that is swelling the ranks of the dissatisfied? Is it not a growing conviction in state after state, that we are fast being dominated by forces that thwart the will of the people and menace representative government?

Since the birth of this Republic, indeed almost within the last generation, a new and powerful factor has taken its place in our business, financial and political world and is there exercising a tremendous influence.

The existence of the corporation, as we have it with us today, was never dreamed of by the fathers. Until the more recent legislation, of which it is the product, the corporation was regarded as a purely public institution. The corporation of today has invaded every department of business and its powerful but invisible hand is felt in almost all the activities of life. From the control of great manufacturing plants to the running of bargain counters, from the operation of railways to the conduct of cheese factories, and from the management of each of these singly to the consolidation of many into one of gigantic proportions,—the corporation has practically acquired dominion over the business world. The effect of this change upon the American people is radical and rapid. The individual is fast disappearing as a business factor and in his stead is this new device, the modern corporation. I repeat, the influence of this change upon character cannot be overestimated. The business man at one time gave his individuality, stamped his mental and moral characteristics upon the business he conducted. He thought as much of bequeathing his business reputation to his son, as he did of bequeathing the business upon which that reputation had been so deeply impressed. This made high moral attributes a positive essential in business life, and marked business character everywhere.

Today the business once transacted by individuals in every community is in the control of corporations, and many of the men who once conducted an independent business are gathered into the organization, and all personal identity, and all individuality lost. Each man has become a mere cog in one of the wheels of a complicated mechanism. It is the business of the corporation to get money. It exacts but one thing of its employees: Obe dience to orders. It cares not about their relations to the community, the church, society, or the family. It wants full hours and faithful service, and when they die, wear out or are discharged, it quickly replaces them with new material. The corporation is a machine for making money, but it reduces men to the insignificance of mere numerical figures, as certainly as the private ranks of the regular army.…

I do not wish to be misunderstood. The corporation, honestly operated in the function of a public servant and in certain lines as a business instrumentality purely, has an unlimited field of opportunity and usefulness in this country. As a public servant, as a business instrumentality, the corporation is everywhere,—before the courts, in the legislature and at the bar of public opinion, entitled to the same measure of consideration, the same even-handed justice as the individual. I have the same contempt for the demagogue who assails a corporation solely because it is a corporation, that I have for the ready tool, who surrenders his conscience in its dishonest service.

SIGNIFICANCE

In La Follette's account, corporate evolution in America followed a clear progression, beginning with individual workers and progressing through multiple stages before finally reaching the enormous conglomerates he claimed posed a threat to the nation itself. Consistent with this perspective, La Follette consistently supported trade unions as a restraint on unchecked corporate power.

One hundred fifty years after his birth, the legacy of populist Robert La Follette and his movement still remains. Speaking in 2003, journalist Bill Moyers described the populist movement as a tradition dating to the birth of the nation: men and women fighting inequality in general and specifically the preferential treatment frequently afforded the wealthy. He noted that the founders of the United States rejected a property ownership requirement for office holders as inconsistent with the principles on which the Union was formed. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, each in his own time, fought to overcome forces perceived as giving inequitable privilege to a minority of wealthy individuals.

Enormous grants of government-owned land given to the railroads were among the government misdeeds that La Follette and his contemporaries saw and criticized. Also, tariffs kept consumer prices high and helped corporations become entrenched and profitable. Moyers also describes federal monetary policy that rewarded creditors (the wealthy) and destroyed borrowers (the poor).

While the Populist Party itself was short-lived and relatively unsuccessful, many of its ideas outlived it, becoming part of the public consciousness and informing federal legislation. Populism remains a vital force in contemporary American politics. Though the two major parties of La Follette's day remain in power, populist sentiment frequently rears its head in the face of government or corporate excess. In the wake of the Enron scandal, in which employees were paid with ultimately worthless stock options while executives awarded themselves large cash bonuses, populist sentiment has stirred again. The passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which specifically requires corporate executives to sign off on financial results rather than claiming ignorance and passing the blame for misdeeds to underlings, represents populism at its best.

Populism has always been fueled by frustration and outrage at the perception that those in authority have taken advantage of their position to benefit themselves and their allies. Yet once the most extreme inequities are addressed, all but the most committed and vocal populists typically lose interest in the cause. As an inherently reactionary movement, populism appears doomed to remain forever an outsider, a referee assessing the behavior of the more central players. Given populism's inherent distrust of government, it appears somewhat better suited to the role of watch-dog and critic than of a majority party.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Goodwyn, Lawrence.The Populist Movement: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Lukacs, John.Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred. London: Yale University Press, 2005.

McGerr, Michael.A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Unger, Nancy C.Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Periodicals

"The Return of Populism."Economist378 (2006): 39–40.

Baldwin, William. "Bigness and Badness."Forbes177 (2006): 16.

Roberts, Kenneth M. "Populism, Political Conflict, and Grass-Roots Organization in Latin America."Comparative Politics38 (2006): 127–148.

Web sites

Moyers, Bill. "This Is Your Story—The Progressive Story of America. Pass It On." June 10, 2003 <http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0610–11.htm> (accessed May 28, 2006).

The Nation. "The Rise of Market Popularism: America's New Religion." October 12, 2000 <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20001030/frank> (accessed May 28, 2006).

Wisconsin Historical Society. "La Follette and the Progressive Era." <http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/teachers/lessons/lafollette/> (accessed May 28, 2006).