East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1912-04-13

representative government with only
the direct primary to aid us. We
are following now in the wake of Ore
gon for the initiative and referendum
and will achieve ultimately all of
these new ideas to representative
government, but we took the other
course in Wisconsin, we fought with
out these aids-we used caucus and
conventions and we met the enemy
upon their own grounds and finally
succeeded in securing government in
that state and we established a rep
.~resentative government in Wisconsin.
There is no place in the United
States where we rave had progress
sive government for many years.
You have all heard, haven't you, that
1 am a very dangerous man; 1 am
certain that quite a number of pa
pers in this state have published over
n over again that La Toilette is a
demagogue, that he is menace to the
business pursuits and prosperity Of
the country.
Now l want to tell you hat / am
the safest man in the whole country
In the state of Wisconsin my enemies
say-and l am willing to admit it for
the sake of the argument-that l
have had absolutely my own way
ever since the ~progressives came into
in that state and if / am so
dangerous then Wisconsin ought to
be a pretty bad state, instead of that
it is the only state in this union where
they have got an approach to perfect
representative government.
I'm Wisconsin We have built the
government over; reconstructed it,
and if you want to know what real
progressive government means, all
you need to do is to study the legisla-
ton of Wisconsin. If you go into
Wisconsin today, you will find repre-
sentatives of the leading universities
of the world. representatives of the
leading periodicals published in Eu-
rope as well as in this country there
in the capital of that commonwealth,
investigating the situation there.
Let me tell you a little about it. 1
think it may interest you. The peo-
pie were duly warned that if L ever
achieved the g~overnorship of that
state-and I want to tel you that l
was a candidate for quite a while be-
fore L was elected governor
But. you know, when l get started
after anything, l keep going until l
get it. And, say, you might just as
we'll understand now, because L neg
lected to mention it, i am a candidate
for the presidency. The standpat
crowd-have you any st~andpatters
here, Judge Lowell? What, not a
standpatter My, what an Eden! l
saw a picture or two hanging in the
windows today which indicated to my
mind that there might be a standpat-
ter or two in town.
"As | was going to say to you
standpatters, if there are any of you
here, you will save a little time by
Just understanding that when l put
my hand to the ploy, 1 go through to
the end of the furrow.
IF you should succeed in defeat
ing me for president this time, there
is l916-just a little way ahead-and
then if anything unexpected should
happens in 1916, why there's 1920 or
1924. or 1928. l am no gutter, ]
was candidate for governor of Wis
consin me-, two, three, foul flVs
times in succession.
Let me tell you what we nave
done up there. The opposition said
that if I ever got to be governor OF
that state and got a legislature with
me, that all capital would be driven
or+ and grass would grow in the
highways to market Well, we start
ed in in 1872, 8, 4, 5, 6, I, 8, 3, III
1900 1 won. What is the situation
up there now? Instead of railroad
capital fleeing from the state; instead
of taking off their trains, since the
progressives have taken charge of the
government in that state, the rail-
roads have expended ~thirty-nine mill
lion dollars in new construction.
do you know what we do with
our railroads in Wisconsin? Let me
tell YOU. You can go tomorrow into
the capital at Madison. take a civil
engineer with you, take a railroad
contractor with you-you can go into
the railroad commission offices and
find out the value, the cost of con-
%structin of any mile of road in the
state. Have you done that yet in
Oregon? Until you do that, you have
not taken the firts step toward reg
ulating the rates of railroads.
Il do not blame the people up
there for thinking I was a dangerous
man. for when l get real warmed up,
look dangerous, but when you see
me in the executive office at the al
itol in Madison, you see a pretty cold
proposition.
Il understood perfectly well that
all of these modern conditions,-un-
lawful, many of them,-were en-
twined with the legitimate business Of
he state. I gathered about me the
best expert help in all the United
States, and we began a study OF
these conditions. We are really only
getting fairly started now.
81 had been a student of railroad
transportation ever since h old
grange days in Wisconsin. I was a
member of the House of Represen-
tatives when they enacted the origi-
nal International Commerce law in
1897. became very much interested
in the study of transportation con-
ditions, and what 1 did not under
stand myself, I have gathered from
the best thoughts OF the day.
$50 we began,-and We know the
cost of every spike. every tie, every
rail, every cut and fill, how many
yards of dirt were required to be