The Elk Mountain pilot., 1924-10-16
URGES WOMEN TO
BACK La Toilette
Zona Gale, Distinguished
Authoress, Says He Has
Earned Their Support.
BY IONA GALE
Author of "Miss Lulu Bett" and Win
ner of Pulitzer Prize

ner of Pulitzer Prize.
1t was only after living for five
years in New York, where | had an
association afar off with the great
humanitarians and social workers of
the country, that I awoke to the fact
that in my own state LaFollette had
been fighting their fight almost single
handed. Plenty of remedial agencies
were at work, but these were not their
concern, nor his His magazine was
In my home-my mother and father
had understood and revered him and
l shall not forget my naive astonish-
ment when | opened that magazine
casually and saw there so passionately
advocated the labor Legislation and the
social measures which had been fee
in remedies the powerful machine
would not have questioned him. 1t
is when the good Samaritan tries to
find out the identity of the thieves
among whom the traveller fell that the
trouble begins. Who cares how much
his wounds are bound up with oil and
wine SO long as the thieves make their
escape?
Senator LaFollette Is first of all a
great humanitarian, believer in the
infinite worth of the human being, and
in the infinite improvabilty of the
human race" That the greatest busi-
ness of the human being, like that Of
all other life. is to grow, is fact
which has been hidden from the ma
jority of politicians, but Robert La
Toilette miraculOusly knows it. And
all his political life, whenever he has
seen man or group of men seated
comfortably on stone beneath which
other human beings struggle to live,
he has tried to move either the man or
the stone. and sometimes both.
laFoIlette, the Candidate.
This is why, if ever there was can
didate who deserved the support of the
women of the United States, it is Rob-
ert LaFollette. Not chiefly because he
has always stood for them and cham
p'oned woman suffrage 20 years before
it was respectable to do so. Not chief
ly because he was one of the first gov
ernors to appoint women to state
boards. Not because he has so con-
sistently fought for the cause of the
woman in industry. But because, In
some clairvoyant fashion, he under
stands the value of human life above
that of every commodity; understands,
too, the pathos and the passion of its
heroic climb. 1t is women who have
always known its value best. But
they have been inarticulate. Not even
in terrible moments-cf disaster to
their husbands. the workers.. or to
themselves as workers, or conscription
of their sons, or in the waste of war
or the battles of peace have they often
been able to say to their governments
You talk always about property.
What about the cost to us? What
about human life? What about our
aspiration for our children?"
He campaigned for suffrage, which
was lost in Wisconsin in 1912: and
years before that, as governor. he,
with Mrs. LaFollette, opened the ex-
ecutive residence to the delegates to a
state suffrage campaign, when all that
the public and press as a whole had
for them was ridicule. Which is a re-
minder that If Mrs. LaFollette goes to
the White House she will be one of the
first women there whose grasp of eco
nomic conditions is keen. Also, she Is
a member of the Wisconsin bar and a
brilliant orator.
Foe Of War and Monopoly.
| believe that all women, and all
other believers in internationalism,
would elect Robert LaFollette If only
they could be made to understand how
Intimately allied are private monopoly
and war. If only they would imagine
the absurdity, the impossibility of
Ramsay Macdonald, premier of Eng
land, and Robert LaFollette, President
of the United States, laundering into
n war with each others countries, or
with anybody else's country. The plat
form says except in case Of actual in
vasion." Can anybody imagine either
OF these men failing to use their
brains to quiet the profiteers who are
back of war?
In the lives of this generation there
has never been such a chance to serve
democracy by living for 1t for three