U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [145]
elected governor and wrecked the Republican machine; this was the tenyears war that left Wisconsin the
model state where the voters, orderloving Germans
and Finns, Scandinavians fond of their own opinion, learned to use the new leverage, direct primaries, ref-erendum and recal . La Fol ette taxed the railroads John C. Payne said to a group of politicians in the lobby of the Ebbitt House in Washington "La Fol-lette's a damn fool if he thinks he can buck a railroad with five thousand miles of continuous track, he'l find he's mistaken . . . We'l take care of him when the time comes."
But when the time came the farmers of Wisconsin
and the young lawyers and doctors and businessmen
just out of school
took care of him
and elected him governor three times
and then to the United States Senate,
where he worked al his life making long
speeches ful of statistics, struggling to save democratic government, to make a farmers'
and smal business-men's commonwealth, lonely with his back to the wal , fighting corruption and big business and high finance
-367-and trusts and combinations of combinations and the miasmic lethargy of Washington.
He was one of "the little group of wilful men
expressing no opinion but their own"
who stood out against Woodrow Wilson's armed
ship bil that made war with Germany certain; they
cal ed it a filibuster but it was six men with nerve straining to hold back a crazy steamrol er with their bare hands;
the press pumped hatred into its readers against
La Fol ette,
the traitor,
they burned him in effigy in Il inoisi
in Wheeling they refused to let him speak.
In nineteen twentyfour La Fol ette ran for presi-dent and without money or political machine rol ed up four and a half mil ion votes
but he was a sick man, incessant work and the
breathed out air of committee rooms and legislative chambers choked him and the dirty smel of politicians,
and he died,
an orator haranguing from the capitol of a lost
republic;
but we wil remember
how he sat firm in March nineteen seventeen
while Woodrow Wilson was being inaugurated for the
second time, and for three days held the vast machine at deadlock. They wouldn't let him speak; the gal-leries glared hatred at him; the senate was a lynching party, a stumpy man with a lined face, one leg stuck out
-368-in the aisle and his arms folded and a chewed cigar in the corner of his mouth and an undelivered speech on his desk,
a wilful man expressing no opinion but his own.
CHARLEY ANDERSON
Charley Anderson's mother kept a railroad boarding-house near the Northern Pacific station at Fargo, N. D. It was a gabled frame house with porches al round, painted mustard yel ow with chocolatebrown trim and out back there was always washing hanging out on
sagging lines that ran from a pole near the kitchen door to a row of brokendown chickenhouses. Mrs. Anderson was a quietspoken grayhaired woman with glasses; the boarders were afraid of her and did their complaining about the beds, or the food, or that the eggs weren't fresh to waddling bigarmed Lizzie Green from the north of Ireland who was the help and cooked and did al the housework. When any of the boys came home drunk it
was Lizzie with a threadbare man's overcoat pul ed over her nightgown who came out to make them shut up. One of the brakemen tried to get fresh with Lizzie one night and got such a sock in the jaw that he fel clear off the front porch. It was Lizzie who washed and scrubbed
Charley when he was little, who made him get to school on time and put arnica on his knees when he skinned them and soft soap on his chilblains and mended the rents in his clothes. Mrs. Anderson had already raised three chil-dren who had grown up and left home before Charley came, so that she couldn't seem to keep her mind on Charley. Mr. Anderson had also left home about the time Charley was born; he'd had to go West on account of his
-369-weak lungs, couldn't stand the hard winters, was how Mrs. Anderson put it. Mrs. Anderson kept the accounts, pre-served or canned strawberries, peas, peaches, beans, to-matoes, pears, plums, applesauce as each season came round, made Charley read a chapter of the Bible every day and did a lot of churchwork.