Pope Francis was Time Magazine’s 'Person of the Year.' The Time lead
article stated:
You could argue that he (Pope
Francis) is Teddy Roosevelt protecting capitalism from its own excesses or he
is simply saying what Popes before him have said, that Jesus calls us to care
for the least among
us...
The question
is interesting. Yes, T. Roosevelt’s neoliberalism (regulated capitalism) saved free market capitalism (liberalism)
from self destruction, and Pope Francis, in focusing on real problems rather
than Church rules, may be saving the Roman Catholic Church from
irrelevance. However, it should be noted
that the tradition of Roosevelt’s neoliberalism is now under attack by his
own Republican Party. Also, Pope Francis
is advocating for justice for the poor.
Free market capitalists might throw loose change to the poor, but justice
beyond fulfilling contracts is not a concept understood by the free market
liberals.
Where are the Wisconsin Politicians on the issues of justice? The debate on
the minimum -living wage ordinance will tell the tale. Wisconsin legislators have Wisconsin progressive tradition to refer to that dates back
to the Roosevelt era.
McClure’s
Magazine
Doris Kerns Goodwin in Bully Pulpit
recounts that McClure’s Magazine investigated
abuses of the robber barons, published stories about political reformers, and
was a part of T. Roosevelt’s attempt to go over the heads of politicians and
communicate with the people.
Let’s look as some McClure's articles not
referenced by Kerns Goodwin as a historical guide for Wisconsin legislators in deciding about a living wage for workers. McClure’s writer Lincoln Steffens wrote about Wisconsin Governor Robert La
Follete in October, 1904:
His [La Follete's] long, hard fight has
developed citizenship in Wisconsin - honest reasonable intelligent citizenship. And that is better than business; that is
what business and government is for men (people) (McClure’s, Oct. 1904, No. 6,
vol. XXIII)
McClure’s Magazine published an
article in 1904 by former Democrat President Grover Cleveland where he tries to
justify sending Federal Troops to Chicago to end the Pullman strike. Pullman workers went on strike because of a
cut in their meager wages. The strikers
were supported by the American Railway Union headed by Eugene Debs. In the McClure article, former
President Cleveland argued in terms of existing law written to protect business. From Washington, D.C., Cleveland decided that
Interstate commerce was interrupted, that the mail was stopped, that there was
violence and neither the State of Illinois nor the City of Chicago would act,
therefore Cleveland had to send in the troops.
Labor leader Eugene Debs defied an injunction to call off the strike and
he was sent to prison.
Debs
wrote a reply contradicting Cleveland point by point, but the ‘progressive’ McClure’s
would not publish the article. Victor
Berger of Milwaukee, later to be the first Socialist to be elected to Congress,
visited Debs at his Woodstock, IL prison cell.
Later, Debs wrote explaining how he became a Socialist because of the
events of the 1894 Pullman Strike:
Victor Berger – and I have loved him
ever since – came to Woodstock, as if a
providential instrument, and delivered the first impassioned message of Socialism I had ever heard. (Eugene Debs Speaks, ed. Jean Y. Tinssey, Pathfinders
Press, N.Y. 1970, p. 49)
But do Wisconsin legislators need the principles and compassion of a
socialist to understand the need for a living wage? Consider the words of Adam Smith the founder
of liberal economics or laissez faire
Capitalism.
Servants, labourers and workers of different kinds, make up a large part
of every great political society. But
what improves the circumstances of the
greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to
the whole society. No society can surely
be flourishing and happy of which the
far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who
feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body
of the people should have a share of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably
well fed, clothed and lodged. (Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations, I. VIII, 36, 1776)
A minimum - living
wage makes practical sense, but does the politics of money make it a tough call
for Wisconsin politicians?
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