Robert M. La Follette Quotes

When the Morgan and Rockefeller interests harmonized to consummate the great wrong, they well understood that they could not achieve their purpose against a hostile press. Hence they "took over" the newspapers.
This does not necessarily mean the ownership of all newspapers. The perfection of the modern combination is little less than a Fine Art. Here again control is better than outright ownership. And control can be achieved through that community of interests, that interdependence of investment and credits which ties the publisher up to the banks, the advertisers, and special interests.

Rather in time of war the citizen must be more alert to the preservation of his right to control his government. He must be most watchful of the encroachment of the military upon the civil power. He must beware of those precedents in support of arbitrary action by administrative officials, which excused on the plea of necessity in wartime, become the fixed rule when the necessity has passed and normal conditions have been restored.

More than all, the citizen and his representative in Congress in time of war must maintain his right of free speech. More than in times of peace it is necessary that the channels for free public discussion of governmental policies shall be open and unclogged.

I think all men recognize that in time of war the citizen must surrender some rights for the common good which he is entitled to enjoy in time of peace. But, sir, the right to control their own government according to constitutional forms is not one of the rights that the citizens of this country are called upon to surrender in time of war.

Wealth has never yet sacrificed itself on the altar of patriotism.

Where public opinion is free and uncontrolled, wealth has a wholesome respect for the law.
Except for the subserviency of most of the metropolitan newspapers, the great corporate interests would never have ventured upon the impudent, lawless consolldation of business, for the suppression of competition, the control of production, markets and prices.
Except for this monstrous crime, 65 per cent of all the wealth of this country would not now be centralized in the hands of 2 per cent of all the people. And we might today be industrially and commercially a free people, enjoying the blessings of a real democracy.

The basic principle of this government is the will of the people. A system was devised by its founders which seemed to insure the means of ascertaining that will and of enacting it into legislation and supporting it through the administration of the law. This was to be accomplished by electing men to make, and men to execute the laws, who, would represent in the laws so made and executed the will of the people. This was the establishment of a representative government, where every man had equal voice, equal rights, and equal responsibilities. Have we such a government today? Or is this country fast coming to be dominated by forces that threaten the true principle of representative government?

To control the American market is to own America. It is better than that. Control of the market prices of this great country enables those in contral to tax the people through extortionate prices for the necessaries of life, to the limit of their earning power, and yet escape all of the responsibilities of ownership.

To befool and mislead the people, to falsify public opinion, is to pervert and destroy a republican form of government.
Free government is government by public opinion. Upon the soundness and integrity of public opinion depends the destiny of our democracy.

The real cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.