Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/186

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162
THE WISCONSIN IDEA

factory. It has gradually been found in this country that this is the wrong method; the right way is to put $100,000 in the plant and $100,000 in the men who run the plant. If you can promise a man who comes into your employ that he will have a clean, bright place in which to work, that he can get married and bring up children because, if he is hurt, you will provide for him; in old age that he will be cared for; that if he is sick he will receive some benefit from you and that his growing children will receive industrial education which will fit them for the work of society and not leave them drifting, masterless men, you will have no difficulty with your employees. It is not strange that this philosophy was brought into the Wisconsin law for workmen's compensation, because the idea had already been adopted that the state must protect and invest in the life and happiness of the individual in order that the greatest prosperity might come from it and that security, peace and happiness are the best foundations of good government and prosperity. Those who had been taught by John Bascom and Richard T. Ely of the University of Wisconsin understood well these doctrines and accepted them.

The manufacturers, the working men of Wisconsin and the men who understood the Wisconsin idea, went even further than this. They bethought themselves of the scheme used in the railroad commission act, in the