ROBERT M. LaFOLLETTE 291 spite of this LaFoUette and his friends, including many for- mer university students, made a valiant fight, and in Novem- ber he was elected by a small majority. The six years spent by Mr. LaFoUette as a member of Con- gress — from 1885 to 1891 — were years of preparation for the greater career to which Providence has since called him. Previous to the time spent in Washington he had not fuUy understood the real sources of political corruption. As pros- ecuting attorney he had enforced the law against the law- breaker, but he had not seen the forces of organized greed that lurked behind the violator of law. In the early years of public life LaFoUette was Uke most of the statesmen of the period following the close of the Civil War in his attitude toward the problems of the day. Few of them had discovered the real source of corruption ; few had recognized the funda- mental economic character of political and social problems. Abraham Lincoln, foreseeing the danger of vast combinations of wealth, admonished his countrymen to beware of the threat- ening menace of monopoly. Wendell PhilUps, prophetic knight of the nineteenth century, warned his countrymen against the despotism of the corporate slave-driver who had grasped the reins of power when the chattel slave-driver was driven from the throne. During the time he was a member of Congress, LaFoUette experienced a great awakening and be- gan to see what Lincoln and PhilUps had seen. He now un- derstood that the violation of law, as weU as other forms of poUtical corruption which he had always considered as caused merely by poUtical conditions, were frequently the effects of class legislation cunningly designed to control the operation of economic laws. He found the halls of Congress besieged by the hired representatives of Privilege, who sought oppor- tunities for the few at the expense of the many. He saw the patrimony of the people bartered away in return for generous contributions to campaign funds. He found that here was the center of an ** invisible government which was graduaUy destroying the representative form of government guaranteed by the constitution. LaFoUette refused to acknowledge the authority of this
