Subseries: Robert Lewis, 1985 March 26
Note: Access online.

INTRODUCTION

BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND
Scope and Content Note: Born in Montana, June 5, 1919. Parents homesteaded 320 acres each. Father had come from Pigeon Falls, Wisconsin, and mother from near Stillwater, Minnesota. They went broke during the depression following World War I and returned to the Lewis family farm in Pigeon Falls. Bob attended Pigeon Falls public schools and Whitehall high school. Mother's parents came from Sweden; father's from Norway. Father's mother's father was a Lutheran minister, a Haugist. (At this point in the interview Lewis read from an article written by Frederick Schultz, “Norwegian Influence on the Upper Midwest.” The article explains the beliefs of Hans Hauge, a Norwegian Lutheran reformer, which “were the views that I was imbued with as a child and that affected my political ideas.” He did not know about Hauge, however, until recent years.) Some-time during high school decided he wanted to be a journalist. Father was vice president of the Farmers Union in Wisconsin. Father, in the winters of 1933-34 and 1934-35, went to Washington, D.C., as part of the Farmers Union's Northwest Legislative Committee, to lobby for farm relief. While in Washington, he got involved in the Rural Electrification movement. Returned to Wisconsin and began organizing Rural Electrification Association (REA) cooperatives. Appointed by Phil La Follette to chair the Rural Electrification Coordination Committee. Father then hired by REA as a field man to organize cooperatives thgoughout the country; worked for REA until his death. Since his father was on the road, he farmed the family farm for two years prior to going to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

COLLEGE YEARS
Scope and Content Note: “I went off to college (in 1938) determined to work on the Daily Cardinal.” Had read the Capital Times about the Daily Cardinal strike. Became editor of the Cardinal his senior year. “The Cardinal editor had a great deal of weight on the campus. We were completely independent in those days ...no subsidies at all.” His year as editor was the last year without any subsidies. “We even made a little money.” He was paid twenty-five dollars a month and a one hundred fifty dollar bonus at the end of the year. Member of the Young Progressives Club. Member of the University League for Liberal Action, which was infiltrated by Communists. There was an effort to disaffiliate from the American Student Union, “which had become identified as a Communist organization.” The Young Progressives opposed disaffiliation. “Also, in 1940 the campus was shocked to learn that a 'Wilkie for President Club' was being formed. This took us all by surprise. We just couldn't imagine that there were any Republicans on the campus. And the president of the 'Wilkie for President Club' was a college orator, who had not attracted much attention ouside of oratorical circles, named Henry Maier.” In response, the liberals organized a “Roosevelt for President” Club and Lewis was elected its president. Belonged toga housing cooperative and an eating cooperative. President of a Farmers Union student local.

ACTIVITIES OF THE YOUNG PROGRESSIVES CLUB
Scope and Content Note: Issues committees and election activities committees. Worked on one committee with a young woman who's father was a stalwart Republican state senator. Speakers.

1938 FOUNDING CONVENTION OF THE NATIONAL PROGRESSIVES OF AMERICA
Scope and Content Note: He was not in attendence, but his aunt, Agnes Thorston, for many years “the secretary and actual engine of the Trempealeau County Farmers Union, was there.” She and Bob's father had been active in the Farmer- Labor- Progressive- Federation, “and these people inclined to be a little skeptical of Phil La Follette.” Phil was too flamboyant and domineering.

MILITARY SERVICE
Scope and Content Note: Graduated on his birthday, June 5; got married on June 6; went off to the army on July 15, 1942. Wanted to get into the air force. Wanted to be non-infantry officer. “I was rejected for all of the officer things that I applied for.” Applied to the Royal Canadian Air Force and “I even applied to the Chinese, the Nationalist Chinese Air Force, and was turned down. So I was drafted. Physically unfit to be an officer.... Over bite. The doctors couldn't explain why that was disabling.” “Out of all of my college friends, I'm about the only one that ever heard a shot fired in anger.” Became an infantry officer and went through a year of combat in Europe. Discharged in late 1945.

MORE ON COLLEGE POLITICS
Scope and Content Note: Almost everyone was a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt. Communists were very active on campus. Young Communists handbilled against Lewis once because of something he had written as editor of the Cardinal. The big issue on campus was whether to intervene in World War II. He had been very sympathetic to the Spanish Loyalist cause.

END OF TAPE 54, SIDE 1

INTRODUCTION

MORE ON COLLEGE POLITICS
Scope and Content Note: All of his friends had supported the Loyalist cause in Spain. “It was an era when political ideas were very much wide open.... One of the outstanding things, it seems to me, in my record in politics in the University was that...sometime in November (1941), just before Pearl Harbor,...I wrote an editorial in favor of intervention, intervening on the side of the allies.” Most of the other Young Progressives were still opposed to intervention, with the exception of John Lawton and Ery Bruner. Those two had quite a bit of influence on Lewis in regard to writing the editorial.

MORE ON COLLEGE YEARS
Scope and Content Note: “It was a very exciting time. And it was also a formative time for our generation.” Lewis had been a prolific reader as a youth. Read the local library's entire run of National Geographic. Would read two or three books a week while in high school. “All of us were finding each other, a new generation, having come out of our respective ghettos.” He purposely sought out Jews and Catholics and others, “making a self-conscious choice against racial bigotry and religious prejudice.... And I think my peers were doing the same thing.”

LEWIS' ELECTION AS EDITOR OF THE DAILY CARDINAL
Scope and Content Note: “By the time I was finally elected, all the competitors had fallen by the wayside.” The Badger Party was the campus party of independents, those who were liberal and not affiliated with a fraternity or sorority. All five members of the Cardinal Board, which elected the editor, were members of the Badger Party. “What really happened is that I just worked night and day, a workaholic.” By so doing he placed himself in a position where he was the only real candidate to become editor.

ANECDOTE ABOUT HIS FATHER'S OFFER TO SET HIM UP IN FARMING AS WORLD WAR II APPROACHED
Scope and Content Note: This would have exempted him from military duty. “I said, 'I know there's a war coming. I don't know whether I believe in it or not. But I want to be a part of my generation's experience.”

BIOGRAPHY UPON RETURN FROM WORLD WAR II
Scope and Content Note: His aunt was running the family farm. “I was too ambitious to get into politics and to change the world.” Regrets he did not use the G.I. Bill to get a law degree. Got a job with the Farmers Union. Felt he could not run for elective office unless he first organized “a popular movement of farmers and workers.” The Farmers Union job did not work out for several reasons. So, he got a job in Madison working for the Wisconsin REA News.

FIRST INVOLVEMENT IN DEMOCRATIC POLITICS
Scope and Content Note: As early as 1945, he had made up his mind in favor of the Democratic Party. Bob Tehan and Charles Greene wanted him to run for Congress in the ninth district in 1946. Financially he could not afford to run. After voting for Bob La Follette in the 1946 primary, he got a leave of absence from his job with REA News and campaigned for Howard McMurray in the ninth district. Had only been working for the REA News for about a week. Bill Owen, who later became a Republican but who was a Progressive, was president of the Wisconsin REA and permitted Lewis the leave of absence to campaign for McMurray. McMurray was able to pay him what he would have earned with the REA.

1946 PROGRESSIVE PARTY CONVENTION
Scope and Content Note: Lewis was a delegate from Trempealeau County. Made a speech at the convention which received a lot of publicity in the Milwuakee Journal, saying “that the Progressives should join the party of Henry Wallace and Franklin Roosevelt. And we lost. We carried the day up until the end of the day when Bob La Follette addressed the convention and said that he wished to run in the Republican primary.” Lewis thinks the Progressives would have joined the Democrats, but for La Follette's wishes. Most of the young people at the convention were leaning toward the Democratic Party. “Most of us young people, young Progressives, did not join the Republican Party. We went en bloc into the Democratic Party. And that's when the DOC started.” Lewis voted a straight Democratic ticket in the general election of 1946, after voting in the Republican primary.

LEWIS' “FIRST POLITICAL CAMPAIGN” WAS IN 1928, AT AGE NINE
Scope and Content Note: “I smashed my dinner pail on the head of a little Norwegian bigot, who was our next door neighbor, who said that, if Al Smith got elected, the Pope would have a tunnel under the ocean to the White House.” Lewis' father was for Al Smith, probably the only Norwegian in the school district who was. Lewis did not really understand what his neighbor was saying, but he “knew that that was a nasty crack.”

WORLD WAR I PACIFISM
Scope and Content Note: His parents had voted for Woodrow Wilson because they were anti- war. His mother resented the fact that Wilson did not continue to keep America out of World War I. Norwegians generally were anti-war. La Follette's real strength after World War I came from Germans who had not necessarily supported him before the War.

ANECDOTE ABOUT HIS FATHER BEING AN EARLY SUPPORTER OF FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT
Scope and Content Note: Thought more in terms of liberals or progressives versus conservatives rather than of particular parties.

END OF TAPE 54, SIDE 2

INTRODUCTION

DELEGATES TO THE 1946 PROGRESSIVE PARTY CONVENTION WHO FAVORED GOING INTO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Scope and Content Note: People from Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha. People from the labor movement. Lewis did not know many people at the convention. Almost none of his college friends were there.

DECLINE OF THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY
Scope and Content Note: The German ethnic support “unravelled.” By World War II Germans in Wisconsin considered themselves Americans. Also, some Progressives got quite conservative after the War. Importance of German ethnicity in American history. Also, Roosevelt had quite a pull on the young Progressives.

BY THE TIME OF THE 1946 PROGRESSIVE CONVENTION, LEWIS CONSIDERED HIMSELF A DEMOCRAT
Scope and Content Note: Was considering running for Congress as a Democrat. Was being wooed by Tehan and Greene and later Dan Hoan.

LEWIS' JOB WITH THE REA
Scope and Content Note: Started as the assistant to the editor, but the editor soon moved up to become director of public relations and Lewis became editor. Later Lewis became director of public relations.

POLITICS OF REA LEADERSHIP, LATE 1940s
Scope and Content Note: They had all been progressives, with a small “p” and a capital “P”. Orland Loomis had been an REA attorney. They were trying, as an organization, to remain nonpartisan. “I never quite knew where I stood.” Lewis wrote speeches and wrote thefarm planks for the Democrats. Was a member of the American Veterans Committee, with all the young Democrats. In (1949) the president of the Baron County REA, John Olson, ran in a special election for state senator as a Democrat. “Startling.” Lewis and Floyd Wheeler “did all his publicity.” He won. Norris Maloney, REA attorney and lobbyist, complained that Lewis was being too partisan; that this hindered his lobbying. After the 1948 election, Lewis by analyzing the vote at the precinct level, wrote an article showing how farmers in Wisconsin had voted for Truman, indeed elected him in Wisconsin. Lewis ran the story with a banner headline in REA News and expected to be reprimanded at the following board meeting. To his surprise, he was praised from unexpected sources. “And everybody agreed, the whole board; there wasn't a peep.” In 1948, Earl Stoneman, president of the Dairyland Power Cooperative, ran for Secretary of State as a Democrat. Turns out the leadership were New Dealers and to that extent Democrats. “So these people were declaring themselves in a very gradual way. I think actually they were in support of the formation of the New Deal as a political party, called Democratic Party.”

LEWIS, BECAUSE OF HIS POSITION WITH THE REA, COULD NOT TAKE A PUBLIC POSITION WITH THE DOC
Scope and Content Note: Attended private meetings and conventions. Did a lot of work for Horace Wilkie's congressional campaign in 1948. He worked on issues and supplied names, but did not attend meetings at which local DOC units were organized.

LEWIS ATTEMPTED TO WORK WITH LABOR AND COOPERATIVES TO SMOOTH THE TENSIONS GROWING OUT OF UNION ATTEMPTS TO ORGANIZE COOPERATIVES
Scope and Content Note: Norris Maloney “blew his stack.” Maloney wanted to take a hard line against union organization and Lewis “was trying to figure out some way where we could get these two liberal movements to work together in a cooperative way, non-confrontational. I believe in unions.” By the time Lewis went to Washington to work for the REA on the national level, the head of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Associaiton, Clyde Ellis, was in agreement with Lewis and they formed the Electric Consumers Information Committee, “which had as its primary purpose of bringing the union leadership and the co-ops together with the Farmers Union to get a kind of a farmer-labor political lobbying activity going.”

LEWIS WAS THE EXPERT IN WISCONSIN ON THE BRANNAN PLAN

IN 1949 LEWIS DIRECTED THE CHRISTIAN RURAL OVERSEAS PROGRAM IN WISCONSIN
Scope and Content Note: “The first statewide activity of any kind that got Catholics and Lutherans and Protestants together on a coordinated, unified campaign. That was the Friendship Train.” Went on half time with the REA in order to do this. Raised over $200,000.

END OF TAPE 55, SIDE 1

INTRODUCTION

ELECTED AS A DEMOCRATIC PRECINCT COMMITTEEMAN IN 1947

FOUNDING CONVENTION OF THE DOC, 1949
Scope and Content Note: Not much of a farmer presence. Farm organizations' leaders did not get involved in party politics as much as the labor unions.

LEWIS ALMOST RAN FOR CONGRESS IN THE NINTH DISTRICT SPECIAL ELECTION IN 1953
Scope and Content Note: He was in Washington at the time and was emotionally depressed at the time. There was a meeting to discuss candidates in Black River Falls, but his wife was pregnant and overdue; so he did not go to the meeting. He had been promised support and $5000 immediately by the Committee for an Effective Congress if he would run. He was working for the Farmers Union and its president had agreed to permit him a leave of absence. Later Lester Johnson, who won the election, told Lewis that he would have supported him for Congress and not run himself. “I should have done it. That was my one break.” Did not stump for Lester Johnson, but provided him material and names. The farmers elected Johnson and reelected him “time and time again.”

MORE ON THE LACK OF FARMERS TAKING ACTIVE ROLES IN PARTY POLITICS
Scope and Content Note: Usually farmers would be able to engage in one major activity outside farming and no more. Professional people simply had more time to engage in politics. “Farmers in those days didn't feel comfortable in that kind of arena.”

1950 DEMOCRATIC U.S. SENATE PRIMARY
Scope and Content Note: Democrats were surprised at their successes in 1948 and that accounted for the interest in the 1950 U.S. Senate race. Lewis very involved in the William Sanderson campaign. Sanderson was an old Farmers Union friend of Lewis' father. Sanderson was secretary of and one of the main people behind the creation of the Farmers Union Central Exchange. Democratic leadership recruited Sanderson to run on the assumption that he could get labor support and mobilize the farmers. “And Bill Sanderson felt, and I feel, he was double crossed by some of the people who had talked him into declaring himself. That meant cutting some bridges for him too.” Drove several young Democratic leaders to a meeting in Milwaukee. These people had been Sanderson supporters but were secretly trying to convince Tom Fairchild to run. He felt a Sanderson candidacy was a good way to bring the farm supply cooperatives and the REAs actively into the Democratic Party. Dairy cooperatives were more conservative and more Republican. Official labor--the AFL--supported Sanderson in the primary, but many younger people in the labor movement, who felt AFL state leader George Haberman was too conservative, did not support Sanderson. “That was the beginning of the Democrats in Wisconsin becoming less a party of organized people and movements, a coalition of movements like the old Farmer- Labor- Progressive Federation had tried to be..., and (more) a party of candidates, personalities.” Bill Proxmire is a prime example; has a personal following but has not used that to help build the party. Hubert Humphrey was the opposite. Miles McMillin is one Democrat who had recruited Sanderson and then switched to Fairchild. “I remember coming back from that meeting. I felt, you know, I'd been had.” Felt these people would have at least given him some warning. “I'm not a very good politician.” Dan Hoan's candidacy “was a surprise and a disappointment.” Lavvy Dilweg “wasn't very active...in building the party. He was just a politician that saw a possibility.... I consider that 1950 campaign a kind of a fiasco.”

LEWIS MOVED TO WASHINGTON, D.C., IN NOVEMBER, 1951, BUT MAINTAINED WISCONSIN AS HIS LEGAL RESIDENCE FOR MANY YEARS

THE McCARTHY RECORD AND “ALUMNI AGAINST McCARTHY”
Scope and Content Note: Lewis was involved in a small meeting with Jim Doyle, Morris Rubin, Horace Wilkie, and Carl Runge at the Capitol Hotel at which the seeds for The Progressive's special edition, The McCarthy Record, were sown. Later, Lewis was involved in the Washington area with a group known as “Alumni Against McCarthy.” Its purpose was to raise money for a campaign against McCarthy. In order to avoid the charge of being carpetbaggers, they used their common connection to the University of Wisconsin.

END OF TAPE 55, SIDE 2

INTRODUCTION

1952 SENATE RACE
Scope and Content Note: Lewis was not in Wisconsin and was not much involved. Had forgotten (until reminded here) of his role in arbitrating between the potential candidacies of Jim Doyle and Gaylord Nelson.

“JOE MUST GO” MOVEMENT
Scope and Content Note: LeRoy Gore came to Washington looking for support for the movement and looked up Lewis as one of his first contacts. Lewis helped raise funds for the effort.

LEWIS AS AGRICULTURAL ADVISOR TO GOVERNOR NELSON AND AS SENATOR PROXMIRE'S ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT
Scope and Content Note: “Wisconsin has a situation which then was even worse more so than it is now. The Governor had practically no power to administer the government.” The director of the Department of Agriculture was elected by a board which was composed of citizens appointed for six year terms, thereby making it virtually impossible for a first term governor to have significant input into the selection of the director. “They picked their own director, not the governor's director.” Prior to going to work for the Nelson administration, Lewis had been Proxmire's administrative assistant, right after his first election in 1957. “We campaigned. I never worked so hard in my life.... Campaigned very hard; from the day Proxmire hit town, he was running for the general election seventeen months later.” Jack Kyle, head of the Wisconsin Association of Cooperatives, lobbied very hard with Nelson to have him “bring me back to Wisconsin to do something with the farm program.” Lewis worked very hard on a marketing order bill, 810A, modeled after a law in California. Every farm organization in the state, except the Farm Bureau, endorsed it. It passed the assembly, but was killed by the Republican majority in the senate. A small portion of it eventually became law--the dairy checkoff plan whereby a certain amount is used for promotion of dairy products.

HEADED “FARMERS FOR KENNEDY-JOHNSON” IN 1960 AND THEN JOINED THE KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION
Scope and Content Note: “The Wisconsin dairy supply marketing program became the Kennedy administration's dairy policy. We tried to get that passed nationally, and failed.” Neither the dairy farmers nor Congress were ready for it.

THE LEWIS-NELSON FARM PLAN (810A)
Scope and Content Note: “It provided that farmers could put together a pretty comprehensive marketing order program for commodity by commodity.... It's a way whereby the government can lend its authority to a group of farmers, under government supervision.” Basically an effort to rationalize the market. Got real good support from the Beekeepers' Association, mainly in regard to eradicating a disease which was fatal to bees. “It was the marketing orders that made California agriculture boom the way it did.” “It was a way to try to get a lot of the benefits of a cooperative maketing program applied from the top down with the authority of the state, to get the entire industry to cooperate, including the one-third that might vote against it, the free riders who were the bane of cooperative marketing.”

MORE ON LEWIS' WORK AS PROXMIRE'S ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT
Scope and Content Note: Resigned from his job with the Farmers Union to work for Proxmire. “It was an enormous burden of answering mail and organizing letter-writing and things like that. And the legislative work, developing issues.... It was standard, but high intensity senatorial staff work. I was in charge of the staff. Learned a lot that I'd thought I already knew.”

LEWIS' WORK IN THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE DURING THE KENNEDY-JOHNSON ADMINISTRATION
Scope and Content Note: Worked in the department for seven years and seven days. Was offered the position of administrator of the REA. “My father was dead by then, but.... If he had been alive, it would have been a marvelous thing for his boy to have gotten to be the top man of REA. But I felt that-the farm issue, the commodity issue, was the big thing. That's where the farmer's income was. And I felt that the REA program had done its pioneering work.” Lewis wanted to be the assistant secretary in charge of commodities, but that position had already been promised to someone else. So secretary of agriculture Orville Freeman made him deputy administrator of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service. “'Here's where the hanky-panky goes on,' he said, 'and I want you there. I want you, because I trust you.'” “My responsibility was the program formulation for all the commodities.” Lewis had seven or eight divisions under him, which he felt exceeded the capacity of any administrator. Lewis sought to get dairy policy all under one roof, his. He was successful in getting both the price support program and the milk order program under him. The Billy Sol Estes case broke and the scandals were in the sections of two other deputy administrators. Anecdote about a Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, one hundred dollars a ticket. A couple days before the dinner someone came by offering tickets to people; Lewis had already purchased his tickets; turns out the tickets being offered had been purchased by Billy Sol Estes. “But I had a lot of great experiences there. I was disappointed and somewhat bitter about not getting a presidential appointment.” Freeman did nominate him to be assistant secretary for commodity programs and foreign agriculture, “which is exactly what I wanted.” But President Johnson said he wanted a woman. “Then...I had a falling out with Freeman on basic farm policy. I was in favor of getting out of the business of paying farmers not to produce, and giving the stuff away, expand the “food for peace” program...and figure out how wecan build this into a paying market after concessional sales and so forth.” Freeman did not agree and told Lewis he had no future in terms of policy in the commodity programs. Freeman asked him to be the administrator of the Rural Community Development Service, “which was going to coordinate the poverty programs and that was going to be a big thing.”

END OF TAPE 56, SIDE 1

INTRODUCTION

MORE ON LEWIS' WORK IN THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE DURING THE KENNEDY-JOHNSON ADMINISTRATION
Scope and Content Note: A southern congressman thwarted funding for Lewis' poverty program work because it involved blacks planning their own programs. “So that program collapsed and then I decided to leave government.” Prior to his resignation he went to India to study the food aid program there for a couple months, “and that's where I got my credentials in the foreign field.” Had also been the delegate to the International Wheat Council.

BIOGRAPHY AFTER LEAVING THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Scope and Content Note: Worked as a consultant for five years and “I talked the Farmers Union into starting the Farmers Union Milk Marketing Cooperative. And it didn't work.” So the head of the Farmers Union said, “'You got us into this; we're going to draft you to be the manager to make it work.'” He went to Wisconsin then to manage this for a couple years. Got it going and then was elected secretary of the Farmers Union, actually serving as the organization's chief economist. When a new president of the Farmers Union was elected, he and Lewis did not see eye to eye on many matters. Lewis now is a consultant and writes for foreign agricultural journals. “It's a hard way to make a living. It doesn't pay well.”

THE ROLE OF FARMER ORGANIZATIONS IN THE WISCONSIN DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Scope and Content Note: The “economic organizations” were weaker than they were in Minnesota. The Farmers Union in Minnesota was big and was not shy about using its “muscle.” Wisconsin Farmers Union was small. REAs were parochial in their interests; concentrated on electricity. Also the REAs got into nuclear power, which was not especially popular. Also, they started getting “utility-minded managers.” Got to be a big business. Another factor was the creation of the National Farmers Organization (NFO), “which was created because the Farmers Union failed.... The Farmers Union failed to develop economic programs. And they were too partisan, too committed to the Democrats.... And really let down the farmers. They didn't keep the Democrats' nose to the grindstone to deliver. These Democratic politicians, I wrote speeches for. The promises I put in their mouths, they didn't keep. And the farm programs have disintegrated.” Politicians only gave lip service to farmers. “So we got a politics not of popular movements, economic movements, but politics of personalities.” The NFO started out “a kind of a looney economic idea, which basically can't ever work.” But the NFO “had a great gift for motivating people and making politicians out of them.” With just a few people active, the NFO became influential. “With a much smaller membership, they were getting half the Democratic patronage, things like appointments to the state Board of Agriculture.” All the farmer organizations became too concerned about appointments, “and...the real steam went out of the economic movement.”

BAD INFLUENCE OF THE MEDIA ON POLITICS
Scope and Content Note: Because of television, people are no longer depending so much on community and economic leaders for political advice and leadership. “But now politics has gone over the heads of the leaders and the pundits, the press even. The president can overwhelm the editorial page by just putting on a kind of a show. And that's true of politics generally. Whereas in an earlier age, it meant something to have the support of the Farmers Union, for example, in a county.” “People don't listen to their movements any more.”

RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE WISCONSIN DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Scope and Content Note: Has given good government to Wisconsin, much better than it was getting in the 1940s and 1950s. “I think we've served the state well.”

LEWIS FORESEES A NEW ERA SIMILAR TO THE NEW DEAL
Scope and Content Note: Current government of “short run expediency” will have to give way and the larger problems will have to be addressed. There are big social problems in many countries which are tied to agriculture. International environmental concerns. These problems cannot be solved through open economic competition. “We're going to have to learn how to govern ourselves a lot more effectively than we now do. And it's going to require more government, much, much more government than we've ever imagined.” The Democratic Party has the obligation to be out front taking on the hard issues. Hopes to write a book about America's food and agriculture policy. “So there is more need now than ever for the kind of party that we thought we were building in the '40s and the '50s in Wisconsin.”

END OF INTERVIEW