That's up to us. If we ourselves light candles from the flame kindled
in

Madison and carry them to our communities, then the tumult in
Madison could resemble events in the 1890s that provoked a political

revolt against the first Gilded Age, like our own, dominated
politically, culturally and economically by an elite of super-rich

securely entrenched behind their golden walls, indifferent or hostile to
the protests of debt-stricken farmers and exploited

workers, the
thwarted hopes of small businessmen and professionals crushed under the
weight of the great trusts and their

legions of bought lawyers and
editors , the sufferers from the poverty that festered in the shadows of
the great cities'

monuments to progress.
But year by year as the twentieth century dawned, a new breed of
thinkers and activists who labeled

themselves "Progressives" --
journalists, academics, enlightened businessmen and financiers,
officeholders in state capitals

and city halls -- along with anonymous
and rebellious workers and farmers who pushed from below -- chipped away
at the golden

walls. They pushed through three Self-priming pumps amendments in the
Constitution -- a deliberately long and hard process -- between 1909 and
1920: a progressive income tax, the direct election of Senators, and
votes for women.

2011-08-26

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