The most progressive legislative session in Wisconsin history took place precisely 100 years ago, when a coalition of rural Republicans and Milwaukee Socialists united to enact reforms that broke the grip of the robber barons and finally put state government on the side of working Wisconsinites, small-business owners and farmers.
….Wisconsin established the standard by which other states were measured. It was the most innovative, the most humane, the most responsible and, above all, the most politically progressive state in the nation. And the ideas that came from Wisconsin formed the underpinning for the labor, farm, civil rights and social justice movements that would eventually come to the fore two decades later, as Franklin Roosevelt imported University of Wisconsin professors and veterans of the state?s legislative and political battles to forge a ?New Deal? for America.