Heil Heil

Under the late great Robert Marion La Follette, his sons and followers, Wisconsin had 40 years of "new deal." There were interruptions, the latest when the Governorship was held by an old-line Republican (1928-30) and by a Democrat (1932-34). In 1934, however, Philip Fox La Follette, youngest of the sons, came back strong. Last fall Phil La Follette, running for his fourth term as Governor, was beginning to think he might extend Wisconsin's new deal over the whole nation, when he ran smack into a popular revulsion against new-dealing. Like more than a third of the States, Wisconsin turned around and elected a Republican, who clearly (against Wisconsin's background) suggested what may happen in the nation if and when the Roosevelt New Deal is turned out by a Republican leader. Last week, under Julius Peter Heil, 62, "self-made industrialist, hard-headed businessman," Wisconsin enjoyed its first week of what-follows-after-the-new-deal.

Julius ("The Just") Heil personifies the U. S. businessman who is sick of political theorists. Born in Germany, brought to the U. S. at three, orphaned at 12, Julius Heil has been working ever since. He manicured horses and waited on customers for a Wisconsin country storekeeper. He learned about machinery by running a drill press at 14 for International Harvester Co., about trolley cars by being a conductor in Milwaukee. He founded his own business, a rail joint welding company, in 1900 with the first $700 he saved. For ten years he paid himself only $2 a day, and often had to borrow from the neighborhood saloonkeeper to meet his payroll.

Today the Heil Co. employs 1,800 people, makes oil burners, oil and milk tanks for trucks, hydraulic hoists, dump-truck bodies, water systems, road scrapers, snow plows "and everything." Ruddy, energetic, thick-accented Julius Heil is a millionaire, a life-member Elk, also a Moose, Shriner and patriarch of the Milwaukee Athletic Club, where he meets his wife and friends every Saturday evening for a Familienfest. He can boast that in all his business years his workers have never struck, and that during Depression he spent $600,000 of his company's reserves to keep them on the payroll cleaning machinery, repairing plants, keeping up the grounds.

His company has a CIO contract, and when a union official died, President Heil closed down the plant, half-masted the flag, went to the funeral. Julius Heil thinks he has as much social conscience as any man. When he set out to become Governor of Wisconsin, he said he wanted to become the State's general manager, to run it better. When Phil La Follette cried out against his "money bags," Candidate Heil replied typically: "Sure I'm a rich man. And I bet you wish you had more vultures like me who employ men and provide jobs."

As it was for Republican candidates in many States, as it is in Washington for anti-New Dealers, Economy was Julius Heil's campaign watchword. After getting elected, with a working majority in both houses of the Legislature, he sat down to draft his budget. State government cost Wisconsin $71,600,000 during the last two years. Governor-elect Heil said he was going to cut that 15 or 20% for the next biennium.

When Governor Heil sat down to make good, he was confronted by estimates put in by department heads calling for appropriations totalling $96,600,000. It was then that Businessman Heil came face to face with the political fact that some of the biggest items of government cost nowadays are the hardest to reduce. For example: pensions, relief and welfare, highways, public education.

Businessman Heil began budget hearings in a mood of high scorn for the incompetence and extravagance of public officials. He asked President Clarence A. Dykstra (pronounced dike'-struh) of the University of Wisconsin--formerly Cincinnati's efficient city manager, with whom Governor La Follette replaced Republican Dr. Glenn Frank--for a breakdown showing the cost-per-student of each department in the university. He said that in his business, when a department was found inefficient, it was discontinued. Said he, "I want to know if there is a cancerous growth, and if there is, I want to cure it or kill the patient." He said he would send his company's comptroller to help President Dykstra work out the figures.

Mr. Heil's more politically experienced colleagues were worried by such high-handed talk, for its university is one of Wisconsin's great popular prides. They remonstrated with him, and at another budget hearing, on a teacher's retirement fund, Julius Heil showed he was learning his lesson. At first he flared up, demanded to know why there should be such a thing as a teachers' retirement fund. "What do they do for me when I get old?" he snorted. "They don't hold a tag day for me!"

Then he saw the startled look on the legislators' faces. "I'm getting on ticklish ground," he laughed. "I'm for everybody. I want to help the farmers, the teachers."

So the first Heil budget, which had not yet been completed last week, will be evidence of what happened to a businessman after he got into politics. Other demonstrations of what a Republican may do to new-dealish institutions set up before his advent were in store as Business-Governor Heil addressed himself to major monuments of the La Follette regime.

A service of his predecessor, Republican Walter Jodok Kohler, which Phil La Follette enjoyed was the State Emergency Board, composed of the Governor and the finance committee chairmen of the two legislative houses. In the closing days of Mr. La Follette's term, the State Supreme Court padlocked, in the State treasury, some $4,000,000 which this board was about to dole out to Civil War veterans and the teachers' retirement fund. This would have left the State treasury virtually bare when the new Governor took office.

The Court upheld a Heil motion that, in delegating such loose fiscal powers to the Emergency Board, the legislature had acted unconstitutionally.

Another La Follette monument is the Wisconsin Development Authority, designed as a sort of State TVA. Court decisions have restrained it from giving direct aid to municipal power plants, and from PWA it failed to get a $26,000,000 grant to build a State power system in the Fox River Valley. But WDA's chairman is Charles B. Perry, a Milwaukee Republican, who, alert and erect at 80, commands wide respect. Prospect was that Chairman Perry would get $60,000 he asked for to continue WDA's advisory functions. Governor Heil, however, may merge WDA with Wisconsin's public service commission.

Wisconsin also has a "Little NLRB," unpopular with farmers but found praiseworthy by such potent companies as Allis-Chalmers (farm machinery). The labor board's chairman is bald Voyta Wrabetz, a typically idealistic, hard-working social pioneer. The other two members have resigned, so Governor Heil was in a position to control this agency without taking the political risk of abolishing it. Also foreseen: amendment of the State's "Little Wagner Act," so as to pin more responsibility on labor unions, perhaps requiring them to incorporate.

For the rest, Julius ("The Just") Heil has inveighed most bitterly against the many kinds of regulatory inspection fastened upon Wisconsin by the La Follette deal. He snorted: "You can't even comb your hair nowadays unless you are inspected. Every time a farmer wants to milk his cow an inspector comes around and tells him how to do it, and sometimes the inspectors don't know at which end to start."

In spite of the failure in Madison last year of a brokerage house (B. E. Buckman & Co.) which cost hundreds of investors money, Governor Heil announced he would spend less money on the regulatory arm of Wisconsin's SEC. He swore he would wipe out 57 oil inspectors, confident that the big oil firms are honest enough to give consumers proper products. But here again, more experienced colleagues reminded him of the revenue the oil inspectors collect.

Net impression of what Business-Governor Heil's administration would mean to Wisconsin was thus about this: modification and relaxation, but not much repeal, of the social controls established by La Follettism, coupled with hopeful, personal salesmanship to coax the State back to prosperity. Governor Heil proposed to abolish the newly established (1937) Commerce Department, designed to attract industry to Wisconsin and market its products. Go-getting Julius Heil plans to do that job largely himself. His self-confidence is suggested by his explanation of his election: "All there is to politics is getting people to see things your way."

Behind his confidence, says Julius Heil, there is prayer. He likes to recall how, five years ago, after Milwaukee's striking public-utility employes and their managements had been deadlocked for three days, he appeared before them as NRA's conciliator at 3 a.m. and said: "Now, gentlemen, my mother told me . . . that when undertaking anything important, always ask the assistance of the Deity. I'm going to ask you all to pray with me." He intoned "Our Father Who art in Heaven." After the quarrelers had mumbled the prayer, the strike was settled in 15 minutes.

Some of Phil La Follette's last acts in office were regarded as none too glorious for a high-minded Progressive. The attempted draining of the State Treasury was one. Another was the pardoning of Thomas M. Duncan, part owner of the Milwaukee Leader and long Phil La Follette's executive secretary and financial adviser. One night last March, Duncan, who had been drinking, careened through the outskirts of Milwaukee in his automobile, smashed into three other cars successively, killed a man, never stopped until overtaken by police. Because of Duncan's respected past, a lenient judge, who had found him guilty of first-degree manslaughter (calling for five to ten years in prison), let him off with a short term in Milwaukee's house of correction. Just before leaving office Governor La Follette, acting without the State pardon board, freed his friend because, he said, he knew the tragedy had resulted from Duncan's hard work and business worries.

Phil La Follette wished to avoid attending Julius Heil's inaugural, but the latter insisted on his presence so, before sailing to inspect Europe, he went through with it. He coached the stubby, awkward industrialist in his platform maneuvers and responses. He chatted with him animatedly and tried to look interested when Julius Heil orated: "We want peace and harmony, we want prosperity. . . .

"I believe in God. I believe in prayer . . . I pray now to the Almighty God that divine help might be given us all in reawakening the immortal spirit of 'On Wisconsin!' "

Julius Heil's hairy hands were sore and swollen from too much handshaking after his inaugural. He soaked them in basins for the news cameras and spent his first few days in office making sure his son Joseph had everything under control at the Heil Co. plant in Milwaukee. With his right hand still bandaged he pressed a button opening Wisconsin Public Service Corp.'s new dam near Merrill, Wis. and sat down to a beanfeast with 275 Midwest utilitarians. Then he made a speech which sounded new indeed coming from a Governor of Wisconsin: he admonished the Public Service Commissioners present to "be fair to industry, that the men & women who have money invested may gain a little interest on the money which they have earned by the sweat of their brows." When he finally did go to his executive desk at Madison and held his first press conference, he forbade reporters to smoke. He said, "What message?" when they asked what he was going to say to the Legislature. Reporters explained and he said he would "put some one to work on it." He fixed the salaries of his secretary and purchasing counsellor at $5,000 each (La Follette paid Duncan $4,800), and, in ink as green as the suits he affects, hand-signed 100 notarial certificates, which Governors usually rubberstamp. Newshawks got the impression that green Governor Heil had yet made no real headway with his economy budget, would not have it ready before its due date, February 1.

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