As Government Social Reformer
Witte's first job for the state of Wisconsin was as a statistician of workmen's compensation insurance rates for the Wisconsin Industrial Commission. His work here led the Wisconsin Legislature to grant the Commission authority to regulate those rates.
In 1912, Witte accepted the job of personal secretary to Congressman John M. Nelson. Nelson served on the House Judiciary Committee which was then considering the Clayton Antitrust Act. Witte wrote Nelson's minority report opposing approval of the Clayton Act because its language did not provide a strong anti-injunction clause favored by Samuel Gompers and organized labor. Witte's views were validated in Duplex Printing Press Company v. Deering (254 U.S. 443 ) which struck down the labor protection clauses of the act.
When Commons was appointed to the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, he brought Witte along. Witte's main focus here was on the use of the labor injunction, which became the topic of his dissertation. By the time he published this research, he was noted as the foremost authority on the anti-labor injunction and served as an adviser (along with Felix Frankfurter, Donald Richberg, Francis Sayre, and Herman Oliphant) to the Senate Judiciary Committee drafting the Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act of 1932.
In January 1917, he was appointed the executive secretary of the Wisconsin Industrial Commission., where he added labor and safety regulatory policies to his list of progressive social insurance concerns. In 1921, he accepted the position of chief of the Wisconsin Legislative Research Library a position that was mostly helping legislators draft legislation.
In all of these positions, Witte developed his skills at using research as a tool for persuasion in the development of social insurance policy. Working closely with legislators at both the state and national level, Witte had a keen sense for the process. As a government social reformer, David B. Johnson describe Witte as "neither a politician nor an activist. Rather he was a facilitator, a creative draftsman of public programs, a compromiser, and a tireless mediator who devoted his efforts towards bringing divergent sides together and to working out mutually acceptable solutions".
Read more about this topic: Edwin E. Witte
Famous quotes containing the words government, social and/or reformer:
“The Government is able to afford a suitable army and a suitable navy. It may maintain them without the slightest danger to the Republic or the cause of free institutions, and fear of additional taxation ought not to change a proper policy in this regard.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man’s subordination.... The individual is the heart of society, conserving the essence of social life; society is the lungs which are distributing the element to keep the life essence—that, is, the individual—pure and strong.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish,—and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are not equal to the work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)