Before It Was a Dirty Word

There was a time—long ago, in Wisconsin’s largest city—when likening politics to a sewer was a compliment.

There were no violent insurrections then. Power passed peacefully. Government was not corrupted. It was cleaned up, made more democratic. Books were not banned. Public schooling expanded; libraries were built. The economy didn’t collapse. It grew robustly, as did the city’s population. Life in Milwaukee got better, much better. Wages, raised. Workplaces, safer. Housing, more affordable. The first water treatment plants were built to keep raw sewage out of the drinking water. That’s where the nickname came from. Sewer socialism.

What was originally meant as an insult soon became a term of endearment. For 38 of the 50 years from 1910 to 1960, Milwaukee was governed by three different socialist mayors. Emil Seidel was the first. His tenure lasted only two years. Democrats and Republicans were as spooked by the socialist menace then as they are now, leading the two parties to unite beh…