"Are We All Socialists Now?" That was the plaintive title of a panel discussion at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. The word "socialist" is being heard all over America these days as the federal government takes over banks, tells automakers what to do and tightens regulations in an effort to pull our economy out of its current tailspin. The label is not generally intended as a compliment. To many Americans, socialism means being governed by the government - suffocating under layers of bureaucracy that sop up tax dollars and smother individual initiative.

And that's the positive view. Some critics carelessly lump socialism together with anarchism or even communism. After invoking the "s" word at the recent conservative conference, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said, "Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff." He conveniently forgot, or perhaps never knew, that most American socialists were sworn enemies of Soviet Communism.

The view from Milwaukee is radically different. I'm not a socialist and never have been, but I can testify that Socialism - with a capital "S"- was one of the best things that ever happened to this city. Without realizing it, even the most red-blooded capitalists are enjoying the fruits of their efforts, from spacious parks to clean streets and from a working infrastructure to an expectation, however frequently disappointed, of honest government.

Before the Socialists took charge, Milwaukee was just as corrupt as Chicago at its worst. Our mayor at the turn of the 20th century was David Rose, a political prince of darkness who allowed prostitution, gambling dens, all-night saloons and influence-peddling to flourish on his watch. Grand juries returned 276 indictments against public officials of the Rose era. "All the Time Rosy" escaped prosecution himself, but district attorney (and future governor) Francis McGovern called him "the self-elected, self-appointed attorney general of crime in this community."

In 1910, fed-up voters handed Socialists the keys to the city. Emil Seidel, a patternmaker by trade, won the mayor's race in a landslide, and Socialists took a majority of seats on the Common Council. The election was not a fluke. Seidel served from 1910 to 1912, Daniel Hoan from 1916 to 1940 and Frank Zeidler from 1948 to 1960. No other big city in America entrusted its government to the Socialists, much less kept them in office for most of 50 years. That record makes Milwaukee unique in the nation.

What did the Socialists stand for? In his tellingly titled memoir, "A Liberal in City Government," Zeidler described the party's tenets as a hybrid of lofty thoughts and real-world concerns: "The socialist movement was inspired by the hope of a brotherhood of workers, the Cooperative Commonwealth; by a fierce opposition to war; by a belief in the rights of people; by a passion for orderly government; and by a contempt for graft and boodling."

Where had Socialism come from? It came, first of all, from Germany, in the baggage of assorted intellectuals who had fled a failed revolt against royal rule in 1848 and transplanted their ideals in Milwaukee. It also came from the city's huge population of industrial workers, many of them German, who were attuned to any and all appeals to class consciousness. And it came from the fertile mind of Victor Berger, the Austrian immigrant who became the movement's chief strategist.

Left-leaning parties always have been famously fractious, prone to splintering over doctrinal fine points. Berger saw through the ideological trees to the electoral forest. He became a convinced gradualist - an "evolutionary moderate," in Zeidler's phrase - who believed that the "cooperative commonwealth" would come only after a long period of education and reform.

How better to educate and reform than by governing? The Socialists set out to win elections, and they built a remarkably effective campaign organization. It was based on a hand-in-glove alliance with organized labor and fueled by the famous "bundle brigade," a platoon of party workers who could reach any household in the city with literature on any issue in any of several languages within 48 hours.

And what did they do once they were in office? They governed, first of all, with unimpeachable integrity. Berger was fond of declaring that honesty was the highest virtue to which a Democrat or a Republican could aspire. "With us," he said, "this is the first and smallest requirement." The Socialists applied that honesty to the practice of creative government.

Contrary to popular belief, they did not try to socialize everything in sight. With the exception of the streetcar company, whose services they felt belonged in the public domain (and eventually got there), they accepted the American premise of private ownership. When one of Zeidler's 1948 opponents charged that he would socialize the corner grocery store if he were elected, Zeidler promptly went out and got the endorsement of the Independent Grocers Association.

The key to understanding Milwaukee's Socialists is the idea of public enterprise. They didn't just manage, and they didn't just enforce laws and regulations. They pushed a program of public necessities that had a tangible impact on the average citizen's quality of life: public parks, public libraries, public schools, public health, public works (including sewers), public port facilities, public housing, public vocational education and even public natatoria.

Underlying their notion of public enterprise was an abiding faith - curiously antique by today's standards - in the goodness of government, especially local government. The Socialists believed that government was the locus of our common wealth - the resources that belong to all of us and each of us - and they worked to build a community of interest around a deeply shared belief in the common good.

The results were plain to see. After years in the political sewer, Milwaukee became, under "sewer Socialists" Seidel, Hoan and Zeidler, a model of civic virtue. Time Magazine called Milwaukee "perhaps the best-governed city in the U.S." in 1936, and the community won trophy after trophy for public health, traffic safety and fire prevention. The health prize came home so often that Milwaukee had to be retired from competition to give other municipalities a chance.

The Socialists governed well, and they did so without breaking the bank. Contrary to another popular myth, these were not tax-and-spend radicals intent on emptying the public coffers. They were, in fact, every bit as frugal as the most penny-pinching German hausfrau. The Socialists managed civic affairs on a pay-as-you-go basis, and in 1943, Milwaukee became the only big city in America whose amortization fund exceeded its outstanding bond obligations. It was, in other words, debt-free.

I'm aware that running a city is different from solving a global economic crisis. The scale of the problems confronting the Obama administration is worlds removed from the difficulties any Milwaukee mayor has faced. But let's not allow "socialist" to become a dirty word in the current debate.

As it came to life in Milwaukee, the Socialist movement had a moral gravity and a passion for results that still resonate in our civic life. Honesty, efficiency, creativity, frugality? If that's Socialism, let's bring it back tomorrow.

John Gurda, a Milwaukee historian, writes in Crossroads the first Sunday of each month. "Cream City Chronicles," a collection of his best columns, is available at area bookstores or online at www.wisconsinhistory.org/shop