LA FOLLETTE, ROBERT M. 1855-1925

Governor of wisconsin, 1901-1905

U.s. senator, 1906-1925

"Battlin' Bob."

With his election as governor of Wisconsin in 1900, Robert La Follette emerged as one of the most impassioned American progressives, battling the entrenched power of the corrupt political "machine" by putting into practice his "Wisconsin Idea" of entrusting his administration to non-partisan civil servants drawn largely from the University of Wisconsin faculty. Largely because of Lincoln Steffens's articles about his efforts in McClure's Magazine he was soon marked as a rising star in the nationwide progressive movement, earning him the nickname "Battlin' Bob."

Background

La Follette was born into a poor but respectable farming family in pioneer Dane County, Wisconsin, on 14 June 1855. Despite their poverty, La Follette's family managed to scrape together enough money to send him to the University of Wisconsin. His love of oratory and the need to perform drew him to the stage, but fearing he could not support a family as an actor, he turned to law. After graduation in 1879, he stayed at the university to study law and was admitted to the bar in 1880. Within a year he had been elected district attorney of Dane County, Wisconsin, and married Belle Case, with whom he subsequently had four children, including two sons, Robert M. Jr. and Philip Fox, who followed their father into politics. Driven by ambition and local popularity, Robert La Follette Sr. was elected to the first of three terms in Congress in 1884 as a more or less orthodox Republican. After his district unseated him in 1890, he spent the next eight years in private practice in Madison, where populist rumblings could be heard. During this period La Follette gained an understanding of what he described as the sinister alliance between the "interests" (Wisconsin's lumber and railroad corporations) and the "bosses" (the majority-party leaders, predominantly the Republicans) who worked together to "cheat" the people—the farmers, workers, and small businessmen. La Follette became the popular champion of "the people" as he crisscrossed the state on a speaking campaign that finally landed him in the governor's mansion in 1900, after two unsuccessful tries. His election signaled the temporary defeat of the Republican machine in Wisconsin.

Fighting for Reform

While trying to reform state government, La Follette was engaged in a continual struggle against a conservative legislature and a Republican political machine dominated by "the interests." La Follette's strength came from his seemingly infinite energy, his firm belief in the need to restore representative democracy, and his willingness to borrow ideas such as railroad taxes and direct primaries from other states and adapt them for Wisconsin. Not until around 1903 did he, and the rest of the country, recognize that there was a nationwide reform movement afoot. Once he recognized this upsurge of progressivism La Follette, like other insurgent governors, decided to take his program to Washington and try to make it a national one. Elected to the Senate in 1905, he never became a successful insider despite his long tenure there. He had the same problems he had while governor—an unwillingness to compromise and an ideology far to the left of the general public.

Progressive Candidate

Never a team player in the Senate, La Follette did well at independently and uncompromisingly fighting for progressive legislation on the floor of the Senate and on the nationwide lecture circuit. In 1912 he was the leading candidate of progressive Republicans who unsuccessfully attempted to take away the Republican presidential nomination from the incumbent William Howard Taft. After the Progressives formed their own party, La Follette hoped to be their candidate to oppose Taft, but his presidential ambitions sustained a setback when Theodore Roosevelt re-entered the national political scene. La Follette lost his supporters when rumors spread that he had suffered a "nervous breakdown" while giving a long, rambling speech on 3 February 1912, and the Progressive Party nomination went instead to Roosevelt. After progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the election, La Follette supported his domestic programs but broke with him over American entry into World War I. La Follette was vilified and ostracized for his position and nearly expelled from the Senate. After the war, he was forgiven and assumed a new role—the respected elder of a progressive movement that went into an eclipse during the administrations of Warren G. Har-ding and Calvin Coolidge. In 1924 La Follette ran for the presidency on the Progressive Party ticket, polling almost six million of the nearly thirty million votes cast, but he carried only one state, Wisconsin, for a total of thirteen electoral votes. The campaign took its toll on his health, and he died of a heart attack on 25 June 1925.

Source:

David P. Thelen, Robert M. La Follette and the Insurgent Spirit (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976).

LA FOLLETTE, ROBERT M. 1855-1925

United states senator from wisconsin, 19O6-1925

Progressive party presidential candidate, 1924

Progressive Reformer

In 1906 Robert La Follette moved from the governor's office in Wisconsin, where he had served three two-year terms, to the United States Senate, where he served as an active member of the progressive wing of the Republican Party until his death in 1925. Resented by fellow Republican senators, La Follette constantly fought against privilege, corruption, and political bossism to produce a more viable and equitable democracy. Invariably defending unpopular positions, La Follette was often resented, even by those whose cause the senator believed he championed.

"Irreconcilable."

La Follette opposed entry into World War I, and after Wilson negotiated the peace, he led the hardcore resisters—known as "irreconcilables"—in opposition to ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, Sounding isolationist themes, La Follette argued that the treaty betrayed the powerless and served only as preparation for a future bloodbath. The document omitted Wilson's Fourteen Points, which had been the basis for American entry into the war. The treaty failed to liberate the victors' colonies, La Follette insisted, making a mockery of "self-determination." Moreover, La Follette completely distrusted the League of Nations, which, he argued, would be dominated by governments who revered the status quo. La Follette's opposition to the League had a higher motivation than the partisan animosity expressed by Henry Cabot Lodge and the "strong reservadonists," but together all opponents of the League, whom Wilson called a "little group of willful men," prevailed with the Senate's rejection of the Treaty of Versailles.

Presidential Bid in 1924

Although La Follette constantly contested conservative business interests, his major domestic battle came in 1924. Disappointed with the two conservative, mainstream presidential candidates—Calvin Coolidge and John Davis—progressive reformers mobilized for a third-party challenge in 1924. Leaders of the Conference for Progressive Political Action—an organization of farm leaders, social workers, organized labor, former Bull Moosers, and Socialists—formed the new Progressive Party and selected La Follette as their presidential candidate. La Follette attempted to unite discontented farmers and organized labor. In the campaign La Follette and the Progressives called for public ownership of utilities, nationalization of the railroads, increased taxes on the wealthy, curbing the power of the Supreme Court, popular election of the president, elimination of child labor, and a national referendum on declarations of war. During the campaign Republicans constantly attacked La Follette's "radicalism," and the Wall Street Journal referred to the party's agenda as "Wisconsin Bolshevism." Yet the Communist Party labeled the Progressive Party's platform "the most reactionary document." Although La Follette had been a fiery progressive leader and radical by some standards, the Wisconsin senator had always staunchly opposed communism.

Ultimate Victory

While La Follette's third-party candidacy was not as successful as Theodore Roosevelt's had been in 1912, the Progressive candidate carried his home state, Wisconsin, and attracted almost 5 million votes. La Follette's bid for the presidency was his final political contest: he died less than a year later at age seventy. Although La Follette lost many of his political battles in life, most of his "radical" ideas were enshrined into law after his death, apparently vindicating the soundness of his principles.

Source:

Bernard A, Weisberger, The La Follettes of Wisconsin: Love and Politics in Progressive America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994).

LAFOLLETTE, ROBERT MARION

Robert LaFollette (1855–1925), known as "Fighting Bob," introduced political and social reforms into his home state of Wisconsin. His practices later served as models for the rest of the United States during the Progressive Era (1900–1914). His legislative efforts to more fairly distribute and diversify wealth and power in the United States helped U.S. politics become more responsive to popular will rather than to special privilege. LaFollette was unrivaled as a radical and was a persistent fighter for democracy. He was known as the enemy of political machines and corrupt corporations and the friend of the farmer and the emerging blue-collar worker.

Robert Marion LaFollette was born in a log cabin in Primrose, Wisconsin, in 1855. His father died eight months after his birth, and his widowed mother worked hard to provide the essentials for her four children.

LaFollette managed to enroll in the state university at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1875. He supported himself by teaching school and by editing a student periodical at the university. He was a gifted speaker, who even considered a career in acting during college. However, he chose to study law, and in 1880 he was admitted as an attorney into the Wisconsin bar.

Since legal work was scarce, LaFollette was attracted to running for the office of district attorney in Wisconsin. Although his opposition had more money and more endorsements, LaFollette's door-to-door campaign among his farmer–neighbors, then an uncommon practice for a politician, won him the election. This experience taught him the importance of speaking directly to voters—a lesson he never forgot.

Two years later, in 1884, LaFollette ran for congressional representative from Wisconsin, and by reminding voters directly of his readiness to represent their interests in Washington, he won the election. At age 29, he was the youngest member of the House of Representatives. However, he failed to be reelected in 1890 and returned to a prosperous legal practice in Madison, Wisconsin.

The major turning point in his life came when the fiercely-honest LaFollette discovered that many of his Republican colleagues were stealing public funds. One of these colleagues approached him in an unsuccessful effort to obtain a sympathetic judge. LaFollete was being bribed by his own political allies and he later wrote: "Nothing else ever came into my life that exerted such powerful influence on me as that affair. It was the turning point, in a way, of my career. . . ."

From that time until the end of his life, LaFollette was a dedicated and principled public servant. It was now he and "the people" against the rich and venal politicians. He took his hard facts and preached directly to the people, speaking publicly wherever he could.

His enemies in Wisconsin successfully kept him from becoming governor of the state until he won the election of 1900, promising a reform program to destroy the old party machine. LaFollette was reelected to three terms as governor. Against the will of big business, he created a corporate tax and implemented "The Wisconsin Idea," a plan to use government as an agent of social and political reform. He treated Wisconsin as a progressive political laboratory, with expert commissions attending to taxes, railroads, banking, conservation, insurance, public service, and industrial problems. He next planned to take his "Wisconsin Idea" to the United States Congress and try his ideas on a national level.

In 1906 LaFollette became a senator from Wisconsin. He found himself battling with President Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909), although both of them were Progressive Party members. LaFollette called Roosevelt "an inconsequential playboy." In 1912 he ran against Roosevelt and William Taft (1857–1930) for nomination as the Republican candidate to run against Democrat Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) for the presidency. LaFollette's passionate run against Teddy Roosevelt split the Republican Party vote and Wilson likely won the election because of this.

President Wilson (1913–1921) gradually adopted many of LaFollette's progressive ideas. Wilson supported LaFollette's programs for public disclosure of campaign contributions and a fairer graduated taxation. LaFollette worked with Wilson indirectly to limit the powers of business, and he helped create the Department of Labor and the Federal Trade Commission. LaFollette fought for higher worker wages and better working conditions for American laborers, and he supported women's right to vote. He also advocated civil rights legislation for ethnic minorities.

LaFollette's ideas impacted the entire twentieth century. They led to laws benefiting working people and to even larger global social changes during the presidencies of men like Franklin Roosevelt (1933–1945), Harry Truman (1945–1953), and Lyndon Johnson (1963–1969).

Robert LaFollette died in 1925 from complications of pneumonia, asthma, and a coronary condition. He spent a lifetime fighting bad business practices and creating laws to protect the rights of ordinary Americans.

FURTHER READING

Case, Belle. LaFollette. New York: Harlan Davidson Press, 1983.

Ekirch, Arthur A. Progressivism in America: A Study of the Era from Theodore Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson. New York: New Viewpoints, 1974.

Greenbaum, Fred. Robert Marion LaFollette. New York: Twayne Press, 1975.

Link, Arthur. Progressivism. New York: Harlan Davidson Press, 1983.

Thelan, David. Robert M. LaFollette and the Insurgent Spirit. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976.

lafollette's ideas impacted the entire twentieth century. they led to laws benefiting working people and to even larger global social changes during the presidencies of men like franklin roosevelt, harry truman, and lyndon johnson.