Robert M. La Follette

American politician

• Born: June 14, 1855
• Birthplace: Primrose, Wisconsin
• Died: June 18, 1925
• Place of death: Washington, D.C.

As governor of Wisconsin and a U.S. senator, La Follette combined a strong sense of social justice with an intense commitment to principles as a leader of the reform movement in politics from 1900 to 1925.

Early Life

Robert M. La Follette (lah-FAW-leht) was born in Primrose township, Dane County, Wisconsin, a few miles from Madison. His father, Josiah, died before Robert was a year old; in 1862 his mother, née Mary Ferguson, married John Z. Saxton of Argyle, a prosperous merchant and Baptist deacon. La Follette attended school in Argyle until 1870, when he returned with his family to the La Follette family farm in Primrose, where he assumed much of the responsibility for operating the farm. In 1873, a year after his stepfather’s death, he began preparatory courses at the Wisconsin Academy in Madison and entered the University of Wisconsin in 1875. He did not distinguish himself in academics but built a reputation as a brilliant speaker and a popular student who financed his education by purchasing and publishing the student newspaper, the University Press. Following graduation, he took law courses at the University, read in a Madison attorney’s office, and courted his University of Wisconsin classmate Belle Case, whom he married in December, 1881.

La Follette established a legal practice in Madison in 1880; he entered politics the same year with his election to the office of district attorney for Dane County. His warm personality and speaking ability made him popular, and he was easily reelected in 1882. He was elected to the first of three consecutive terms in the United States House of Representatives in 1884, even though he did not have the backing of Republican state bosses. The youngest member of Congress when he entered the House in 1885, La Follette was a fairly regular Republican during his three terms there. He strengthened his political hold on his congressional district by supporting legislation he saw as beneficial to farmers, including assiduous support of the McKinley Tariff of 1890. In spite of his strong political base, he was the victim of an imbroglio over a law requiring English-language instruction in Wisconsin schools. While La Follette had nothing to do with the state law, he was caught in a backlash against Republicans and was defeated in 1890.

La Follette returned to his legal practice in Madison. The clean-shaven, square-jawed lawyer with piercing eyes and upswept, bushy dark hair (which added inches to his five foot five inch frame) built a reputation for dynamism in jury trials. At the same time, he strove to fulfill his political ambitions by establishing, within the Republican Party in Wisconsin, an organization to challenge the control of state bosses, notably U.S. senators John C. Spooner and Philetus Sawyer. By 1897, the La Follette organization had adopted a popular program that grew out of the economic depression that began in 1893: corporate regulation, equity in taxation, and the democratization of the political system through direct primary elections. Refused the gubernatorial nomination by state Republican conventions in 1896 and 1898, La Follette persevered in winning support; in 1900 he was elected governor of Wisconsin and assumed office in January, 1901.

Life’s Work

As governor for two full terms and part of a third, La Follette successfully converted Wisconsin into a so-called laboratory of democracy. The transformation, however, did not take place immediately. When he entered office with the intention of redeeming his campaign pledges of a direct primary law and railroad tax legislation, he encountered persistent opposition from the state legislature. The lack of reform accomplishments in his first term led to a sweeping campaign in 1902 not only for his own reelection but also for the election of state legislators who would follow his program. In subsequent sessions, the legislature passed the primary election and railroad tax laws and set up a railroad rate commission. Moreover, La Follette so firmly established the direction of reform politics in Wisconsin that his followers would control state offices for years after he left the governorship. A few weeks after the legislature convened in January, 1905, La Follette was elected to the United States Senate. He left Wisconsin at the end of the year, after securing passage of the railroad rate commission law, and was sworn into the Senate on January 4, 1906.

La Follette made an immediate impact on the Senate. Although unsuccessful in promoting major reform legislation in early sessions, he received widespread attention for pressing for more stringent regulation of railroads and for his attack on the “Money Trust” while filibustering against a monetary bill proposed by Senate Republican leader Nelson W. Aldrich. His national reputation was further enhanced by his frequent Chautauqua speaking tours around the country (which began while he was governor of Wisconsin) and by the attention accorded him by reform journalists such as David Graham Phillips and Lincoln Steffens; the latter proposed a La Follette presidential campaign in 1908 on an independent ticket. While eschewing such a campaign, La Follette successfully assisted Progressive candidates in several states in their congressional races, thus establishing a solid core of reform-minded colleagues for the ensuing Congress. To publicize his causes (and with the hope of a solid financial return), he initiated La Follette’s Weekly Magazine in January, 1909; he would continue the venture until his death, although it was more a financial liability than a success and was reorganized as a monthly in 1914.

La Follette and his new Senate allies challenged the Taft administration on several important issues and effectively established themselves as an insurgent wing of the Republican Party. By leading Senate Progressives in opposition to the 1909 Payne-Aldrich Tariff and in pressing for conservation measures and a program of direct democracy, La Follette earned the hostile attention of President William Howard Taft, who worked hard to unseat the Wisconsin senator in his 1910 bid for reelection. La Follette won easily and returned to Washington in 1911 determined to reconstruct the Republican Party along liberal lines. As much as any individual, he was responsible for the ideological split in the GOP that led to the formation of the Progressive Party in 1912. He was not the presidential nominee, however, as most of his supporters in the National Progressive Republican League (which he had founded in January, 1911) deserted him to support the popular former president Theodore Roosevelt; his candidacy was further impaired by a temporary breakdown he suffered while delivering a speech in February, 1912, before the annual banquet of the Periodical Publishers’ Association in Philadelphia. He refused to endorse any candidate in 1912, but his speeches and magazine articles were generally supportive of the Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

La Follette’s influence declined in the Democratic-controlled Senate of the early Wilson administration. While he supported some Wilson labor measures and managed to steer his La Follette Seamen’s Act through Congress in 1915, he was critical of the president’s blueprint for the Federal Reserve System, appointments to the Federal Trade Commission, and policy on racial segregation in the federal government. His greatest opposition to Wilson came in the area of foreign policy. Sharply critical of Wilson’s increased military spending in 1915-1916, La Follette argued that such expenditures increased the profits of corporations at the expense of taxpayers and, ultimately, American security interests. Using the same argument, he voted against American entry into World War I and remained a leading antiwar spokesperson throughout. He also led fights for free speech and against censorship laws, and proposed new taxes on war profits to pay for the prosecution of the war. He voted against the Versailles Treaty in the Senate, characterizing it as reactionary in its treatment of the Soviet Union and in reinforcing colonialism in Ireland, India, and Egypt.

In the conservative Republican era that followed the war, La Follette fashioned a new political constituency among the farm and labor groups that emerged in political affairs in the early 1920’s. Reacting to an agricultural depression and what many saw as an antilabor atmosphere, groups such as the American Federation of Labor, the railroad brotherhoods, the Nonpartisan League, and the American Farm Bureau Federation formed an alliance that resulted in the Conference for Progressive Political Action in 1922 and the Progressive Party in 1924. In a zealous campaign against Republican “normalcy,” La Follette and Burton K. Wheeler, Progressive candidates for president and vice president, respectively, polled 4.8 million votes, approximately one in every six cast. La Follette’s health was poor during this campaign, which was his last. He died of a heart attack on June 18, 1925, and was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison four days later.

Significance

La Follette’s campaigns, full of vitriol directed against “the interests” as opposed to “the people,” largely reflected the Populist roots of midwestern Progressivism. In La Follette’s view, the most obvious villain was large-scale corporate capitalism; his ideal was an open, competitive economic system he consistently championed the cause of individuals as voters, consumers, and small-business persons. His political solutions included a roster of Populist planks: the direct election of U.S. senators, direct primary elections, the graduated income tax, and public ownership of railroads, among others.

In opposing corporate growth, La Follette fought a losing battle against modernization; he was also responsible, however, for labor and agricultural programs that eased the adjustment of some groups to modern conditions. In addition, an important facet of the “Wisconsin Idea” he initiated as governor was the modern use of expert panels and commissions to make recommendations on legislation and regulatory activities. His reliance on faculty members of the University of Wisconsin (such as economists John Commons and Richard Ely) not only enhanced the university’s reputation but also served as an example to reformers in other states.

Nicknamed Fighting Bob La Follette, the senator possessed notable personal characteristics that made him a symbol of the movement he led. His dynamic, aggressive style was complemented by a fearless quality that enabled him to challenge the leadership of his own party and to risk his career in opposing World War I. When engaged in a cause, his intensity was so great that he suffered several physical breakdowns during his political career. This combination of qualities contributed to a remarkable Senate career; in 1957, the Senate voted to recognize La Follette as one of the five outstanding members in Senate history.

Bibliography

Burgchardt, Carl R. Robert M. La Follette, Sr.: The Voice of Conscience. Foreword by Bernard K. Duffy. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. Describes the political views of La Follette.

Conant, James K. Wisconsin Politics and Government: America’s Laboratory of Democracy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. Conant provides a history of the state’s Progressivism, including the policies implemented during La Follette’s gubernatorial administration.

La Follette, Belle Case, and Fola La Follette. Robert M. La Follette: June 14 and 1855-June 18, 1925. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1953. Written by La Follette’s wife and daughter. As an “insiders’” account, the book naturally tends to lack objectivity, but it is strengthened by the authors’ intimate understanding of the subject. In addition, the book is meticulously researched and ably written with a wealth of detail.

La Follette, Robert M. La Follette’s Autobiography: A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences. 1913. Reprint. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963. Originally published by La Follette as a campaign document for the 1912 presidential election. La Follette provides a detailed narrative of his political thought and activities, as well as his antagonism toward Theodore Roosevelt.

Margulies, Herbert F. The Decline of the Progressive Movement in Wisconsin: 1890-1920. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1968. Margulies finds that the Progressive movement in Wisconsin was well into decline before World War 1. He details how internal divisions among the Progressives (largely over La Follette’s political tactics) led to their defeat by conservatives.

Thelen, David P. The Early Life of Robert M. La Follette, 1855-1884. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1966. A brief examination of La Follette’s formative years in Wisconsin, to his 1884 election to Congress.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The New Citizenship: Origins of Progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885-1900. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1972. Demonstrates how La Follette came into a movement already under way in Wisconsin in the late 1890’s. The book is particularly good in its treatment of the social and political milieu in which reform ideas grew, largely out of issues of the 1893-1897 depression; these issues caused a “new civic consciousness” to develop among politicians and voters of diverse backgrounds.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Robert M. La Follette and the Insurgent Spirit. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976. Incisively relates La Follette’s career to the course of Progressive insurgency in the Republican Party from the late 1890’s to the 1920’s. Thelen clearly delineates La Follette’s positions and contrasts them with those of regular Republicans and Wilsonian Democrats.

Unger, Nancy C. Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Biography in which Unger weaves the story of La Follette’s family life with his career accomplishments.

Weisberger, Bernard A. The La Follettes of Wisconsin: Love and Politics in Progressive America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994. A description of the La Follette family and their political views.