Robert M. La Follette

La Follette was admitted to the state bar association in 1880. That same year, he won election as the district attorney for Dane County, Wisconsin, beginning a long career in politics. He became a protege of George E. Bryant, a wealthy Republican Party businessman and landowner from Madison.[8] In 1884, he won election to the United States House of Representatives, becoming the youngest member of the subsequent 49th Congress.[9] His political views were broadly in line with those of other Northern Republicans at the time; he supported high tariff rates and developed a strong relationship with William McKinley. He did, however, occasionally stray from the wishes of party leaders, as he voted for the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.[10] He also denounced racial discrimination in the Southern United States and favored the Lodge Bill, which would have provided federal protections against the mass disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South.[11]

At 35 years old, La Follette lost his seat in the 1890 Democratic landslide. Several factors contributed to his loss, including a compulsory-education bill passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature in 1889. Because the law required major subjects in schools to be taught in English, it contributed to a divide between the Catholic and Lutheran communities in Wisconsin. La Follette's support for the protective McKinley Tariff may have also played a role in his defeat.[12] After the election, La Follette returned to Madison to begin a private law practice.[3]

Portrait from History of the bench and bar of Wisconsin, vol. 2, 1898

According to his autobiography, La Follette experienced a political epiphany in 1891 after Senator Philetus Sawyer attempted to bribe him. La Follette claimed that Sawyer offered the bribe so that La Follette would influence his brother-in-law, Judge Robert G. Siebecker, who was presiding over a case involving state funds that Republican officials had allegedly embezzled. La Follette's public allegation of bribery precipitated a split with many friends and party leaders, though he continued to support Republican candidates like John Coit Spooner.[13] He also strongly endorsed McKinley's run for president in the 1896 election, and he denounced Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan as a radical.[14] Rather than bolting the party or retiring from politics, La Follette began building a coalition of dissatisfied Republicans, many of whom were relatively young and well-educated.[15] Among his key allies were former governor William D. Hoard and Isaac Stephenson, the latter of whom published a pro-La Follette newspaper.[16] La Follette's coalition also included many individuals from the state's large Scandinavian population, including Nils P. Haugen, Irvine Lenroot, and James O. Davidson.[17]

Beginning in 1894, La Follette's coalition focused on winning the office of Governor of Wisconsin. With La Follette serving as his campaign manager, Haugen sought the Republican nomination for governor in 1894, but he was defeated by William H. Upham.[18] La Follette ran for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 1896, but he was beaten by Edward Scofield; La Follette alleged that Scofield only won the nomination after conservative party leaders bribed some Republican delegates. La Follette declined to run as an independent despite the pleas of some supporters, and after the election he turned down an offer from President William McKinley to serve as the Comptroller of the Currency.[19] In 1897, La Follette began advocating the replacement of party caucuses and conventions, the traditional method of partisan nominations for office, with primary elections, which allowed voters to directly choose party nominees.[20] He also denounced the power of corporations, charging that they had taken control of the Republican Party.[21] These progressive stances had become increasingly popular in the wake of the Panic of 1893, a severe economic downturn that caused many to reevaluate their political beliefs.[22]

La Follette ran for governor for the second time in 1898, but he was once again defeated by Scofield in the Republican primary.[23] In 1900, La Follette made a third bid for governor, and he finally won the Republican nomination, in part because he reached an accommodation with many of the conservative party leaders. Running in a strong year for Republicans nationwide, La Follette decisively defeated his Democratic opponent in the general election, winning just under 60 percent of the vote.[24]

La Follette in 1908

La Follette immediately emerged as a progressive leader in the Senate. At first, he focused on a railroad regulation bill making its way through the Senate; he attacked the bill (eventually known as the Hepburn Act) as a watered-down compromise.[41] He also began campaigning across the country, advocating for the election of progressive senators.[42] Conservative party leaders, including Spooner and Nelson W. Aldrich, detested La Follette, viewing him as a dangerous demagogue. Hoping to deprive La Follette of as much influence as possible, Aldrich and his allies assigned La Follette to insignificant committees and loaded him down with routine work.[43] Nonetheless, La Follette found ways to attack monopolistic coal companies, and he pressed for an expansion of the railroad regulation powers of the Interstate Commerce Committee.[44]

With the help of sympathetic journalists, La Follette also led the passage of the 1907 Railway Hours Act, which prohibited railroad workers from working for more than sixteen consecutive hours.[45] Though he initially enjoyed warm relations with President Roosevelt, La Follette soured somewhat on the president after Roosevelt declined to support some progressive measures.[46] Meanwhile, La Follette alienated some of his supporters in Wisconsin by favoring Stephenson, his main donor, over Lenroot in an election to fill the seat of retiring Senator John Coit Spooner.[47] After the Panic of 1907, La Follette strongly opposed the Aldrich–Vreeland Act, which would authorize the issuance of $500 million in bond-backed currency. He alleged that the panic had been engineered by the "Money Trust," a group of 97 large corporations that sought to use the panic to destroy competitors and force the government to prop up their businesses.[48] La Follette was unable to prevent the passage of the bill, but his 19-hour speech, the longest filibuster in Senate history up to that point, proved popular throughout the country.[49]

Beginning with the 1908 presidential election, La Follette repeatedly sought election as President of the United States.[50] La Follette hoped that the backing of influential journalists like Lincoln Steffens and William Randolph Hearst would convince Republican leaders to nominate him for president in 1908, but he was unable to build a strong base of support outside of Wisconsin.[51] Though he entered the 1908 Republican National Convention with the backing of most Wisconsin delegates, no delegates outside of his home state backed his candidacy.[52] At the start of the convention, Secretary of War William Howard Taft was President Roosevelt's preferred choice, but Taft was opposed by some conservatives in the party. La Follette hoped that he might emerge as the Republican presidential nominee after multiple ballots, but Taft won the nomination on the first ballot of the convention.[52] La Follette was nonetheless pleased that the party platform called for a reduction of the tariff and that Taft indicated that he would emulate Roosevelt's support for progressive policies. Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan in the 1908 election, and several progressives were victorious in the concurrent congressional elections.[53] In early 1909, La Follette launched La Follette's Weekly Magazine, which quickly achieved a circulation of well over 30,000.[54]

Along with Jonathan P. Dolliver, La Follette led a progressive faction of Republicans in the Senate that clashed with Aldrich over the reduction of tariff rates. Their fight for tariff reduction was motivated by a desire to lower prices for consumers, as they believed that the high rates of the 1897 Dingley Act unfairly protected large corporations from competition and thereby allowed those corporations to charge high prices.[55] Despite a widespread desire among consumers for lower prices, and a party platform that called for tariff reduction, Aldrich and other party leaders put forward the Payne–Aldrich Tariff Act, which largely preserved the high tariff rates of the Dingley Act. With the support of President Taft, the Payne–Aldrich Tariff passed the Senate; all Republican senators except La Follette's group of progressives voted for the tariff. The progressives did, however, begin the process of proposing the Sixteenth Amendment, which would effectively allow the federal government to levy an income tax.[56]

In late 1909, Taft fired Louis Glavis, an official of the Department of the Interior who had alleged that Secretary of the Interior Richard A. Ballinger favored the illegal expansion of coal mining on government land in Alaska. The resulting Pinchot–Ballinger controversy pitted Ballinger and Taft against Gifford Pinchot, the head of the United States Forest Service and a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt. La Follette's progressives strongly criticized the Taft administration for its handling of the controversy and initiated a congressional investigation into the affair.[57]

Theodore Roosevelt

William Howard Taft

La Follette's successful re-election campaign in early 1911 further bolstered his position as the leader of the progressive faction of the Republican Party.[58] In consultation with sympathetic journalists and public officials, in January 1911 La Follette launched the National Progressive Republican League, an organization devoted to passing progressive laws such as primary elections, the direct election of U.S. senators, and referendums. La Follette hoped that the league would also form a base of support for a challenge against Taft for the 1912 Republican presidential nomination. The league won the endorsement of nine senators, sixteen congressmen, four governors, and well-known individuals like Pinchot and Louis Brandeis, but notably lacked the support of former President Roosevelt. Explaining his refusal to join the league, Roosevelt asserted that he viewed the organization as too radical, stating his "wish to follow in the path of Abraham Lincoln rather than in the path of John Brown and Wendell Phillips."[59]

By mid-1911, most progressives believed that the battle for the 1912 Republican nomination would be waged between La Follette and Taft, but La Follette himself feared that Roosevelt would jump into the race. Though his candidacy was bolstered by the popular appeal of his autobiography, many progressive leaders strongly criticized La Follette for focusing on the writing of the autobiography rather than on campaigning across the country.[60] Roosevelt announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in early 1912, but La Follette rejected the request of Pinchot and some other progressives leaders to drop out of the race and endorse the former president. In February 1912, La Follette delivered a disastrous speech shortly after learning that his daughter, Mary, would undergo surgery.[61] Some of his opponents accused La Follette of having suffered a mental breakdown, and many progressive leaders shifted their support to Roosevelt.[62] Nonetheless, La Follette continued to campaign, focusing his attacks on Roosevelt rather than Taft.[63]

La Follette hoped to rejuvenate his campaign with victories in the 1912 Republican primaries but was able to win in only Wisconsin and North Dakota.[64] He continued to oppose Roosevelt at the 1912 Republican National Convention, which ultimately re-nominated Taft. Roosevelt's supporters bolted the Republican Party, established the Progressive Party, and nominated Roosevelt on a third party ticket, but La Follette continued to attack Roosevelt as a traitor to the progressive cause. He remained neutral in the three-way general election contest between Roosevelt, Taft, and the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson. With the Republican Party split, Wilson emerged triumphant in the 1912 election.[65] La Follette's conduct during the campaign destroyed his standing as the leader of progressive Republicans in the Senate, as many progressives believed that La Follette's refusal to work with Roosevelt had damaged the progressive cause and abetted Taft's re-nomination.[66]

La Follette initially hoped to work closely with the Wilson administration, but Wilson ultimately chose to rely on congressional Democrats to pass legislation. Nonetheless, La Follette was the lone Republican senator to vote for the Revenue Act of 1913, which lowered tariff rates and levied a federal income tax. La Follette, who wanted to use the income tax for the purpose of income redistribution, influenced the bill by calling for a higher surtax on those earning more than $100,000 per year.[67] La Follette and his fellow progressives challenged Wilson's proposed Federal Reserve Act as being overly-friendly towards the banking establishment, but Wilson convinced Democrats to enact his bill.[68] La Follette also clashed with Southern Democrats like James K. Vardaman, who directed the farm benefits of the Smith–Lever Act of 1914 away from African-Americans.[69] In 1915, La Follette won passage of the Seamen's Act, which allowed sailors to quit their jobs at any port where cargo was unloaded; the bill also required passenger ships to include lifeboats.[70]

In the 1914 mid-term elections, La Follette and his progressive allies in Wisconsin suffered a major defeat when conservative railroad executive Emanuel L. Philipp won election as governor.[71] La Follette fended off a primary challenge in 1916 and went on to decisively defeat his Democratic opponent in the general election, but Philipp also won re-election.[72] By 1916, foreign policy had emerged as the key issue in the country, and La Follette strongly opposed American interventions in Latin America.[73]

After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, La Follette praised the Wilson administration's policy of neutrality, but he broke with the president as Wilson pursued policies favorable to the Allied Powers.[74] Theodore Roosevelt called him a "skunk who ought to be hanged" when he opposed the arming of American merchant ships.[75]

La Follette opposed United States entry into World War I. On April 4, 1917, the day of the vote on a war declaration by the US Congress, La Follette in a debate before the US Senate said, "Stand firm against the war and the future will honor you. Collective homicide can not establish human rights. For our country to enter the European war would be treason to humanity."[76] Eventually, the US Senate voted to support entry to the war 82–6, passing the House of Representatives 373-50 two days later.[77] La Follette faced immediate pushback, including by the Wisconsin State Journal, whose editorial claimed La Follette to be acting on behalf of German interests. The newspaper said, "It reveals his position to be decidedly pro-German (and) un-American... It is nothing short of pathetic to witness a man like La Follette, whose many brave battles for democracy have endeared him to the hearts of hundreds of thousands of Americans, now lending himself to the encouragement of autocracy. And that is all it is".[78] After the U.S. declared war La Follette denounced many of the administration's wartime policies, including the Selective Service Act of 1917 and the Espionage Act of 1917.[79] In many people's eyes during 1917 and 1918, La Follette was a traitor to his country because he was in effect supporting Germany.[80]^:1

After the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in late 1917, La Follette supported the Bolsheviks, whom he believed were "struggling to establish an industrial democracy." He denounced the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1919, which he thought stemmed from Wilson's desire to prevent the spread of socialism.[81] During the First Red Scare, a post-war period in the United States marked by the widespread fear of socialism and anarchism, La Follette condemned the Palmer Raids, sought the repeal of the Espionage Act, and proposed amnesty for political prisoners like Eugene V. Debs.[82] Along with a diverse array of progressive and conservative Republican senators, he helped prevent the U.S. from ratifying the Treaty of Versailles. La Follette believed that the League of Nations, a vital component of the Treaty of Versailles, was primarily designed to protect the dominant financial interests of the United States and the Allied Powers.[83]

Time cover, 3 Dec 1923

La Follette retained influence in Wisconsin, and he led a progressive delegation to the 1920 Republican National Convention. Nationwide, however, the Republican Party had increasingly embraced conservatism, and La Follette was denounced as a Bolshevik when he called for the repeal of the 1920 Esch–Cummins Act. After the Republican Party nominated conservative Senator Warren G. Harding, La Follette explored a third-party presidential bid, though he ultimately did not seek the presidency because various progressive groups were unable to agree on a platform.[84] After the 1920 presidential election, which was won by Harding, La Follette became part of a "farm bloc" of congressmen who sought federal farm loans, a reduction in tariff rates, and other policies designed to help farmers.[85] He also resisted the tax cuts proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, and his opposition helped prevent Congress from cutting taxes as deeply as had been proposed by the secretary of the treasury.[86]

In 1922, La Follette decisively defeated a primary challenge from conservative allies of President Harding, and he went on to win re-election with 83 percent of the vote. Nationwide, the elections saw the defeat of many conservative Republicans, leaving La Follette and his allies with control of the balance of power in Congress.[87] After the Supreme Court struck down a federal child labor law, La Follette became increasingly critical of the Court, and he proposed an amendment that would allow Congress to repass any law declared unconstitutional.[88] La Follette also began investigations into the Harding administration, and his efforts ultimately helped result in the unearthing of the Teapot Dome scandal.[89] Harding died in August 1923 and was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge, who was firmly in the conservative wing of the Republican Party.

In 1920-21 La Follette continued his vigorous denunciation of imperialism and militarism, especially in the American and British versions he continued to oppose the treaty oversight settlement and continue to reject the League of Nations, he advocated self-government for Ireland, India, Egypt, and withdrawal of foreign interest from China. By 1922 he focused primarily on domestic affairs.[90]

• Buenker, John D. (Autumn 1998). "Robert M. La Follette's Progressive Odyssey". The Wisconsin Magazine of History. 82 (1): 2–31. JSTOR 4636775.
• Margulies, Herbert (1997). "Robert M. La Follette as Presidential Aspirant: The First Campaign, 1908". The Wisconsin Magazine of History. 80 (4): 258–279. JSTOR 4636705.
• Margulies, Herbert F. (1976). "Robert M. La Follette Goes to the Senate, 1905". The Wisconsin Magazine of History. 59 (3): 214–225. JSTOR 4635046.
• Shideler, James H. (1950). "The La Follette Progressive Party Campaign of 1924". The Wisconsin Magazine of History. 33 (4): 444–457. JSTOR 4632172.
• Thelen, David P. (1976). Robert M. La Follette and the Insurgent Spirit. Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0316839273.
• Unger, Nancy C. (2000). Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer. The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807825457.

• Free Speech and the Right of Congress to Declare the Objects of the War
• Statement of Robert La Follette Sr. on Communist Participation in the Progressive Movement, 26 May 1924

• Biography by John Nichols, at https://web.archive.org/web/20060202174947/http://fightingbob.com/
• United States Congress. "Robert M. La Follette (id: L000004)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Biography at Spartacus Educational
• Wisconsin Electronic Reader– Senator La Follette's picture biography
• Texts on Wikisource:
  • "La Follette, Robert Marion". Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed.). 1922.
  • "La Follette, Robert Marion". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921.
  • "La Follette, Robert Marion". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.
  • "La Follette, Robert Marion". New International Encyclopedia. 1905.