Robert Marion LaFollette, Jr
The Progressive 'Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free' Volume 17 April, 1953 Number 4 Robert Marion LaFollette, Jr. THE DEATH of Robert Marion LaFollette, Jr., by his own...
...He was listened to, but his amendments were not adopted...
...He never rose in the Senate until he had mastered the subject of debate...
...It was not until the Roosevelt Administration came to power that some of his views prevailed, for the New Deal borrowed heavily from the LaFollette philosophy in those first years of crisis and recovery...
...He favored the UN and voted for it, but he warned his colleagues that there were structural weaknesses which would imperil its effectiveness...
...Often, especially in the early years, his views were hooted down until bitter experience proved the soundness of what had been jeered at as "wild-eyed radicalism...
...Throughout the Thirties Bob LaFollette served as the conscience of the Congress...
...24, came as a tragic epilogue to a father-and-son story which spanned nearly half a century in the United States Senate —a story that chronicled the rise of an indigenous American progressiv-ism whose imprint is to be found in almost every forward-looking law of our time...
...Bob yielded in the end after a great deal of soul-searching had convinced him it was a duty he owed the Progressive movement...
...He urged that the representative Assembly be given greater power, that the Social and Economic Council be strengthened, that the UN Charter be based on the principles of the Atlantic Charter, and that it include a world Bill of Rights...
...He spoke in favor of the people...
...Bob LaFollette fought for the best of the New Deal measures, although in later years he became sharply critical of what he felt was a Roosevelt retreat from progressive reform...
...It was his painstaking investigation of corporate agriculture and oppressive labor practices that prepared the way for basic reforms in both-fields...
...It does not mean freedom to die of curable disease because of lack of funds...
...He won in 1925, and in 1928, 1934, and 1940...
...In 1928, he appeared before the Republican National Convention to urge adoption of progressive measures to prevent the economic disaster he saw coming...
...It is hallowed, too, by a new generation that finds hope and direction in the enduring principles of the Wisconsin Idea and the American Idea that father and son helped to build.—M.H.R...
...Whatever the occasion, he seemed a deeply sensitive spirit forever brooding over how he could do what he was doing better than he was doing it...
...Freedom, as I understand that precious word," he wrote, "does not mean the freedom to starve in the midst of plenty...
...on turbulent campaign tours when he would fight his heart out from early morning to midnight, and on a few rare occasions when he would allow himself to be lured to the north woods for a day or two of quiet fishing...
...Bob LaFollette fought his heart out on every meaningful front of his era—social security, health, housing, minimum wages, rural electrification, farm credit and rehabilitation, river valley development, protection of labor unions, taxation based on ability-to-pay, protection of small business against monopoly, and the, modernization of Congressional methods of operation...
...And again time and events proved him right...
...This is a revolution—against scarcity, poverty, and tyranny...
...Certainly this mood must have been nourished during the next phase of his life, when he was associated with his great father during those lonely years of World War I. Bob LaFollette was a skilled and seasoned veteran of political struggle before he went to the Senate...
...I have been with him when the dawn came up the day after election, in victory and defeat...
...THE DEATH of Robert Marion LaFollette, Jr., by his own hand, has shocked and saddened countless Americans to whom he was the au-x thentic symbol of democracy at high tide...
...He doubted the wisdom of making the Big Five so all-powerful...
...I think I have some appreciation of how much Bob LaFollette gave to that struggle for a better life for all...
...II Bob LaFollette's impact on the legislation of his time was decisive...
...This is more than a war," he insisted in early 1945...
...Bob LaFollette chose death to the torment of recurring illness...
...He had managed his father's triumphant campaign for re-election in 1922 and "Fighting Bob's" drive for the Presidency as a Progressive in 1924...
...It was a measure of his statesmanship that although the people loved him for the enemies he made, his enemies begrudgingly respected him for the clean, hard way he fought for all the people all the time...
...But who can doubt that a deepening concern over the state of the world contributed to the despair in a man who had given so much to build a better world...
...all else is conjecture...
...I have fought against every attempt to trespass on our liberties as individuals, and I have fought [or every proposal of a social and economic character which would, in the words of the preamble to our Constitution, 'promote the general welfare.' " III Bob LaFollette opposed American involvement in World War II...
...He spurned every form of sensationalism...
...When war came, however, he threw his great talents into the struggle to speed it to a successful conclusion and into the challenge to build a just and enduring peace...
...Bob LaFollette brought to the Senate incorruptible integrity, parliamentary skill without parallel then or now, a clear, studious mind, a selfless devotion to the public interest, a conviction that means were as important as ends, and an awesome capacity for hard work, which often taxed his strength to the breaking point...
...When his father died in 1925, "Young Bob" was loathe to run for his Senate seat...
...he was president and I the editor of The Progressive...
...It was a model of fairness and thoroughness —in every way the direct opposite of the kind of inquiry his successor was to conduct years later...
...Always the most conscientious of men, he fell to brooding that ill health was robbing him of the chance to do the kind of job he wanted to do...
...We can have both...
...His brother, Phil, who was to become three times governor of Wisconsin and to join with Bob a decade later in founding the Progressive Party, was under the constitutional age of 30...
...It is in the fight to reach this goal of the American Idea that I have devoted my 21 years of service in the U. S. Senate...
...In 1944 and early 194,5 he warned the White House specifically that continued temporizing on the fundamental terms of peace might result in Red domination of the Baltic and the Balkans, that the reinstatement of Indo-China as part of the French Empire would create tension and crisis in the Far East, and that failure to persuade Great Britain from her oil imperialism in the Middle East would produce mischief-breeding consequences which would endanger the peace then being so dearly wonr Bob LaFollette's extraordinary foresight showed up again in the historic Senate debate on the Charter of the United Nations...
...The investigation by the LaFollette Civil Liberties Committee stands as a landmark in Congressional history...
...Today Bob LaFollette lies buried next to his father under a great white oak in Madison's Forest Hill Cemetery...
...Early in 1929, Bob LaFollette pleaded for curbs on the runaway stock market, and when nothing was done and the crash came later that year, he implored the Hoover Administration to establish a program of jobs for the unemployed and assistance for desperate farmers...
...He was convinced that war would multiply rather than solve the deep maladjustments which gave rise to totalitarianism, whether brown, red, or black...
...I knew him as a friend for 15 years and for half that span as my chief...
...While the war still raged in Europe and Asia, Bob LaFollette begged the Administration to formulate and have ready for operation a large-scale program of aid to all countries in need—allied, liberated, and former enemy nations—so they could help themselves to a sound social and economic footing as soon as hostilities ended...
...Perhaps this introspection was a legacy of his childhood, when he was critically ill and condemned to several prolonged convalescences...
...His influence in the Senate became so great that although he was a Progressive minority of one, he was often more effective behind the scenes than party leaders who commanded large blocs of votes...
...The end, by gunshot at his Washington home, Feb...
...But those who knew him best knew he had despaired of recovering his health...
...It is hallowed ground— hallowed by two generations of La-Follettes and by the people who caught and shared their vision of a better world...
...The choice is not between food and freedom...
...Freedom, not in the deadening legalisms of the Old Guard, but freedom for all people of all classes, creeds, and colors to enjoy equality of opportunity...
...It does not mean freedom to live in a squalid slum...
...A fundamental philosophy ran through his every move and vote in the Senate...
...Freedom, as I understand its fullest and richest meaning, is the preservation by the people of their individual liberties—civil, political, and religious—while banding together as a free people to elect a government of their own choosing for the purpose of providing for the common welfare of all...
...He was defeated in 1946, partly because conscience kept him on the job in Washington, and partly because many workers were duped by the Communist leaders who then controlled the CIO in Milwaukee into betraying their best friend...
...He was wedded to freedom...
...He summed it up for readers of The Progressive in June, 1946, in a front-page editorial entitled "A Faith to Fight For...
...Repeatedly during the years of war Bob LaFollette pleaded with the Administration, on the floor of the Senate and in the columns of The Progressive, to use its immense wartime bargaining power to secure agreement from our Allies that would give life and meaning to the generalities of the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms...
...There is a middle way—an American, democratic way—to give the people what they need and want without the surrender of basic political rights...
...It does not mean freedom to spend one's old age as a charity ward...
...But he was not heeded...
...He confided to no one in his last agony...
...They kept in the Wall Street ones...
...But, as Will Rogers reported at the time: "Young Bob LaFollette made the only real speech of the convention...
...His despondency grew noticeably in the last months as illness bore down on him more frequently...
...This we know...
Vol. 17 • April 1953 • No. 4
