THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN INSURGENT
The Autobiography of an Insurgent FOLLOWING IS THE PUBLISHER'S ANNOUNCEMENT OF SENATOR LA FOLLETTE'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY WHICH WILL BEGIN IN THE OCTOBER NUMBER OF THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE THE MOST...
...No other leader so nearly expresses in his own character and career its every factor— all of its power, its moral enthusiasm, its sympathy for the common man, its fervor for tearing down and building anew, even in its occasional extravagances and impatience—he represents it all...
...but at present there are a dozen senators and many representatives following in the same path, inspired by the same ideas...
...He has a wonderful memory for detail and can give the very color and character of an incident...
...The Autobiography of an Insurgent FOLLOWING IS THE PUBLISHER'S ANNOUNCEMENT OF SENATOR LA FOLLETTE'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY WHICH WILL BEGIN IN THE OCTOBER NUMBER OF THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE THE MOST CHARACTERISTIC and spirited figure in the so-called progressive movement in America is Robert M. La Follette, United States Senator from Wisconsin...
...Wisconsin is to-day a happier, more democratic, more prosperous State because of La Follette's leadership...
...Therefore La Follette's own story, which he is to tell for the first time in the American Magazine beginning in the October number, has unique and timely importance...
...These qualities of mental and physical endurance have been an armor for La Follette during the long years when he was the lone fighter in Washington...
...He has a fearless tongue and tells what he really thinks about his contemporaries...
...They set forth the problems which now confront the nation with extraordinary lucidity of vision...
...terest what manner of man he is, what he stands for and what he intends to do...
...The Great Magazine Feature of the Year LA FOLLETTE is one of those men of rare intensity of mind and feeling who appear occasionally in public life...
...Autobiography is the most persuasive form of Literature: and this is a remarkable autobiography of a picturesque and courageous leader, a hard-working and warmhearted man, whose long struggle with poverty and debt and whose thirty years fight with powerful forces of financial and political organization are full of stirring incident...
...He seems to have been driven always by the inner impulse...
...A big railroad official recently said, "that if he had a just cause there was no tribunal where he would rather present his case than the Wisconsin Railroad Commission...
...in a large measure it is the story of the recent progress of democracy in America...
...It is with an air of discovery indeed, that Theodore Roosevelt recently wrote of La Follette: "I doubt whether American students of social economics fully realize the extraordinary work that has been accomplished during the last decade, and is now being accomplished in the State of Wisconsin, under the lead of Senator La Follette...
...Fresh Expressions of New Political Ideas THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN INSURGENT is more than an autobiography...
...In the State of Wisconsin, where he was born and reared, indeed in the great Middle West, La Follette has long been accepted as a representative leader, but it is only to-day that he has become a commanding national figure...
...He has an enduring devotion to the things he believes, and ne fights for them...
...No man in our public life today awakens more passionate loyalty on the one hand or more bitter hostility on the other...
...He then stood where he now stands...
...he advocated the things he now preaches...
...Whether one agrees with La Follette or not, whether one is a progressive or a conservative, these articles are to be read as a notable contribution to modern political philosophy...
...Frank Characterizations of Public Men SENATOR LA FOLLETTE has known all the important public men of the past twenty-five years...
...Since the overturn of Cannonism in the House of Representatives and the increase of the forces of Insurgency in the Senate, people everywhere have begun to look toward La Follette, and are asking with eager in...
...The people of Wisconsin are surer of liberty and justice, and the rights of property are there more justly safeguarded...
...And every step of his career has meant a fight...
...This narrative will take its place among the great political memoirs, for it has vividness and frankness, and contains a fresh expression of political ideas that are moving forces in this day...
...The editors of this magazine believe La Follette's political memoirs to be one of those rare writings which is so crowded with contemporaneous life and problems that it must be read...
...He showed this characteristic from the time he became district attorney in Madison, Wisconsin, a mere youth, beating the machine in the nominating convention...
...Many of these men, Reed, Carlisle, Blaine, Garfield, Allison, Spooner, Cleveland, Bryan, Roosevelt, Taft and others, are characterized with vigor and frankness, and from the point of view of the liberal movement...
...And these men represent millions of voters whose minds have been similarly moved to interest in these new policies...
...From the beginning he has been a nonconformist, a protestant in politics...
...As a physical machine La Follette is a marvel of tirelessness—a man who can work all day and all night and all day again, thirty-six hours almost continuously, and then after a night's sleep go to work anew unaffected by the strain...
...He is a personage not to be escaped or ignored...
...This has required not only courage, conviction and intensity of purpose, but pure bodily endurance...
Vol. 3 • September 1911 • No. 36
