The Fighting Founder
LUEDERS, BILL
The Fighting Founder Robert LaFollette took on the rich and powerful BY BILL LUEDERS It was 1922, and Wisconsin Senator Robert M. LaFollette was speaking for the first time in four years before...
...Industrialization dramatically widened the gap between rich and poor and fostered corruption in the political system...
...The audience gasped in amazement, then broke into deafening applause...
...As a member of what he called the "dear old rotten Senate" for almost twenty years, LaFollette was that body's foremost voice of progressive reform...
...LaFollette made two bids for the Presidency: in 1912 as a Republican (losing the nomination to the incumbent, William Taft), and in 1924 as the leader of the Progressive Party (he received 16.5 per cent of the vote...
...LaFollette denounced the corporateowned newspapers of his day as the handiwork of "hired men who no longer express sincere and honest conviction, who write what they are told, and whose judgments are salaried...
...He was a populist: His allegiance was to the interest of the majority, and beyond that, to the ideal of fairness and equal opportunity...
...He set a Senate record for filibustering nineteen consecutive hours...
...LaFollette edited and wrote extensively for the magazine until his death in 1925...
...He never broke the back of the power structure, or drove corporate special interests from influence...
...For most of his life, LaFollette drove himself to the limit, repeatedly injuring his health...
...It is only as those of every generation who love democracy resist with all their might the encroachments of its enemies that the ideals of representative government can ever be nearly approximated...
...In response to these developments, a grass-roots movement known as Progressivism was born, and LaFollette soon emerged as its most prominent and respected leader...
...As Republican governor of Wisconsin from 1901 to 1906, LaFollette secured a host of progressive legislation, including an antilobbying law, a corrupt practices act, and a law restricting campaign expenditures...
...In the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, the will of the people was a far cry from the law of the land...
...Bill Lueders is an editorial intern at The Progressive...
...LaFollette's greatest contribution, perhaps, was that he stood up and fought...
...Billed as "a publication that will not mince words or suppress facts, when public utterance demands plain talk," LaFollette's became the vanguard of the insurgent movement...
...Lacking the monetary might of the organized special interests and corrupt party bosses, the Progressives relied on a human resource: education...
...On one lecture tour, he spoke on forty-eight consecutive days, averaging, he recalled, "eight and one-quarter hours a day on the platform...
...When the last night comes and I go to the Land of Never Return," he wrote to his son Robert Jr...
...On two occasions, he pushed himself to the point of nervous collapse...
...And LaFollette, a captivating lecturer, would read the "roll call" of legislators' voting records to their constituents, urging the defeat of those who had "wronged the public...
...Appalled at the domination of the democratic process by special interests, he struggled to make government responsive to the rights and needs of those it was pledged to serve...
...A longtime political enemy was moved to tears...
...And yet, he infused a bold new spirit into American politics...
...He hoped, he often said, to usher in a day when "the will of the people shall be the law of the land...
...I would not change my record on the war for that of any man, living or dead...
...Principled obstinance was at the core of his being...
...The success of the so-called Wisconsin Idea provided a model for insurgent movements elsewhere and propelled LaFollette into the national political arena...
...Above all else, Fighting Bob LaFollette was known for his courage...
...There was nothing LaFollette held dearer than his reputation as a man who could not be bought and would never give in...
...Throughout his long career of public service—as district attorney, member of Congress, governor, senator, and leader of the Progressive movement—LaFollette left no doubt that he would rather imperil his political future than compromise his integrity...
...The muckraking journalists who flourished in the early 1900s greatly aided the Progressive cause with their accounts of corporate and governmental malfeasance, prompting widespread calls for reform...
...For all his accomplishments, La- Follette's reach always exceeded his grasp...
...But suddenly, in mid-speech, LaFollette thrust his clenched fist into the air and thundered, "I do not want the vote of a single citizen who is under any misapprehension of where I stand...
...He had high regard, however, for the various independent muckraking journals that "strode like a young giant into the arena of public service...
...Still, he would not rest...
...I hate the son of a bitch," he said, "but, my God, what guts he's got...
...He enacted industrial safety laws, child and woman labor laws, and the first workman's compensation act in the nation...
...Friends had counseled him beforehand that his opposition to World War I—for which he was widely branded a traitor and almost expelled from the Senate—was a topic he would do well to avoid...
...LaFollette stood squarely in opposition to the powerful men and institutions of his time...
...It was in this spirit that LaFollette founded his own magazine, LaFollette's Weekly, in 1909...
...His opposition to the war stemmed from his observation that corporate interests were the chief advocates and primary beneficiaries of armed conflict...
...It was not uncommon for him to put in eighteen-hour days...
...The Fighting Founder Robert LaFollette took on the rich and powerful BY BILL LUEDERS It was 1922, and Wisconsin Senator Robert M. LaFollette was speaking for the first time in four years before an audience in Madison, Wisconsin...
...It was renamed The Progressive in 1928...
...in 1919, "what an awful account of things undone I shall leave behind...
...He set up regulatory commissions for railroads, banks, and public utilities...
...As he said seventy-five years ago, "Democracy is a life, and involves continual struggle...
Vol. 48 • July 1984 • No. 7
