UNDEFEATED LA FOLLETTE
Undefeated La toilette From "The Literary Digest" (New York), May 6,1916 NOT all Senators fit the pictures in the funny papers. The man there depicted, fat, soft-hatted, guileful in expression,...
...The East has never liked La Follette...
...He was conferring with all sorts of men in whom he had confidence...
...La Follette, and no estimate of Senator La Follette is more than half correct that does not include the calm, clear-visioned opinions of his wife...
...But it is a safe assumption that the West never follows a man for long unless it understands him...
...When the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Bill was dragging itself slowly along during the hot summer months of 1909, La Follette was studying schedules, reports, differences in production-costs...
...His state, it was said, was tired of him and the things for which he stood, white the halls of Congress would hear him no more...
...It is his own...
...Frequently the conference adjourned with no one the wiser as to his opinions than when the conference began...
...And when a man meets these conditions the West follows him with an intimate, personal affection that does not exist between the people and their representatives in the East...
...La Follette thinks hard...
...And because of his thoroughness and honesty his opinion is waited on not only by members of Congress, but by the country as well...
...Then, he lives simply, though generously, without much "fuss and feathers" but usually with a houseful of guests...
...Other members of the Senate were there...
...Still less does it fit some individuals —Robert Marion La Follette, for instance, who played a large part in purging the Senate of its former corporation representatives...
...And then came the contradictory, and incidentally the true, report that he had after all run far ahead of Governor Philipp in the State Presidential primaries and had fifteen of his delegates out of twenty-six elected...
...I have been at his house evening after evening, where others were expressing their views on some urgent public question upon which an immediate decision seemed to be necessary...
...In a recent article in the New York Tribune, United States Commissioner of Immigration Frederic C. Howe, who writes as one of authority on the subject of Wisconsin and its public men, gives several reasons why "The Little Giant" of Wisconsin is not the cartoon type of Senator...
...He seems both to trust and, for the time being, distrust himself...
...Possibly that is because the East does not understand the West...
...They were impatient at his silence...
...It is entertainingly and intimately revealed by Commissioner Howe in the article from which we quote in part as follows: "La Follette works hard...
...A van was necessary to bring all the books from the Congressional Library that he consulted in the preparation of one speech alone...
...The personality of such a man is interesting...
...At least, he trusts no one else to make up his mind, unless it is Mrs...
...La Follette works when he is not brooding...
...He makes money for himseif and supports La Follette's Magazine to a large extent by his lectures...
...He has been "on the firing line" and has worked hard in public life ever since he was graduated from college thirty-seven years ago...
...He must speak their language...
...In the first place he has no wealth to speak of...
...He is never ignored...
...The man there depicted, fat, soft-hatted, guileful in expression, and with pockets stuffed with special privileges, is largely a relic of bygone years...
...It has never understood him...
...His opinions mature slowly...
...It may take hours to deliver it in the Senate, but the speech is accepted as something final on the subject...
...he must think their thoughts...
...He said little, but listened much...
...Whether loved or feared, La Follette is never despised...
...he must have lived their daily lives, and understand their problems...
...Ultimately a decision is reached...
...This is part of the process...
...The other part is books and official records...
...His latest achievement has been to "come back" when many outside newspapers were already jubilantly shouting the news that he was down and cut...
...And, despite the battles he has waged and the enmities he has incurred, there is no man in Congress who is more generally respected for his mental integrity and character...
...And if the premises upon which it is based are correct, it is mathematically sound...
...It may be long and voluminous, but it is complete...
...And he is not suspected of dishonesty or disingenuous-ness...
...He works like a hod-carrier...
...He broods over public questions until he sees through them...
Vol. 8 • May 1916 • No. 5
