Why Wis The Badger State in

WISCONSIN MAGAZINE
OF
HISTORY
Why Wis
The Badger State in
By John Milton Cooper Jr.
W
hy did Wisconsin become, politically, the most
watched state in the Union during the first two
decades of the twentieth century? During this period,
when the science of industry and technology affected the daily
lives of men and women throughout the nation, the Badger state
earned the title, “laboratory of democracy,” by leading the
reform movements of that era, reforms that became known collectively as “progressivism” by the end of that twenty-year period. Many people would like to think that this role came
naturally to the bright, creative, forward-looking citizens of Wisconsin, yet there was nothing inevitable about the part that the
Badger State played in the progressive movement. Other states
could have and almost did take the vanguard position in the
reform crusades of that era. So, why Wisconsin?
Progressivism, as Richard Hofstadter pointed out in the midtwentieth century, arose from the confluence of two streams of
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reform. The first was agrarian. This was the continuation of
Populism that the Democrats had appropriated in 1896 under
the leadership of their presidential candidate, William Jennings
Bryan. Besides currency inflation, Bryan and his followers also
called for railroad regulation, income and inheritance taxes on
the wealthy, and legal action to break up the huge business conglomerates, known as “trusts.” When progressivism briefly came
to dominate the national political scene in the twentieth century,
these faithful Democrats wandered in from the wilderness and
entered the promised land of fulfillment with Bryan himself as
Moses. Like the prophet, Bryan was barred from his own promised land, the White House, which he ran for twice more after
1896. He found consolation, however, in shepherding many of
his fondest programs through Congress as Secretary of State
under Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1915.
The second stream of progressivism, urban reform, arose at
the same time as its agrarian counterpart during the late nineteenth century, but from a source different than the Populists
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Phil La Follette’s
quote made the simple
connection between
Progressivism and the
state of Wisconsin,
and in its simplicity
also described the fame
that Wisconsin
received for its
Progressive identity.
consin?
the Progressive Era
and Bryan Democrats. Urban reformers were usually groups of
citizens who rallied behind insurgent mayors and against the
political machines that controlled their respective cities. These
reformers attacked the corruption of the machines overall, not
as a temporary blight to be remedied by simply throwing out the
rascals, but as part of a larger system that tied politics to dominant business interests. Moreover, these reformers cared about
their fellow citizens’ economic and social welfare. They emphasized such issues as regulation of utilities and public transportation—which then consisted mainly of streetcars. They also
wanted to ease the plight of the poorest citizens, and they soon
came to be allied with the pioneers in the new, female-led profession of social work. The most successful and best known of
these urban reform movements occurred in the eastern Great
Lakes region, in such cities as Cleveland, Toledo, and Detroit.
By the twentieth century, these urban reform movements tried
to expand to the state level, with varying degrees of success.
Did Wisconsin figure much in either of these early streams
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WHS 5-6835
WHS ID 10650
Robert M. La Follette during
his tenure as U.S. Senator
from Wisconsin, 1906.
that later joined progressivism? The answer is, largely, no.
Bryan’s programs, largely agrarian in nature, never attracted
much of a following here, for several reasons. One was that Wisconsin was acting like other states north of the Ohio River and
east of the Missouri River, in not responding favorably to either
of those movements. The Great Lakes region rejected many
Populist and Bryanite programs because they served only certain farmers and laborers, although Bryan and his followers
claimed to speak for them all. Their advocacy of publicly owned
crop storage facilities appealed to farmers who grew non-perishable crops, mainly those who lived on the Great Plains and in
the South. Few Wisconsin farmers fit that profile, and the state’s
growing number of dairy farmers had no use for such policies.
On the industrial front, Populists and Democrats allied themselves with unions and strongly supported workers’ rights to
organize. But the Democrats’ support of a low-tariff program
ran contrary to widespread convictions that a high tariff protected not just business profits but also job creation and high
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wages for industrial workers. Real wages, as expressed in the
buying power of their dollars, had been rising for two decades.
Such job protection and pocketbook concerns appealed far
more to Wisconsin workers than did sympathy for unions,
which, in the late nineteenth century, had only a small membership here as elsewhere. Finally, populist support of currency
inflation repelled small business people and white collar workers
throughout the Northeast and Midwest where established communities were not as dependent on borrowed money.
Another reason for the Populists’ and Bryanites’ lack of
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appeal in this part of the country in the 1890s was political. The
two major parties, especially the Republican party, were much
more firmly established in the Midwest than on the Great Plains
or in the West. Among the Midwestern states, Ohio, Indiana,
and, to a lesser extent, Illinois had been competitive two-party
states since the Civil War, whereas Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa had been Republican strongholds. Still, dominated by the GOP, Wisconsin was not like the one-party
Democratic South. The two-party system did function here
when certain issues gained momentum. For instance, Democ-
Whi(X3)5235
William Jennings Bryan speaking in Columbus, 1900.
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H GX83 R1 1878
This 1878 map of railroad land grants makes clear the level of influence
that railroad companies had in Midwestern states,
especially Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.
This poster for a
December 5, 1874,
anti-railroad rally
attests to the
Progressive belief in
bringing together a
community’s leaders
and the common, or
“every” man.
WHS Archives 3-3888
WISCONSIN MAGAZINE
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rats had swept the state in 1890 when
Republican incumbent governor,
William D. Hoard, and other members
of the GOP supported the bitterly contested Bennett Law, which required all
schools, including parochial, to teach a
common body of subjects in English.
Twenty-six Wisconsin counties that had
voted Republican in 1888 swung to support Democrats and defeat the law that
riled many of the communities that still
embraced their native speech. The sporadic nature of these political conditions
did not promote an ongoing attraction to
Populism or tilt Wisconsin voters toward
Bryanite Democracy as much as it did to
people living in what Bryan called “the
great crescent” of the South and West.
U
rban reform made more of a
dent. There were various
WHi(X3)17707
municipal reform efforts in the
Railroad construction on the Annapee & Western Railroad near Sturgeon Bay, 1888–1889.
larger cities and towns, but none of them
Railroad lines continued to reach into areas of Wisconsin through the end of the nineteenth century.
ever grew into the full-fledged insurgencies that exploded in cities in other states.
It is not clear why this was so. Cleveland, Toledo, and Detroit
By then, however, Wisconsin had taken the lead. In 1900
had much in common with Milwaukee, in both their industrial
Robert M. La Follette had won the governorship at the head of
economies and their mixtures of ethnic groups. The difference
an insurgent Republican movement that called for reform of
railroad taxation, railroad regulation, and the direct primary.
may have been one of the two factors that historians like least to
From then on Wisconsin would remain in the vanguard. These
acknowledge: chance. Milwaukee and other Wisconsin cities
men and women would, in fact, pin the label of “progressive” on
may simply have lacked the kind of people, especially leaders,
these reform movements. Clearly, Wisconsin’s primacy in
who kicked off urban reform movements elsewhere at this time.
statewide reform, at least as a matter of timing, also owed a great
In any event, when urban reform finally did come to Milwaudeal to the historian’s unloved explanation—chance. Such
kee it would be under the banner of the Socialists, who would
statewide reform movements were bubbling up all over the
dominate the city’s politics for more than three decades, beginMidwest. Ohio or Michigan might have beaten Wisconsin to
ning in 1910.
the punch, and Iowa came in a close second.
Things were different at the state level, but there, too, things
But it would be a mistake to credit everything about the state’s
did not have to turn out the way they did. In Ohio and Michistatus as the flagship of reform to chance. In several ways, Wisgan, reform mayors made bids for statewide power earlier than
consin had been a leader of reform as early as other states. Even
they did in Wisconsin. Both Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones of
without a major urban reform movement before the twentieth
Toledo and Tom L. Johnson of Cleveland were serious concentury, there had been plenty of small city improvement drives
tenders for the Ohio governorship during the 1890s, and the
and campaigns for municipal ownership of utilities. From 1894
state’s powerful Republican machine had to make strenuous
onward, every two years brought the gubernatorial election, and
efforts to beat them back. In Michigan, even the Republican
there was a significant statewide insurgent challenge to the ruling
machine’s best efforts failed to thwart the gubernatorial ambipowers in the Republican party. These insurgents plumped the
tions of Hazen “Potato Patch” Pingree of Detroit. Pingree was
issues of railroad taxation and railroad regulation. In 1894, the
the first insurgent reformer to win a statehouse, as he did in
insurgent leader was Congressman Nils Haugen, and in 1896
1896, serving from 1897 until 1901. It was in 1901 that a group
and 1898 it was La Follette.
of reform Republicans in Iowa won the office of governor and
One notable historian, David Thelen, has found these grassmajorities in the legislature under Albert B. Cummins and the
roots efforts so impressive that he argues that the true heyday of
banner of the “Iowa Idea.” This was a platform that combined
progressivism in Wisconsin was in the 1890s, before La Follette
railroad regulation with anti-trust measures.
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took office. Thelen downplays La Follette’s importance and
is hard to imagine the insurgents and reformers coming to
argues that “Fighting Bob” was only reaping where others had
power and passing those laws as soon as they did without La
sown. By doing so, Thelen is downgrading that other factor so
Follette. He duplicated Pingree of Detroit’s feat of beating the
many historians vehemently dislike: the influence of a single
established powers within the Republican party, except that La
individual or, more colloquially (as well as pejoratively) put, the
Follette had no previous experience or the fame of being a
“Great Man.”
reform mayor. As La Follette told the story, he underwent a
This view of Wisconsin progressivism has points in its favor.
conversion experience in 1891, like St. Paul’s on the road to
A single person does not a movement make. Insurgency and reDamascus, when Republican party leader, U.S. Senator Phileform sentiments had been widespread in the state from the early
tus Sawyer, allegedly offered him a bribe. That revelation, he
1890s onward. The candidacies of Haugen and La Follette drew
believed, was the truth about the corrupt system that dominaton strong strains of discontent within the Republican ranks.
ed politics in the state and nation, a truth that caused his public
Once La Follette assumed the governorship, it would become
break with Republican leaders. Later he emblazoned the masteven clearer just
head of his magahow strong those
zine, La Follette’s
reform
sentiWeekly, with the
ments were.
biblical injuncAnother factor
tion: “You shall
that aided Wisknow the truth,
consin in entering
and the truth shall
the reform ranks
make you free.”
early was the relaLa
Follette
tive weakness of
spent the 1890s
the conservative,
cultivating potenbusiness-allied eltially insurgent
ements that held
constituencies. In
power in the Re1894 he deferred
publican party.
to Haugen as the
Strictly speaking,
standard bearer
there was no machbecause, as a Norine that ruled the
wegian-American,
WHS microfilm P33968
Design by Nick Jehlen
state. There were
Haugen would
On the front page of the first La Follette’s Weekly, issued January 9, 1909,
such figures as
appeal to Scan“Fighting” Bob’s message appears in biblical verse. In 1929 the magazine’s name would change to
The Progressive, the name it carries today, as seen in the November 2001 issue shown on the right.
Philetus Sawyer
dinavians restive
and John C.
under Yankee domSpooner, both of whom were United States senators, but they
ination of the Republican party. When La Follette assumed the
never dominated Wisconsin politics in the way that their fellow
insurgent leadership in 1896 and again in 1898, although unsucsenators Thomas C. Platt did in New York or Matthew Quay did
cessful in his bids, he drew on Haugen’s ethnic followers while at
in Pennsylvania. Rather, the GOP here was a collection of local
the same time tapping into anti-railroad sentiment among farmfactions joined in a loose alliance. The relative weakness of a
ers and businessmen who were angry over shipping costs. La Folstate’s machine played a big role in determining when the
lette added to his program by advocating the abolition of tax
reformers were able to win statewide. Iowa had a political strucbreaks that railroads enjoyed and adoption of a new device for
ture like Wisconsin’s, with a dominant but not unbeatable
choosing party candidates—the direct primary. Between elecRepublican party. Michigan had a somewhat stronger machine,
tions, he made himself perhaps the best known person in the state
but in 1898 scandals from the Spanish-American War had weakthrough his tireless speaking about reform issues, particularly at
ened its leader, Secretary of War Russell Alger. Clearly, then,
county fairs. He also contacted like-minded leaders in counties
Wisconsin’s leading role in progressivism owed a great deal to
and in towns across the state and kept their names in an elabofactors other than a single leader.
rate filing system, cultivating them through frequent letters and
But would Wisconsin have become the vanguard of progresmeetings.
sivism without La Follette? Two things need to be considered in
The persistence that La Follette showed as an individual
answering that question—one is timing and the other is persistence.
reflected the persistence of the movement as a whole, as WisOn the matter of timing, Wisconsin became the flagship of
consin’s reformers remained committed to progressive proreform by being the first to enact laws on the state level, and it
grams and leaders long after the initial burst of enthusiasm.
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WHi(X3)41543
From the pen of cartoonist Clifford Berryman, Bob La Follette and
Teddy Roosevelt struggle for control of the nation’s Progressive leadership.
Although La Follette and Roosevelt began as allies, both men’s volatile
personalities played a role in ending their professional friendship.
PH 2744
The Red Gym, on the UW campus in Madison and illustrated here
on an undated postcard, was the scene in 1904 for the Stalwarts’ “bolt”
from the Republican convention. Bob La Follette engineered the split
by locking out his opponents, by setting up barbed wire around the entrance,
and hiring UW football players to act as bouncers to anyone who was not of
a Progressive turn of mind.
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WHS 3-5324
The September 5, 1922, Cambridge News Extra reported primary election
returns of a thorough, dominant Progressive victory that would eventually return
La Follette to his senate seat, and welcome John Blaine as Wisconsin’s governor.
Each time La Follette vied for the gubernatorial nomination, he
came closer. In 1898 the conservatives barely beat back his challenge, and by 1900 he had become unstoppable. He owed his
victory not only to his hard work but also to a falling out among
the conservative elements he had been battling ever since his
political revelation of nearly a decade earlier. In 1900 the
Republican nomination was tantamount to election in Wisconsin. Still, La Follette took no chances. As he had done earlier in
1892 and 1896, he spoke vigorously and often for the party’s
national ticket. For him, this was not hard to do. The Republican nominee in 1896 and 1900 was William McKinley, a friend
from their days in Congress in the 1880s, who had privately
stood by La Follette after the break with Sawyer and the Wisconsin conservatives. This support of the national ticket also
neutralized any opponents’ allegations of party disloyalty.
In the 1900 campaign La Follette made such a virtue of his
GOP loyalty that he soft-pedaled his reform issues and jumped
on the bandwagon of the party’s leading national issue: retention of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. In the
face of the Democrats’ charge of “imperialism,” La Follette
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PH 4063 (3)
Guide Jake Borah, Bob Jr., and Bob La Follette Sr., pose by their day’s work in Crystal River, Colorado, in 1907.
Two years before, President Theodore Roosevelt used the same guide and shot a bear on his famous Colorado hunting expedition.
La Follette’s presidential ambitions seem evident in his decision to have himself photographed in a similar setting with the same guide.
During his presidential campaign in
1924, La Follette
fought the good fight
on a national scale.
He and Young Bob
appeared at Yankee
Stadium September 21,
to participate in
Steuben Day ceremonies, which honored
the German Revolutionary War general,
Baron Von Steuben.
WHi(X3)13031
La Follette’s statewide campaigns captured the very essence of “whistle stops.” He
spoke to a crowd in La Valle when photographers captured him in October 1900.
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became such an enthusiastic, flag-waving imperialist that he
turned himself into a regional edition of his party’s chief campaigner and imperialist cheerleader, vice-presidential nominee
Theodore Roosevelt. In later years La Follette would adopt a
foreign policy that was the opposite of those 1900 stands, and he
conveniently forgot what one historian has called his “imperialist flirtation.”
T
here was another aspect of his career that he and others
would also tend to forget in later years after he emerged
as “Fighting Bob,” the fearless crusader for truth, righteousness, and justice—his political shrewdness and caution. As
he later admitted in his autobiography, La Follette knew better
than to overload the political agenda when he became governor. Of his three initial programs, he focused on the two that
involved the railroad—taxation and regulation. The low taxes
that railroads enjoyed on their properties were a holdover from
earlier decades when the state had offered such inducements as
an incentive to build lines and develop communities. Aside from
the railroads themselves, almost no one favored continuing
these tax breaks. Regulation proved a bit harder to enact,
because many politicians in both parties were beholden to the
railroads for favors and financing. But regulation, too, was an
idea whose time had come. Other states, particularly in the
South, had already established railroad regulatory agencies.
Ironically, La Follette’s fondest program, the direct primary,
proved hardest to pass, but it would have the most important
political impact. In retrospect, it seems ironic that this measure,
justified on the sacred ground of popular sovereignty, would have
had a tough row to hoe. But it did. Not only conservative Republicans but also the state’s rump Democratic party rose to resist
this assault on a cardinal principle of their existence—the right to
select candidates and thereby control access to political office.
It took La Follette four years to push through the direct primary. In the process he fought and won two more reelections,
for himself and for majorities in the legislature favorable to his
programs. This required him to repeat one of the feats that had
won him the governorship. He again organized a faction within
the Republican party, but this time he was not just working for
himself. He put together slates of candidates for the state assembly and senate based on loyalty to him and his program. This
tactic split the party into well-defined and fiercely opposed factions. La Follette’s followers called themselves “Progressives”—
one of the first uses of what would become the signature word
for this era—and his opponents reached back into Republican
party history to call themselves “Stalwarts.”
This intraparty division exploded in 1904, when both factions
vied—literally—to seize control of the party convention. Governor La Follette and the Progressives prepared better. They used
barbed wire barriers to restrict access to the University of Wisconsin’s Red Gym, where the convention was being held, and
stationed football players as guards to keep unwelcome Stalwarts
22
WHi 5-1582
Although Bob La Follette had died the year before, an Independence Day
celebration at Tomah’s Wayside Inn clearly states that the gathering is “under
auspices of La Follette Progressive Republicans. By 1926 the name La Follette and
the “Progressives” had become synonymous.
out. Infuriated, the Stalwarts held their own convention at an
uptown theater. Both sides claimed to be the legitimate Republican ticket, but the Stalwarts were the ones who bore the stigma
of bolting. This factional warfare gave the national GOP fits. The
bad blood that later grew between La Follette and Theodore
Roosevelt, who was now president and running himself in 1904,
stemmed in part from what struck him and other national party
leaders as dangerous parochial divisiveness.
I
t is popular to regard reform and political creativity as
products of large-minded harmony and consensus. But the
opposite was the case with Wisconsin progressivism. The
very sharpness of these divisions emboldened the winners, La
Follette and his Progressives, to push further in the direction of
reform. The “Wisconsin Idea” of drawing on the intellectual
expertise of the University of Wisconsin to create and run independent commissions in such areas as banking, insurance, and
natural resources, emerged from these heady days of combat
and victory. La Follette himself moved on to a vacant seat in the
U.S. Senate in 1906 with great reluctance, because he wanted
to shepherd more progressive measures through to enactment.
By then, Wisconsin was renowned as the flagship state of
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Lincoln Steffens,
La Follette became a national
figure, “Wisconsin’s Little Giant.”
This was the
first example of
what would become a common
pattern for progressivism at the
state level. A group
of reformers would
seize control of
one or both of the
parties, often with
a dynamic governor, and push
through a program to clean up
political corruption and regulate
business. Besides
Iowa, other states
such as Mississippi, Missouri, New
WHi(X3)5776
Jersey, and CaliPhil La Follette campaigning for governor at Allis Chalmers Plant, West Allis, September 20, 1930.
fornia repeated
this experience.
New Jersey and
reform and the laboratory for new ideas of regulation and popCalifornia were particularly notable because the reform governors
ular participation in government. Some of this reputation came
there were Woodrow Wilson and Hiram Johnson, both of whom,
from favorable publicity. In addition to exposing abuses, the
like La Follette, went on to prominent national careers.
“muck-raking” journalists pointed to La Follette and his state as
Another feature of this pattern that emerged first in Wisconshining exceptions and examples of how to make things better.
sin was an inevitable conservative backlash. La Follette’s deparThanks in part to magazine articles by the famous muckraker
ture for Washington created a falling out among his followers
PH 3652(3)
WHi(X3)33375
Phil La Follette signing Unemployment Compensation Law, January 18, 1932.
Pictured, left to right: Henry Ohl Jr, Elizabeth Brandeis, Paul Raushenbush, John
Commons, La Follette, Henry Huber, Harold Groves, and Robert Nixon.
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The first unemployment check ever issued in the U.S. was to
Neils B. Ruud of Madison on August 17, 1936. Rudd endorsed the check,
as did well-known minister and social activist, Walter Rauschenbusch,
and it can be found today in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society.
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and led to a partial victory for the Stalwarts. The same thing would happen in
other states with progressive movements.
Statehouse reformers rarely proved to be
a politically long-lived breed.
T
his was where Wisconsin was different, indeed unique. In the
Badger state what proved to be
evanescent was not progressive control,
but the Stalwart and conservative backlash. A second wave of progressivism
swept the state in 1910. La Follette was
re-elected to the Senate, Francis McGovern won the governorship, and Progressives regained majorities in the
Legislature. In the next four years, another, even bigger program of reform measures saw the light of enactment. The
Progressives fell out again in 1914, thereby allowing the Stalwarts to reign again
WHi(X3)22749
for six years. But in 1920, the Progressives
Robert
M.
La
Follette
Jr.
(standing
in
center
with
hand
in
pocket)
speaks
to
a
crowd
roared back, to begin a dominance that,
in Mauston on October 4, 1936, at a Progressive Party rally.
except for brief interruptions, would last
for nearly 20 years.
Another, truly unique feature of progressivism in Wisconsin
party affiliation but had only run on a Progressive presidential
was continued control by La Follette. Unlike other progressive
and vice-presidential ticket, not a separate party. By the 1930s,
governors who went on to Washington, he ruled over his politithe Great Depression gave the younger La Follettes the opporcal following at home with an iron hand. This control proved to
tunity to form a new Progressive party partly in order to retain
be a mixed blessing. Its major disadvantage was that La Foltheir following. These Progressives enjoyed a brief, tumultuous
lette’s personal relations with other progressives often deterhistory in Wisconsin. As governor, Phil was able to push
mined how well or how badly the movement fared. In 1910 La
through substantial reform legislation, especially in social welFollette topped the ticket when he won re-election to the Senate
fare. The Wisconsin plans for relief and old age pensions
and swelled the victory for the rest of his followers. In 1914,
became the model for Social Security at the national level, and
however, his vendetta against McGovern—who had defied him
such professors from the University of Wisconsin as Edwin
in national politics in 1912—was a major factor in the ProgresWitte and Elizabeth Brandeis played a large role in drafting
sives’ defeat. La Follette entered into a similar vendetta against
the Social Security Act that set up the national system. Likehis one-time top lieutenant, Irvine Lenroot, who had toed the
wise, a member of Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission,
line in 1912 but later broke with La Follette over intervention in
David Lillienthal, became one of the founders and guiding
World War I. The fallout between the two men helped to prospirits of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
long the Stalwarts’ reign. After the war, La Follette patched
This later flowering of Wisconsin progressivism ended
things up enough with his followers to regain a progressive win
abruptly with Phil La Follette’s disastrous defeat for re-election
of the governorship in 1920 by John J. Blaine and to gain a triin 1938 and his abject failure to expand the Progressives into a
umphal re-election for himself in 1922.
national party. He never sought elective office again. His brothLa Follette ruled over Wisconsin politically until he died in
er, Bob Jr., managed to get re-elected senator on the Progressive
1925. Death, however, did not end his influence. One of his
ticket in 1940. Orland Steen Loomis won the governorship on
sons, Robert (“Young Bob”) Jr., succeeded him in the Senate,
that line in 1942, but he died before taking office. At the end of
where he served until 1947. The other son, Philip (“Phil”),
World War II, the Progressives disbanded and moved into one
later won three terms as governor, in 1930, 1934, and 1936.
or the other of the traditional parties. Young Bob’s bid to return
They also managed to do something that their father had shied
to the Republicans crashed when he was defeated for that
away from doing—they left the Republican party. Even in his
party’s nomination in 1946 by Joseph R. McCarthy. Other Prorun for president in 1924, “Old Bob” had not renounced his
gressives did become Republicans, but the most significant of
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the younger members of the party turned to the Democratic
party to find a new home. Of the Democratic leaders who
emerged as serious contenders in Wisconsin politics from the
late 1950s onward, all of them except one had been Progressives. These included Gaylord Nelson, William Proxmire,
Horace Wilkie, James Doyle, Carl Thompson, John Reynolds,
Getty
As a now aging “Young Bob” surveys a crowd in Portage on March 17, 1946,
he witnesses both the anguish of the Progressive Party faithful who wish to
stay separate from the GOP, and those who believe the independent course
has had its run. After the party’s formal decision to dissolve,
most of the former Progressives actually became Democrats.
and Thomas Fairchild. The exception, a birthright Democrat,
was Patrick Lucey.
By the middle of the twentieth century, Wisconsin had come
to look like some, though not all, of its neighboring states in the
Midwest. It featured clean government, well-run public services, enlightened social attitudes, and a vigorous liberal wing within one of the two major parties. But this was a far cry from the
state’s progressive heyday at the beginning of the century or its
second season in the limelight in the 1930’s. Only once afterward were the eyes of the nation again on Wisconsin. That was
when the state drew attention during Joe McCarthy’s rampage
in the early 1950s—attention that most Badgers would gladly
have done without. There was nothing remarkable about this
lapse from national fame. It had happened over a century
before with the eclipse of the Virginia Dynasty of the early presidents. What was remarkable was how long Wisconsin’s day in
the sun lasted. Here again, that second least favored of historians’ explanations, the Great Man, seems inescapable. Without
La Follette and his sons this simply would not have happened.
It is not necessary to invoke that ambiguous and overused
word “charismatic” to describe the La Follettes’ roles in making
Wisconsin famous. A better description is to note that the progenitor and one of his offspring showed an unremitting, sometimes frightening, intensity and a flair for dramatizing and
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personalizing issues. Those qualities kept Wisconsin politics at a
high temperature, often a fever pitch. This emotional inferno led
to bad as well as good consequences. Among the consequences
were the repeated internal breakdowns in the progressive coalition, thanks mainly to the father’s and sons’ personal behavior.
Another came during World War I when the polarized political
atmosphere in Wisconsin was nastier and more repressive than
anywhere else, except in the West. The fault did not lie directly
with La Follette but, instead, with his opponents, who tried to
capitalize on his opposition to the war to wreak revenge on him
and try to destroy his power in Wisconsin. He was the source for
much of the political divisiveness, but his opponents had taken
it to a level of personal attack on his loyalty, character, and even
his family, all of which cut far deeper than any barbed wire, literal or virtual, that he had ever constructed.
This polarizing, realigning role of a single individual and a
family in a state is not quite unique in twentieth century American politics. The other shining example comes from a state that
is in many ways the polar opposite to Wisconsin—Louisiana.
There, Huey Long shook up, dominated, and realigned that
state’s politics around himself and his family and established patterns that lasted about as long as such patterns did in Wisconsin.
What Louisiana’s corrupt, raffish Kingfish and the incorruptible, upright Fighting Bob had in common, besides immense
political talent, was a leftward orientation in favor of the less
advantaged and against entrenched privilege, as well as an
extraordinary ability to make themselves the central political
issue. Both men wrought remarkable achievements. Of the two,
La Follette established a far more respectable, elevated reputation for public service and devotion to principle. Transferred to
our state, that achievement played an indispensable role in making Wisconsin the flagship of reform and the laboratory of
democracy.
About the Author
John Milton Cooper Jr. is E. Gordon Fox
Professor of American Institutions at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he has
taught since 1970. Robert La Follette was a
major figure in his first book, and his most
recent book is Breaking the Heart of the World:
Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League
of Nations. Since 1991 he has served on the
Society’s Board of Curators and is currently
chair of the Stewardship Committee. He is married to Judith W.
Cooper, who is senior vice-president and associate general
counsel of Credit Union National Association (CUNA). He is a
member of the First Congregational Church and the Downtown
Rotary, both in Madison, and a Paul Harris Fellow.
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