robert marion la follette
united states senator
biography
After his graduation from the University of Wisconsin in 1879, La Follette was admitted to the bar in 1880 and began his political career in Dane County as its district attorney, in which office he remained until 1884. From 1885 to 1891, he was a Republican representative from Wisconsin in the House of Representatives, where as a member of the Ways and Means Committee, he took a prominent party in framing the McKinleyy Tariff.
When political reaction to the tariff and local Republican legislation swept him out of office, he returned to law practice in Madison and inaugurated a campaign to improve the political system of his state. In the next decade he proposed and worked for a series of reform measures, which included a system of direct primary nominations to replace the old caucus and convention system, equal taxation for corporate as well as other property, regulation of railroad charges, and the establishment of commissions of experts for the regulation of railroads and other public services.
His crusade alienated the conservative elements of his party but he gradually formed around him a group of progressive Republicans, who by 1900 were strong enough to elect him as governor, which office he won for three terms.
In 1891 he became convinced that Sen. Philetus Sawyer, a wealthy lumberman, had tried to bribe him in connection with a legal case, and LaFollette's outrage triggered 50 years of bitter political rivalry. From then on the real division in Wisconsin was almost always between pro- and anti-LaFollette factions rather than between Republicans and Democrats. He remained a Republican, and was opposed by conservatives in both parties. LaFollette's subsequent rise coincided with unrest among farmers angry at Eastern capitalists who controlled money and credit and who dictated railroad freight rates. Supporting LaFollette, they were joined by small businessmen, professionals, and intellectuals disturbed by how wealthy businessmen controlled access to political power.
A new law taxed railroads on the value of their property, ending an inequity. Taxes on corporations permitted the state to pay its debts. A railroad commission was created to regulate rates. Funding for education was increased. A civil-service law was adopted. This legislation was drafted by political and social scientists and economists, a feature of the "Wisconsin Idea."
Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1905, LaFollette took his seat in 1906. In Washington, he fought the same forces of privilege he had defeated in Wisconsin. A few progressive Republicans joined him, and they often held the balance of power in a Senate closely divided between the two parties. LaFollette opposed the protective Payne-Aldrich tariff and worked to regulate the railroads and other industries. He sought the GOP presidential nomination in 1908 and 1912. He founded LaFollette's Weekly Magazine (1909) and the National Progressive Republican League (1911). In one of his finest achievements, he secured approval of a bill protecting the rights of seamen.
Representing a state with a large German population and reflecting Midwestern isolationism, LaFollette opposed President Wilson's support for the Allies after war broke out in Europe in 1914. When LaFollette opposed the arming of U.S. merchant ships, Wilson denounced the "little group of wilful men" who he said had made the government "helpless and contemptible."
In April 1917, LaFollette voted against declaring war. When he continued to criticize the war, an attempt was made to expel him from the Senate for disloyalty. (In 1957 the Senate voted LaFollette one of the five most outstanding senators of all time.) He also opposed the Treaty of Versailles.
Reelected by a landslide to a fourth term in 1922, LaFollette mounted an independent campaign for president in 1924 and won 17% of the vote. Exhausted by this effort, he died in Washington, D.C., on June 18, 1925. After he died his sons, Robert and Philip, carried on his work. Robert Marion Lafollette, Jr. (1895-1953),his father's secretary, succeeded him in the Senate. Though cautious by nature and frequently ill, he won great distinction during 21 years in the Senate.
An authority on tax legislation, he was also active in behalf of labor and civil liberties. His last majo rachievement was the Congressional Reorganization Act of 1946. In that year he lost to Joseph R. McCarthy in the Republican senatorial primary. Philip Fox LaFollette (1897-1965), inherited his father's fiery temperament. Ambitious and aggressive, he served three terms as governor (1931-1933, 1935-1939). He won passage for the nation's first unemployment compensation act, pushed through programs to aid workers and farmers, and reorganized the state government. He died in Washington
