Robert M. La Follette senior

Robert M. La Follette

Robert Marion La Follette Sr. (born June 14, 1855 in Primrose , Dane County , Wisconsin , † June 18, 1925 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician who served in the US House of Representatives as the 20th Governor of Served in Wisconsin from 1901 to 1906 and as a member of the Republican Party in the US Senate for Wisconsin from 1905 to 1925 . He also ran for president of the United States in 1924 as a candidate for the Progressive Party . Most remembered for his support for the direct election of US Senators and his opposition to cartels and large corporations, La Follette was considered one of the leaders of the progressive movement in the Republican Party.

He was married to Belle Case La Follette , with whom he had, in addition to their daughter Mary, sons Robert and Philip , who were also successful in politics.

Life

As a gifted and spirited speaker, La Follette made many enemies over the years, not least because of his opposition to US participation in World War I and his defense of freedom of expression during wartime. Theodore Roosevelt called him a skunk who deserved to be hanged when he spoke out against arming the merchant navy. A colleague from the Senate said of him that he was “a better German than the chairman of the Reichstag ” when he voted against the Wilson government's motion to declare war on Germany.

In his first year in the Senate, La Follette was poisoned in a milkshake during a filibuster with the remedy Ptomain , whereupon he had to stop the speech marathon. Who was responsible for the poisoning was never determined.

politics

In 1884, La Follette was first elected to the United States House of Representatives. He was re-elected twice. His support for a protective tariff earned him a seat on the powerful Committee on Ways and Means , where he participated in drafting the Customs Act of 1890. However, this bill was so unpopular that he lost the election in 1890 and left Congress a few months later in 1891. He then returned to Wisconsin where he became a judge . In 1891, in this capacity, he refused to bribe a powerful Republican. When this event became public, La Follette became isolated within his party. It was not until 1900 that he managed to win an election again, after having run twice without success because he had meanwhile supported an initiative to nominate candidates in open primaries instead of at party congresses.

From 1901 to 1906, La Follette was governor of Wisconsin. In this role, he advocated numerous reforms, including the first system of statutory accident insurance , stricter state control of large corporations, the direct election of United States senators, the recall of all civil servants (except judges), and tax progression . This political program therefore came to be known as the Wisconsin Idea . He was a staunch advocate of collaboration between the state government and the University of Wisconsin .

He was a member of the United States Senate from 1906 until his death. In this capacity, he firmly opposed US entry into World War I, but supported many of President Woodrow Wilson's domestic reforms . La Follette pushed the investigation forward in a bribery scandal involving the award of oil fields in which US Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall was involved.

In the nomination of the Republican candidate for the presidential election in 1912, he stood against the incumbent William Howard Taft and was defeated against him and against Theodore Roosevelt , who supported many progressives. In the election campaign, La Follette then supported the eventual winner Woodrow Wilson. In 1924, La Follette ran for the presidency, this time as a candidate for a separate, newly formed progressive party supported by the Socialist Party of America and won 17%, the third highest percentage of the vote for a third party presidential candidate since the Civil War. He died a few months later. His son Robert succeeded him as a senator. Another son, Philip F. La Follette , later became governor of Wisconsin. In 1909, La Follette and his wife Belle founded La Follette's Weekly , which was renamed The Progressive in 1929 and is a monthly magazine to this day.

literature

• David P. Thelen: Robert M. La Follette and the Insurgent Spirit , Little, Brown and Company, Boston / Toronto 1976.

Web links

Commons : Robert M. La Follette  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Robert M. La Follette senior in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Robert M. La Follette senior in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Statement of Robert LaFollette, Sr. on Communist Participation in the Progressive Movement, 26 May 1924 (English; PDF file; 55 kB)
• Robert M. La Follette senior in the database of the National Governors Association (English)
• Newspaper article about Robert M. La Follette senior in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .