In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Family Background, Education, and Debut in Politics Born in 1855, Robert Marion La Follette took a circuitous route in finding his place as a prophetic critic of American imperialism. He spent his first years on a prosperous but isolated farm in Primrose, Wisconsin. The death of his father when he was less than a year old and his mother’s subsequent remarriage in 1862 made it necessary for him to relocate several times during his childhood and adolescence. Following some financial reverses, the family returned to the Primrose farm. He had a difficult time with his evangelical stepfather over religion, an experience that un-churched him for life. In his autobiography, La Follette recalled the thrilling intellectual release that he experienced upon hearing Robert G. Ingersoll, the author of Some Mistakes of Moses and other works that ridiculed the Bible. Ingersoll had liberated his mind: “Freedom was what he preached: he wanted the shackles off everywhere. . . . He wanted men to follow wherever truth might lead them.”1 Farming life was hard, but La Follette loved the work and revered the lessons of character it imparted. For the rest of his life he would think of the American farm as the nearest thing to heaven on earth. The decline of the agricultural way of life in America, already far advanced in his lifetime, he viewed with a Jeffersonian foreboding about what might befall a society and a people no longer connected with the natural rhythms of the earth. When he came to have children of his own, he wanted them to live on a farm. He proudly announced at the beginning of his autobiography, “I knew farm ways and farm life.”2 His formative life experiences enabled him to identify in a completely authentic way with working people, a facility that would prove to be one of his most valuable assets as a political campaigner. 8 1  Formative Influences The University of Wisconsin figures prominently among the formative influences in La Follette’s life. He wanted a good education, and to get one he knew that it would be necessary to leave Primrose. Following the death of her husband in 1872, La Follette’s mother moved the family to Madison. He began to take special preparatory courses in order to qualify for admission to the University of Wisconsin. He entered the university in 1875 and excelled in extracurricular activities. Though only five feet six inches tall and very slight, La Follette made his mark as an orator, debater, and actor by virtue of his magnetic personality and verbal aptitude. His senior year he won an interstate oratorical contest in Iowa City that made him a legend among his fellow students, the “Little Lion of the Northwest.” The Madison Democrat described his triumphant return from the contest: “the university and the people of Madison joined in extending a welcome to Mr. La Follette that he will never forget. There were unbounded enthusiasm and rejoicing.”3 To help pay the tuition, La Follette taught school for a time, sold books, and took any paying job that came along. He also owned and edited the student newspaper, which celebrated the culture of self-help as the surest way to advancement and success. Feeling no compassion at all for the men thrown out of work during the economic doldrums that followed the Panic of 1873, he counseled them to stop whining and to buckle down. Gilded Age Republican politics suited the young La Follette perfectly. He belonged to a University of Wisconsin generation of students who identified completely with the ideal of the “self-made man.”4 John Bascom, the university president, inspired him with a highly moralistic vision of education as a preparation for citizenship. Nevertheless, he struggled academically and barely received a diploma. He had an alert mind and an extraordinarily retentive memory, but poor prior training in school made the university classroom a site of struggle for him. The true character of La Follette’s politics at this time stands revealed in a speech that the newly graduated and celebrated young orator gave on 4 July 1879 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, titled “The Home and Vagrancy Question .” He made it clear that the poor frightened and disgusted him: “It is the homeless rabble that feeds the fury of the mob, that furnishes the armed troops of the tyrant.”5 These vicious tramps and human parasites, as he called them, brought fear and terror to the Wisconsin countryside. They caused the vagrancy problem...

Share