Louis A. Arnold (July 13, 1872 – October 4, 1958) was anAmericanschoolteacher,HVAC worker andSocialist politician fromMilwaukee who served two terms (1915–1922) as a member of theWisconsin State Senate representing theMilwaukee-based 7th Senate district.[1]
Arnold was born inBoonville, Indiana on July 13, 1872; four months later his parents moved toNewburg inWashington County, Wisconsin, where his father had ahardware store. He attended thepublic schools, and graduated from theWest Bend high school. He taught school one year and then went to work for theVilter Manufacturing company of Milwaukee, where he was engaged in erectingicemaking andrefrigerating plants.[2]
Arnold was a member of Milwaukee's moderate,social-democratic "Sewer Socialists." In theSocial Democracy Red Book of 1900 he was listed among "One Hundred Well-Known Social Democrats."[3] He was the Socialist nominee for a number of offices, includingCongressman from thefourth Congressional district. He was a City of Milwaukeealderman for the 17thWard from 1908 to 1912;tax commissioner of Milwaukee from 1912 to 1915; and was elected to the Wisconsin Senate's 7th District in 1914 (succeeding fellow SocialistGabriel Zophy) and re-elected in 1918.[4]
On October 29, 1918, a few days before the election in which he was a candidate for re-election, Arnold (as state secretary of the Socialist Party of Wisconsin) was one of five Socialists (the most prominent being CongressmanVictor Berger) indicted under theEspionage Act of 1917 due to their organized opposition to U.S. participation in theFirst World War.[5] Like Berger, he was re-elected despite the highly publicized indictment, receiving 4,730 votes to 4,532 forRepublican David Love.
Arnold was the1922 Socialist nominee forGovernor of Wisconsin[6] and came in third toProgressiveRepublicanJohn James Blaine andDemocratArthur A. Bentley, with 39,570 votes (8.21% of a total of 481,828).[7] His Senate seat was claimed by fellow SocialistWilliam Quick.
In 1922, Arnold was appointed Tax Commissioner of Milwaukee, with MayorDaniel Hoan taking advantage of the absence of two objecting city council members due to illness to gain a successful vote of appointment.[8] Arnold continued in that office until his retirement in 1939.[9] During his tenure, he was offered a role on the State Tax Commission by GovernorPhilip La Follette, but preferred to remain in Milwaukee.[10]
He was elected in 1933 as aWet delegate to the Wisconsin convention which voted to ratify theTwenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution.[11] In 1941, he spoke at a Socialist meeting in support of the return of a ballot line for the Socialist Party, which had previously merged into a Farmer Labor Progressive Federation.[12]
