Fond du Lac's Anti-La Follette Movement, 1900-1905
by Matthew J. Crane

During the early twentieth century, a major political force, Progressivism, reshaped American politics. At the forefront of this movement was the State of Wisconsin, and one of its foremost advocates was arguably Wisconsin’s most famous political figure, Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette. La Follette’s political career was marked by many challenges and controver-sies. He was not uniformly popular across the State, and the issues that he championed did not resonate equally with all of its citizens. A typology of anti-La Follette voters from Wisconsin inevitably points to economic status, political party loyalty, ethnicity, and political philosophy as determinants. All of these groups combined during Robert La Follette’s campaigns for Governor of Wisconsin to produce a significant “anti-La Follette movement.” Fond du Lac was one of the more prominent cities in the State that was affected by this movement.

Robert La Follette based his 1900, 1902, and 1904 campaigns on two principal issues. The first of these issues was the need for election reform, to be achieved through the introduction of a direct primary system. La Follette adopted the concept of the direct primary to replace the existing caucus and convention system that was used to nominate political candidates. He saw this tactic as a way to lessen “bossism” and to bring grassroots politics back to the people and away from the control of political party leadership. The second issue was the need for railroad regulation in the State. La Follette’s perspective was that “corporate arro-gance” and “tax dodging” by railroads should be challenged, because the railroads did not pay their fair share to help support the workings of Wisconsin’s government. According to La Follette, a fairer system could be attained through governmental regulation of the rates that the railroads charged their customers. These two issues played strongly in Wisconsin, and they generated much support for LaFollette’s election bids. However, this was not the case in Fond du Lac, which tended to be a center of resistance to La Follette’s message.

Both the primary and railroad rate issues were at the forefront of the La Follette platform in his campaigns from 1900 to 1904, but they were responsible for only a part of the anti- La Follette movement in Fond du Lac, for this movement had planted its roots even before he became Governor of Wisconsin in 1901. Fond du Lac’s strong German heritage, La Follette’s political enemies, and even some of his allies, were all players in the growth of the movement.

Robert M. (Fighting Bob) LaFollette, 1922

Ethnicity became a central factor in determining support or opposition to Robert La Follette in the politics of Fond du Lac and Wisconsin at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Robert Marion La Follette was born to Josiah La Follette and Mary Ferguson in Prim-rose, Wisconsin, in a log house, on June 14, 1855. In 1874, he attended the preparatory depart-ment of the University of Wisconsin, and he graduated from the University in 1879. That same year he entered the University’s Law program, and in February 1880 he passed the State Bar Examination and opened a law office in Madison. In 1880, he won election as District Attorney for Dane County. Reelected in 1882, he practiced law for two more years, until his election as Congressman from the Third Congressional District. He served three terms in Congress until 1890, when he was renominated but lost the election, as did many other Republicans in that year. Reentering private life, La Follette reactivated his law practice as a senior member of La Follette, Harper, Roe and Zimmerman. The law practice dissolved in 1894, and he practiced alone until 1900, when he was elected Governor of Wisconsin.¹

The Fox Valley, with Fond du Lac at its southern edge, had a very large German-American population at the end of the nineteenth century. It was estimated that 31.1 per cent of the population of Fond du Lac County were of German heritage. Historically, the German-Americans of Fond du Lac tended to vote for the Democratic Party. Philosophically, they voted on the basis of defense of personal rights, that is, they opposed control by government that could interfere with their property and prosperity.² They had settled in areas of the state that were well suited to agriculture, and they employed diversified farming techniques. Many engaged in dairy-ing, and these independent farmers formed a prosperous part of the Wisconsin economy, and of Fond du Lac in particular. Catholic Germans, many of them foresters, shepherds and farm workers, settled in towns like Oshkosh, Fond du Lac, and Menasha. Many had arrived between 1848 and 1854. Only in the 1870s did industrial workers from Germany begin settling in Wisconsin cities. Generally well-to-do, Wisconsin’s German-American farmers tended to be apolitical, so long as their sense of personal autonomy was unchallenged. This was in marked contrast to Wisconsin residents of Scandinavian origin.³ In general, Wisconsin’s German-Americans tended to political conservatism, promoting sound money, a protective tariff, support for their German-language homeland school system, and civil service reform. La Follette’s backing among these people of German heritage was not as strong as was his link to the Scandi-navian population of the state.

Scandinavians who had immigrated to Wisconsin after the Civil War settled on farm land that was less fertile than that occupied by the earlier-arriving Germans. Scandinavians in Wisconsin exhibited a very different pattern of voting and tended to be concerned with issues and conceptions of liberty and political rights, rather than personal rights. This difference tended to make them more active politically, due to their perceived need to better themselves in society. Wisconsin residents of Scandinavian descent formed a crucial power base for La Follette. Assemblyman Irvine L. Lenroot of Superior, in Bayfield County, whose parents came from Sweden, was a key figure in mobilizing voters of Scandinavian ancestry for La Follette.

Yet another group of Scandinavians, the Norwegians, had settled in Winnebago, Dane, Vernon, Pierce and Waupaca Counties. Norwegians supported lower tariffs and Granger cooper-ative legislation that tended to be politically progressive. La Follette’s following among the Nor-wegians was catalyzed by his political ally, Nils P. Haugen, who was a native of Norway and the U. S. Congressman from River Falls, in Pierce County.⁴ Thus the relationships that La Follette established before and during his terms as Governor placed him squarely among the fault lines defined by ethnic and factional divisions within the diverse cultural population of Wisconsin.

The issues for which La Follette fought and which he was able to establish as the Repub-lican platform during his gubernatorial campaigns became a driving force that produced a split in the Republican Party. La Follette campaigned actively on promises to establish railroad taxation and a direct primary election law. Traditionally, campaign promises from Wisconsin Republi-cans had been regarded as “campaign” issues, not as a basis for governing. The party leadership had no intention of keeping these promises that LaFollette had introduced. La Follette sought to change that tradition in Wisconsin politics, and he ended by revolutionizing the political system.

La Follette argued that taxation and regulation of the railroads, plus the need for election by direct primary, were features that were essential for every Wisconsin community’s well-being. Railroad regulation and taxation were hard-fought and divisive issues in early twentieth century America, due to the power of monopolies and trusts in the transportation industry. At the time, railroad companies were taxed only on their earnings, not on property they owned, and this had a serious impact on communities that were dependent on property taxes. La Follette fought for taxation of railroad land and favored establishment of a commission to oversee the railroads and regulate the rates they charged to passengers and shippers. If railroad property were taxed instead of earnings, he argued, railroads could not cheat Wisconsin’s government out of tax money that could be used to provide basic services to its people.

Many people in Fond du Lac saw the issue differently. They viewed railroad regulation and taxation of land as an infringement on the personal rights of local businesses, even though regulation might permit farmers and businessmen to get their products to market without paying the existing high or arbitrary freight rates.

The primary election issue also generated negative reactions in Fond du Lac. In 1900, the caucus and convention system then in effect in Wisconsin allowed caucus delegates from each county to send a representative to the County and State conventions. Convention delegates then voted for the individual they had been instructed to support. La Follette charged that corrupt use of money and influence by business interests and powerful individuals led delegates to change their votes, thereby disenfranchising the grassroots party members. As La Follette stated in a speech at Monroe,

You cannot bribe the people, but you can bribe delegates to a convention. Public sentiment is the public conscience, and when it is roused to demand any legislation, the forces which oppose it are crushed and destroyed.”⁵

Primary election, La Follette asserted, would permit nomination of officials without intervention from caucuses and conventions.⁶ Destroying the caucus and convention system, La Follette believed, would destroy corporate control of party nominations and place it in the hands of the people. La Follette also understood that direct primary elections would open the door to his own political future. In 1905, Fond du Lac was one of the first Wisconsin cities to use a direct primary in the spring election. Fond du Lac citizens’ main concern about the primary system was its cost. It was claimed, inaccurately, that primaries cost more than the caucus and convention system. In fact, direct primary elections at that time were cheaper than the convention system, because one county might hold five or six different conventions for each party to elect its delegates to the state convention.

Still, the charge of a threat to the pocketbooks of the German-heritage voters of Fond du Lac had an impact. Many also opposed direct primaries because they believed such primaries violated their personal liberty and imposed policies that would undermine the existing political power distribution between traditional Democrats and Republicans. Decentralizing politics meant less control by the power brokers of Fond du Lac and more government regulation in the interest of less wealthy citizens. This, of course, was just what La Follette sought to do.

La Follette tried to counter this mindset by making an appeal to the German-American people of Wisconsin, especially to a group he characterized as “the German farmer.” He under-stood that the majority of Wisconsin’s population was rural, and he claimed that the voice of rural residents of the state was underrepresented. In 1901, the Wisconsin Legislature had 133 members, of whom only 31 were farmers. La Follette argued that 31 farmers were insufficient to reflect the 60 per cent of Wisconsin’s population who were rural. La Follette asserted that direct primaries would remedy this problem, for the farm vote would be more heavily felt in an election where there was direct vote by the people in a primary, whereas the cities’ centralized power would be more likely to be reflected in caucuses and conventions. La Follette believed that this message would appeal to farmers, who would share his view that city-bred politicians lacked the stamp of sincerity.⁷ His judgment was correct with respect to the economically disadvantaged Scandinavian-American farmers who occupied the poorer, stump-filled and swampy land in the northern part of Wisconsin. The wealthier, German-American farmers of the Fond du Lac area, however, saw La Follette’s plans as likely to reduce the value of their property rights.⁸ They also saw direct primaries as “Republican” legislation. Conservative German Democrats in Fond du Lac voted in their caucuses against La Follette.

The year 1903 was the most crucial for La Follette’s drive to enact a direct primary law. Many of the predominately German areas in Wisconsin were debating the bill and weighing its chances to pass in the legislature. Wealthier areas of the state tended to support the existing system. Surprisingly, Winnebago County, despite its strong German heritage, voted 60 per cent in favor of the direct primary, while Fond du Lac County voted only 49.9 per cent for the legi-slation. Winnebago County, of course, was still suffering from a collapse of its once-thriving lumber economy, and the loss of employment doubtless encouraged support for the bill. Prospering and more diversified areas, such as Fond du Lac, tended to regard the primary bill as more threatening. The larger Norwegian population in Winnebago County also helped push the vote for the direct primary, whereas Fond du Lac’s division over the bill was caused by the larger number of Democrat farmers and conservative Republican Party “Stalwarts” who opposed it.

Supporters included those who were called “fair-minded” Democrats and Republican “Half-breeds,” so named by “Stalwart” Republicans due to their support of the La Follette cause. The racial epithet, common in the politics of the day, was applied because these individuals were seen as a threat to party loyalty on account of their support for progressive political views. “Stalwarts,” as they liked to call themselves, were the members of the anti-La Follette faction of the Repub-lican Party who opposed direct primaries and railroad regulation and taxation.

A typical Fond du Lac County farmer’s objection to direct primaries was that any change in politics or in business and industry would have negative effects on Fond du Lac’s economy. In comparison, ethnic Swedes, Finns and Norwegians, farming in the less prosperous western and central parts of the State, favored the bill, which passed by over 60 per cent in those areas. Farmers in those counties sought the same kind of prosperity that well-established areas like Fond du Lac already possessed.

Fond du Lac, during the La Follette era, had only a small Scandinavian population that had little or no effect on politics. Political conflict in the city tended to produce disagreement between German-American Democrats and German-American Republicans. Fond du Lac was a well-known stronghold of the Republican Party, but from 1900 to 1905, the city, divided over many issues, produced a fifty-fifty vote split between the two political parties. This political shift was triggered largely by negative reactions to La Follette.

German-American support for Governor La Follette was weakened in 1901, after he criticized what he considered the weak Hagemeister Bill for primary election reform. That legi-slation would only have applied to county and city elections, excluding state and federal contests. This bill was thought by many Republicans to be a compromise response to the sweeping direct primary reform that La Follette advocated. La Follette noted that the bill would have no effect on nationally elected officials, only local politicians, and the newly elected governor saw it as a mockery of the direct primary legislation he sought. La Follette vetoed the bill, stating that it did not fulfill the promises of the Republican Party platform. The veto was important in initiating a factional struggle between La Follette and the “Stalwart” Republicans that would continue throughout his three terms as governor.Die Germania, the leading German language newspaper published in Milwaukee, which had previously been friendly to La Follette, criticized him for the veto of the Hagemeister Bill, stating that he caused the split in the Republican Party.⁹ La Follette vetoed the bill to make the point that he would not compromise the principles embedded in the Republican Party’s platform, even for the sake of unity within the organization. For Fond du Lac, this marked the beginning of a significant anti-La Follette movement that would not end until after La Follette’s race for a third gubernatorial term in 1904.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German-American population of Fond du Lac was divided in its party loyalties. Large numbers of German-Americans voted Republican, despite the fact that before the Civil War most of Fond du Lac’s Germans had been Democrats. The slavery issue temporarily converted many to support Republicans, although a majority re-verted to the Democratic Party after the war.¹⁰ Of course La Follette’s politics divided not only the Republicans but also the Democrats, the former according to principle, the latter according to politics. As one historian put it, “As Napoleon disarmed a possible menace by keeping the Ger-man states divided against one another, La Follette did the same with the Democratic Party.”¹¹

During La Follette’s five years as Governor, politics typically were played out between the self-styled “Stalwart” Republicans of the old faction and the “Half-breeds.” Democrats during the era were divided over issues and generally not effective in State politics. La Follette relied heavily on “fair minded” or cross-over Democrats for votes throughout the State. In Fond du Lac and other heavily German-American areas, the “personal liberty” issue could become a La Follette strength, because the concept of personal liberty tended to erode party loyalty or ideology. One Fond du Lac commentator observed that, “Governor La Follette [is a man] who can change himself into a Democrat among Democrats, a Republican among Republicans, a Populist among Populist, and a Socialist among Socialists.”¹²

Fond du Lac, as we have seen, was well established at the beginning of the century as a Republican city with a conservative bent. La Follette spoke many times in Fond du Lac during his first term as Governor, talking on his favorite issues of railroad regulation and the need for the direct primary, two very popular issues, statewide, for the Republican platform, but divisive for both the Republican and Democratic Parties in Fond du Lac. The split of the Republican Party opened the way for “fair-minded” Democrats to cross party lines to vote for La Follette.

The two major local newspapers, theDaily Reporter and theDaily Commonwealth, played an important part in the anti-La Follette sentiment that developed in Fond du Lac, for they helped develop public opinion regarding the Governor’s actions in the State of Wisconsin and the Fox Valley. TheFond du Lac Daily Reporter supported Democrats aligned against La Follette, and its coverage illustrates the anti-La Follette movement from the Democratic German-American point of view. The Daily Commonwealth, on the other hand, was a “Stalwart” Repub-lican newspaper. TheDaily Commonwealth never again fully supported La Follette after the split he caused in the Republican Party in 1901. The newspaper combined support for strong Republican Party politics with sympathy for the German heritage of many residents in the Fond du Lac community. Since party unity was the key platform plank for many Fond du Lac Repub-licans of German descent, theDaily Commonwealth took a pro-La Follette stance only on those occasions when he acted in unity with the views of “Stalwart” Republicans.

Both papers played an important part in the shifting patterns of party politics in Fond du Lac during the La Follette gubernatorial years.The Commonwealth argued that two years as governor were enough and that La Follette should step aside. TheDaily Reporter typically sug-gested that La Follette wanted to take personal rights away from the people. The one common idea that both papers supported was the importance of party politics and unity in voting. This idea was anathema to La Follette, who saw such slavish devotion to party as leading to political corruption. The influence of the two newspapers was not always decisive, as is suggested by voting patterns that show the numbers of Republicans and Democrats who crossed party lines in each of La Follette’s three election campaigns for Governor, especially during the 1904 contest, but they were an important source of public information.

La Follette’s 1904 campaign for a third gubernatorial term was the most striking of the three electoral races in terms of newspaper editorial activity. In 1904, theDaily Commonwealth openly supported the candidacy of Samuel A. Cook, the “Stalwart” candidate for Governor, a former member of Congress who resided in Winnebago County. Cook promised that he would not vote on “factional lines or use Democratic votes to be elected.”¹³ The editor of theCommon-wealth wrote, “the party should be rehabilitated[;] the sentiment against a third La Follette term is very strong in the state, Fond du Lac Counties [sic] sentiment to support Mr. Cook has grown.”¹⁴ At the State Convention in Madison, Republicans were divided even further after the Stalwart Republicans bolted the convention, protesting that the La Follette party had not been legally organized.

Stalwarts then met at the Fuller Opera House to nominate their candidate, Cook, for Governor.¹⁵ Who would officially be placed on the Republican ballot was a matter eventually decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. On October 5, 1904, the Court ruled that La Follette’s name must be placed on the ballot as the Republican candidate, and the Stalwarts thereupon formed the National Republicans, headed by United States Senators John C. Spooner and Joseph V. Quarles, as an organization to oppose La Follette. Senator Spooner, a Stalwart Republican from Madison, was well known as a polished debater and constitutional lawyer. Spooner had been elected to the United States Senate in 1896 and held the position until his retirement in 1907.¹⁶ Senator Joseph V. Quarles of Kenosha, a member of one of Milwaukee’s political busi-nessmen’s groups, had been elected to the Senate in 1899. Soon after the court decision de-claring La Follette the Republican nominee, Cook dropped out of the race, forcing ex-Governor (1897-1901) Edward Scofield of Oconto to replace him. The shift from the local candidate, Cook, to Scofield badly hurt Republican Party fortunes in Fond du Lac, and many Stalwart Republicans in the city were angered that, once again, it seemed that the strength of the Repub-lican Party had been compromised by La Follette and his “Half-breeds.”

TheFond du Lac Commonwealth vigorously supported the National Republican leaders, underlining the strength of the Stalwart cause in the city and the significant anti-La Follette movement, whose goal on the State level was to restore traditional Republican Party politics in Wisconsin. Prior to a 1904 Quarles speaking engagement in the city, theCommonwealth pointedly observed that, “Fond du Lac should be friendly to Senator Quarles, [for] he has always been loyal to the interests of the city.”¹⁷

In a last effort to oust La Follette, both the Commonwealth and Daily Reporter printed a letter, signed by 200 of Fond du Lac’s cititzens and businessmen, addressed to the voters of Fond du Lac city and county urging his defeat in the 1904 election. The letter stated:

It becomes our duty to work and to vote for the interests of our own people, regardless of party affiliation. While we recognize that the right to regulate and control railroads belongs to the people and to this end we favor stringent and just laws governing the same, we deny the right to delegate this most important power to the arbitrary dictations of any one man[,] which is what Governor La Follette asks for in his railroad commission and wherein he declares that the people cannot be trusted to do their full duty. It is self-evident to every citizen that the condition of our city today is primarily due to the location of the great railroad shops and division headquarters at North Fond du Lac at an expenditure of over one million five hundred thousand dollars.”¹⁸

Obviously, the anti-La Follette movement was tied to the economic interests of Fond du Lac and to one of its principal industries. From Fond du Lac, the railroads snaked eastward to Sheboygan, southwest to Madison, northward to Oshkosh, Appleton, and Green Bay, and south-ward to Milwaukee. Not only was Fond du Lac economically and politically tied to the rail-roads, but its merchants and farmers benefited from their location near an important railroad division point. Businesses in the city received preferential shipping rates and access to many markets. Establishment of a railroad commission was likely to mean regulated rates and most likely higher shipping costs for businesses in Fond du Lac. And of course there was the remark-able, not to say amazing, argument that La Follette was taking away both Fond du Lac’s property and its citizens’ personal and individual rights to regulate the railroad companies themselves.

La Follette’s opponents in Fond du Lac framed the struggle in terms of personal liberty at odds with political liberty, somehow associating the idea of political liberty with reduced loyalty to political party. TheCommonwealth criticized the split in Republican Party and theDaily Reporter voiced its dislike for La Follette’s challenge to Democratic Party loyalty. As Repub-lican Senator Quarles stated to a Fond du Lac audience, he was shocked by La Follette having said, “It is better to vote for a good Democrat rather than a bad Republican.”¹⁹

Both theReporter and theCommonwealth typically used every opportunity to advance the anti-La Follette movement in the Fox Valley in order to undermine the progressive La Follette platform. While theCommonwealth supported former Governor Scofield, in 1904, the Democrats supported George W. Peck of Milwaukee, another former Governor of Wisconsin, who had served from 1891 to 1895, but who was defeated for reelection in 1894.²⁰

La Follette made many appearances in Fond du Lac during his years as Governor of Wisconsin, always drawing large crowds of both Democrats and Republicans and speaking in general terms on his favorite issues of the direct primary and railroad. The anti-La Follette senti-ment in Fond du Lac had always been present, as it had in most other urban areas of the State. The anti-La Follette forces continued to portray the Governor as a threat to personal liberty and a disrupter of party unity. The attack on La Follette and his “Half-breeds” came from many newspapers in the State, such as theFond du Lac Commonwealth and the Janesville Gazette.

The German-American community in Fond du Lac had identified La Follette as a threat to their interests even before he became Governor, largely due to his affiliation with ex-Governor William D. Hoard of Fort Atkinson, whom La Follette considered an essential ally, due to the strong support Hoard enjoyed among farmers. Hoard, the editor and founder ofHoard’s Dairy-man, a periodical published in Fort Atkinson, had a large following among dairy farmers in Wisconsin. But Governor Hoard and a Republican-dominated legislature had passed the Bennett Law in 1889, a measure that prescribed mandatory schooling for all children. Hoard stated that he wanted legislation that would put children in school instead of in factories.

While this might appear to be a rather benign piece of legislation, the drawback to the Bennett Law, from the perspective of the German-American community, was that all Wisconsin school children were to be taught in the English language. Both Catholic and Lutheran Germans saw this as a threat to their parochial school systems that utilized the German language for much instruction. German Lutheran Churches and the Democratic Party led a march against Hoard, while the old-guard Republican Party claimed the Hoardites were “nativists” and suggested the next issue would be prohibition, both matters likely to inflame German-Americans who were sensitive to anti-immigrant legislation and to threats to their right to drink alcoholic beverages.²¹ During the last weeks of the 1900 campaign, this charge was used to get German-American Democrats to vote against La Follette. When the Milwaukee Sentinel attacked Louis G. Bohmrich, from Kenosha, the 1900 Democratic candidate for Governor, the Fond du Lac Reporter responded that this was a “futile desire to check the increasing tide of German support for Bohmrich by a silly attempt to excite racial prejudice against him.” According to theReporter, theSentinel’s attack only served to remind the German people that La Follette’s supporters were

part and parcel of the regime that attempted only a decade ago to place upon them a restriction of their sacred rights, and has reawakened the impulses which aroused them to that memorable effort for the overthrow of their would-be oppress- sors. Because they asserted their right to cherish their language and racial traditions the Sentinel evidently thought they would consider it a crime for one of their number to love America more than Germany and thereby betrayed its opinion that the Ger- man people were disloyal to American institutions—the same hallucination that led to the passage of that detested coercive educational measure known as the Bennett Law.²²

A year after the Bennett Law was passed, in 1890, the Democrats won back control of the State Legislature in Wisconsin, and Republicans, including La Follette, who held seats in Con-gress also lost their races. The Bennett Law left among German-Americans a residual distrust of the Republicans, especially in Fond du Lac, and the Bennett Law was one of the main reasons La Follette was seen as a threat to Fond du Lac, even before he became Governor.

La Follette had other political problems in Fond du Lac. One of the most significant was his reluctance to endorse United States Senator John Spooner for reelection in 1902. People of German heritage regarded Spooner as one of Wisconsin’s greatest assets in the political arena. Aligned with the Republican cause, Spooner endorsed German-American candidates, and he recognized the strength and influence of the ethnic group’s voting power, particularly in crucial areas such as Fond du Lac, where party strength of Republicans in the November 1902 election was especially important. Men like William H. Froehlich, Republican congressional candidate from Washington County, who was also La Follette’s Secretary of State, relied on the Repub-lican Party endorsement. Spooner stated in a speech in Fond du Lac, “He [W. Froehlich] is a German-American and there is no better American anywhere.” Spooner also endorsed the Republican ticket fully in both the state and in the nation saying, “Stand by your party and vote for Governor La Follette and all the Republican ticket.”²³

Six days earlier La Follette had paid tribute to Senator Spooner in a speech given in Fond du Lac, but he did not endorse the State ticket as a whole, a stance he maintained throughout the campaign of 1902. Nine days after La Follette’s speech in Fond du Lac he spoke in Appleton. The gap between Stalwart Republicans and the “Half-breeds” had been widening steadily since La Follette had first become Governor of Wisconsin in 1901. At the end of a speech, a reporter requested the opportunity to ask a question, and the Governor agreed to his request:

Governor, in view of the brilliant record made by Senator Spooner, to which you have eloquently referred in your speech, and in view of the splendid campaign he is making for the entire Republican ticket, are you in favor of the unconditional reelection of Senator Spooner to the United States Senate?

Governor La Follette replied:

I am for the success and for the principles of the Republican party, and the day and the hour that Senator Spooner raises his voice for the principles of the Republican party, as laid down in the state platform, I will raise my voice for his reelection to the United States Senate; because I then can do so in conformity with the platform of my party.²⁴

This statement probably cost La Follette many votes across the State, and in Fond du Lac particularly, because the city’s residents had great respect for Senator Spooner and his dedication to the principle of party unity. This was only one of many steps La Follette took in separating the “Half-breed” Republicans from the Stalwart Republicans, but it was a definitive breaking point between Fond du Lac and La Follette, at least in terms of political support for him from local newspapers. The StalwartDaily Commonwealth took a more aggressive anti-La Follette view even than the DemocraticReporter. But Fond du Lac generally viewed La Follette’s poli-tics within the traditional context of Democrat versus Republican. La Follette’s issue-orientated politics were either incomprehensible to them or else seemed irrelevant. Other newspapers around the state that had been friendly to La Follette also changed their views, once he openly declined to support the popular Senator Spooner. The reelection of Spooner as an issue was particularly visible in Oshkosh, where theOshkosh Northwestern, a former La Follette supporter, began to distance itself from the Governor in an editorial stating, “Spooner should be endorsed.” TheOshkosh Northwestern still supported the reelection of La Follette, but it took the position that it was easier to find gubernatorial timber than another fine Senator like Spooner.²⁵ The Oshkosh newspaper was not alone in regarding Spooner so highly, for a majority of Fox Valley editors shared this outlook.

During this period La Follette remained associated with the Republican Party although his ideas were more progressive than those of many Republicans. But he still looked to both parties for votes, and such disregard for party lines did not play well in Fond du Lac. Both news-papers printed warnings about crossover voting on the ballot, and Republicans and Democrats both urged voting a straight ticket in general. The straight ticket vote was even more important for the areas where there was a heavy German-American population, because these were the areas where party politics was power. In the 1904 election, La Follette took votes from both Democrats and Republicans, with the vote for him coming about evenly from Democrats and Republicans. Forty-six per cent of Fond du Lac County voters voted Republican in 1904, down eight per cent from 1900.²⁶ The strong Fond du Lac support for Senator Spooner was important in carrying the Republican ticket to victory, but it also helped that La Follette received votes from the “fair-minded” Democrats to compensate for the split in Republican ranks that drove “borderline” Republicans to shift their votes to the Democrats or the National Republicans.

The campaign of 1904 was one of the most difficult for La Follette. He won the guber-natorial race by only forty-five thousand votes, the slimmest margin of victory in his three statewide campaigns for office.²⁷ La Follette spoke in many towns and cities during the cam-paign of 1904, but he did not come to Fond du Lac to give a speech on railroad legislation and primary reform. Had theCommonwealth,Daily Reporter and people of Fond du Lac who opposed railroad legislation reform heard La Follette speak, perhaps the attitude toward his campaign platform in 1904 might have been friendlier.

One of the reasons such a speech wasn’t made may be the fact that La Follette’s staff never researched and developed the materials that would have permitted the Governor to speak specifically on Fond du Lac’s railroads and commerce. Material was prepared for Oshkosh, Omro, Sheboygan, Plymouth, Appleton and Neenah-Menasha, all areas in the Fox Valley, yet Fond du Lac was never a target of concern, and no analysis was prepared for La Follette to use there. Such a speech would certainly have generated interest from the people of Fond du Lac, and perhaps it would have garnered more support for the cause of railroad regulation had the Governor presented his side of the issue in person, especially when local newspapers frequently editorialized on the issue of railroad regulation in a vein that was generally critical of La Follette’s stance.

In twenty Wisconsin cities, editors had compiled statistics on the railroads in order to challenge La Follette’s claims. Of the twenty, nine stand out because La Follette’s staff had not done research for these particular areas. Those nine cities were Racine, Whitewater, Ripon, Hudson, Waupaca, Wausau, Lodi, Wauwatosa and Fond du Lac.²⁸ All of these cities were heavily dependent on the railroads. La Follette did not give a speech on railroad regulation in any of them, probably because there were few votes to be won on the issue in those places. Wausau, one of the areas with a heavy German-American Democratic population, was similarly ignored by the La Follette campaign. The reason must have been that these cities’ voters de-pended on the railroads or benefited from the existing rate structure, thus rendering La Follette’s message less effective.

These omissions, however, left La Follette open to attacks upon himself and left his cam-paign open to unanswered challenges to his call for better railroad regulation. Perhaps his charisma might have carried the day before audiences in such places; it is a significant fact that, where La Follette was well known, he always received more support from the electorate. In the elections of 1902 and 1904, the counties he visited all heavily supported him, while the ones he did not visit were often hostile towards him.²⁹ Perhaps he was astute enough to understand which areas were ripe for his message, yet a speech aimed at Fond du Lac would have been important, because of its location and the importance of the railroad to the community. La Follette’s demand that the railroads be taxed on land they owned might mean more expensive shipping costs for Fond du Lac’s people and industries, but La Follette sought change so railroads could not discriminate between richer and poorer areas of the state and would be prevented from driving the price of shipping too high anywhere in the state. Such a change probably would not have benefited Fond du Lac’s farmers, but the Governor at least would have been able to make his case for the fairness of his proposal. Because he did not speak to the situation in Fond du Lac, the anti-La Follette movement in the city was able to characterize the demand for regulation in the convoluted form of an “infringement on personal liberty which could undermine their way of life,” ignoring the broader economic debate. La Follette’s presence might have brought the real economic issues more into focus and at least would have made the people of Fond du Lac confront the question of the inequity of the existing system to other citizens of the State.

The election campaign of 1904 included other controversial incidents that reinforced the anti-La Follette movement. One incident that happened in Fond du Lac involved La Follette supporters’ efforts to take attention away from Senator Joseph V. Quarles’ speech, scheduled for November 5. Reports were released that La Follette himself would be speaking at Turner Hall the same night that Senator Quarles planned to speak. TheDaily Reporter printed, “Little Bob Is Coming, Finally Concludes To Speak To People Of Fond du Lac.”³⁰ After it was announced that La Follette would speak in Fond du Lac, attention was diverted away from Senator Quarles’ speech at the Crescent Opera House. The next day, prominent local Republicans in Fond du Lac asked voters to oppose La Follette in the upcoming election, while the newspapers were an-nouncing his visit, scheduled for Saturday night.

Whether La Follette ever actually intended to speak in Fond du Lac during the campaign remains an open question. Announcements were sent out to all factories and businesses through-out the city, and arrangements for the use of Turner Hall were made. TheCommonwealth andReporter printed an article a day before La Follette was to speak. But La Follette chose not to come to Fond du Lac and instead spoke that night in Madison. This was not an uncommon practice for him; his campaign would reserve two or three places to speak and then would announce at the last minute that he would be unable to attend. As noted previously, by 1904, La Follette’s staff had not developed the relevant information on railroad rates for him to use in a speech in Fond du Lac, so perhaps he never intended to appear.

The failure to appear itself became an issue locally. Democrats and Stalwart Repub-licans wrote articles stating that La Follette had misled the people of Fond du Lac. “Deceived The People, Governor La Follette did not intend to come to Fond du Lac,” proclaimed a headline that asserted La Follette’s purpose had been to try to keep people away from the Quarles meeting at the Crescent Opera House.³¹

A La Follette campaign representative had in fact appeared at the Turner Hall meeting. Assistant Secretary of State Fred M. Miner had been sent in La Follette’s place, but the problem with a relatively insignificant figure like Miner was that no one really seemed to know who he was. TheReporter argued that, if Miner were an important speaker, someone would have heard of him, and the paper returned to the theme that La Follette had not given a speech in Fond du Lac during the 1904 campaign. Given the two speakers appearing in Fond du Lac on that Satur-day evening, the unknown Miner and the well-known Senator Quarles, many more people naturally went to hear Quarles, who enjoyed considerable local support.

La Follette’s campaign strategy really did not consider the city of Fond du Lac as a major threat to his reelection. Where the German-American Democrat population was large, La Follette assumed that, if he lost the Stalwart Republican vote, he would make up for it with crossover voters from the Democratic Party. This had been less true for the elections of 1900 and 1902, for party unity among the Republicans and Democrats had been still relatively strong in those elections, though the 1902 election had involved a more significant threat from the Democrats. In the campaign of 1904, “Stalwart” Republicans in many cities like Fond du Lac mounted a vigorous anti-La Follette movement, but the Democratic defections to La Follette also grew in number.

La Follette may have made a mistake by speaking in Madison rather than in Fond du Lac on November 4, for the latter city would have presented a field in which to win fresh converts, whereas Dane County was already a La Follette bastion. Making a speech in Fond du Lac might have improved his vote in the County. Forty-eight per cent of the voters had favored Repub-licans in 1902, while the percentage dropped to only forty-six in 1904.³² As it was, La Follette gained nothing from the “hypothetical” appearance, while he presented his foes with an issue when he did not give his advertised speech.

Voting statistics show a decline in La Follette’s popularity in Fond du Lac during his three gubernatorial races, yet comparing the three races in terms of votes does not show the real effect of the anti-La Follette movement. If La Follette’s name had been placed on the ballot as a Progressive, competing with Democrat and Republican candidates, it would be easier to deter-mine in retrospect exactly who voted for which candidate. But since La Follette’s faction ran on the Republican Party ticket, only general inferences concerning cross voting between parties can be made. In the 1904 election, La Follette lost the city of Fond du Lac by 553 votes out of 4,151 people voting.³³ In 1902, La Follette had lost the city by 348 votes out of 3,488, whereas in 1900, he had lost by only 105 out of 3,725 votes cast.³⁴ Although he carried Fond du Lac County in 1900, La Follette did not carry it either in 1902 or in 1904. The statistics do not permit exten-sive analysis of cross voting between Democrats and Republicans, but it is clear that defections from the Republicans allowed the Democrats, who otherwise were not very strong in the state, to win a majority in Fond du Lac during the last two La Follette races for the governorship.

Both the anti-La Follette and the Progressive movements were significant in Fond du Lac, but the anti-La Follette movement proved somewhat stronger. La Follette knew that cross voting from party to party would be a critical factor in his 1904 candidacy, and it certainly made a difference in Fond du Lac. German-Americans tended to vote in favor of what the local news-papers termed “personal liberty,” or “laissez faire,” because of their privileged economic status, whereas other Wisconsin ethnic groups tended to respond to La Follette’s call to economic fair-ness and democracy. The German-American tendency to vote according to a philosophy of “personal liberty” made them politically less reliable than Scandinavians, because the German-Americans were more likely to cross party lines to vote for whomever they regarded as guarding those personal rights. The Progressive Era was at its birth in the factional struggles during these Wisconsin elections in the first decade of the twentieth century. Absence of a large Scandi-navian population in Fond du Lac left local politics in the hands of an anti-La Follette movement that faced little opposition. The stage for the anti-La Follette movement in Fond du Lac had been set well before La Follette became Governor. A clash of philosophical and political values that masked real economic disputes, and the emergence of ethnic politics through La Follette’s choice of William Hoard as an ally, laid the groundwork for the anti-La Follette movement. Events after La Follette was elected only accented and reshaped the political struggle that marked Wisconsin politics during his tenure as Governor.

1 -The Blue Book Of The State Of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: 1903), 1069.return

2 - Herbert F. Margulies,Decline Of The Progressive Movement In Wisconsin (Stevens Point, Wisconsin: Worzalla Publishing Co., 1968), 224.return

3 - Allen Fraser Lovejoy,La Follette and the Establishment of the Direct Primary in Wisconsin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941), 14.return

4 - Lovejoy, 21.return

5 - Lovejoy, 74;Milwaukee Free Press, October 12, 1902.return

6 - Ellen Torelle,The Political Philosophy of Robert M. La Follette (Madison, Wisconsin: Robert Marion La Follette Co., 1920), 28-29.return

7 - Lovejoy, 72.return

8 - Lovejoy, 94.return

9 - Marguilies, 56.return

10 - Lovejoy, 14-15.return

11 - Albert O. Barton,La Follette’s Winning Of Wisconsin (1894-1904)(Iowa: The Homestead Co., 1922), 230.return

12 -Fond du Lac Daily Reporter, November 2, 1902.return

13 -Fond du Lac Commonwealth, April 11, 1904.return

14 -Fond du Lac Commonwealth, April 8, 1904.return

15 - Barton, 359-364.return

16 - Lovejoy, 20.return

17 -Fond du Lac Commonwealth, November 1, 1904.return

18 -Fond du Lac Commonwealth andFond du Lac Daily Reporter, November 4, 1904.return

19 -Fond du Lac Commonwealth, November 7, 1904.return

20 -The Blue Book Of The State Of Wisconsin (1891), 575.return

21 - David P. Thelen,The New Citizenship, Origins of Progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885-1900 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1972), 52.return

22 -Fond du Lac Daily Reporter, October 11, 1900.return

23 -Fond du Lac Commonwealth, October 23, 1902.return

24 -Fond du Lac Commonwealth, October 27, 1902.return

25 -Barton, 191.return

26 - James R. Donoghue,How Wisconsin Voted 1848-1954 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956), 88.return

27 -Fond du Lac Commonwealth, November 9, 1904.return

28 - Barton, 412.return

29 - Barton, 196.return

30 -Fond du Lac Daily Reporter, November 3, 1904.return

31 -Fond du Lac Daily Reporter, November 4, 1904.return

32 - Donoghue, 87-88.return

33 -The Blue Book Of The State Of Wisconsin, (1905), 319.return

34 -The Blue Book Of The State Of Wisconsin, (1903), 402.return

Copyright 2002 by Clarence B. Davis. All Rights Reserved. Printed by Action Printing, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
Electronic publication by Fond du Lac Public Library has been approved by Clarence B. Davis.

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