34 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin was not a Populist, and the state 

 which furnished the setting for his career was never Populist territory. 

 Yet it would be hard to find another American of the period more 

 thoroughly representative of Middle Western agrarianism or another 

 state more receptive to the idea of governmental regulation of business. 

 A conservative in his earlier years and almost a regular, La Follette had 

 found his hopes for political advancement blocked at every turn by a party 

 machine subservient to the state's industrial leaders. Taking his case to 

 the people, he persuaded a majority of them, farmers for the most part 

 rather than city dwellers, to back him in his war on the bosses. Un- 

 doubtedly he was aided in his efforts by the Old World background of 

 many Wisconsin voters, men who were accustomed to a powerful govern- 

 ment and now saw no harm in it as long as they could control it. But 

 probably he was aided far more by the strong antimonopoly tradition 

 which among Wisconsin farmers was much older than Populism and 

 dated back to the Grangers. Above all, he furnished to the cause per- 

 sistent, dynamic, intelligent leadership something rarely found among 

 the Populists. 8 



La Follette's acknowledgment of his debt to Grangerism is clear and 

 explicit. Progressivism, he maintained, first "expressed itself in the rise 

 to power of the Patrons of Husbandry," whose influence was brief but 

 unique. The Grangers had succeeded in awakening Wisconsin farmers 

 to the possibilities of cooperation; it had made them more sensitive to 

 the abuses operating behind the political and economic scene. "As a boy 

 on the farm ... I heard and felt this movement of the Grangers swirling 

 about me," wrote La Follette. "I suppose I have never fully lost the effect 

 of that early impression." 9 



In spite of the inspiration he derived from the Grangers, La Follette's 

 decision to lead a movement for agrarian reform did not materialize 

 until he had gone down to defeat as a regular. When he stood for re- 

 election to Congress in 1890, he was serving his third term as a Republican 

 in the House of Representatives. Although showing some evidence of 



8. Robert M. La Follette, La Follette's Autobiography: A Personal Narrative of 

 Political Experience (Madison, Wis., 1913), p. 18; Theodore Saloutos, "The Wis- 

 consin Society of Equity," Agricultural History, XIV (April, 1940), p. 79. 



9. La Follette, Autobiography, p. 19. 



