36 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



Minnesota house of representatives who had migrated to Wisconsin, and 

 had behind him a long background of agrarian protest. After 1890, when 

 he was elected to the Wisconsin assembly from his new home in Dunn 

 County, he became known for his earnest advocacy of anti-pass legisla- 

 tion, and by 1899 he had won the legislature to his way of thinking. 14 



With equal shrewdness La Follette also made friends with Nils Haugen, 

 a popular Norwegian politician who, although a Republican, had won re- 

 election to Congress in 1890. When Haugen unsuccessfully sought the 

 governorship in 1894, La Follette supported him warmly, and the good 

 feeling thus engendered was not forgotten by the Scandinavian contingent. 

 The Scandinavian farmers, as La Follette well knew, were, next to the 

 Germans, the largest foreign group in the state. 10 



Although La Follette lost in his first try for the Republican guber- 

 natorial nomination in 1896, the returns showed that he had made notable 

 progress in lining up the farmer vote. According to the Wisconsin 

 Farmer, a leading farm journal, he was "a man in close sympathy with 

 Wisconsin agriculture." "Such a chief executive," the editorial continued, 

 "is greatly needed in Wisconsin at present. He should be a man, too, with 

 brains and courage, a defender of the 'plain people' and not a tool of 

 corporate interests, nor the choice of corporation lobbyists. . . . We believe 

 that the Hon. R. M. La Follette is such a man." 16 The year following his 

 defeat for governor, La Follette and some of his friends bought out the 

 Old Dane, a newspaper for rural readers published at the state capital. 

 Under a new name, the State, and with a tow-headed Norwegian, John 

 M. Nelson, as editor, this journal soon became a power in Wisconsin 

 politics. 17 Former Governor William Dempster Hoard, the founder of 

 Hoard's Dairyman, was also a La Follette supporter, while two outside 

 newspapers, the S\andinaven of Chicago and the Tidende of Minne- 

 apolis, both of which had many Wisconsin readers, gave him their 

 blessing. 18 



14. La Follette, Autobiography, p. 221; Blue Boo\ of the State of Wisconsin, 

 1897, p. 677. 



15. Ernest W. Stirn, An Annotated Bibliography of Robert M. La Follette (Chi- 

 cago, 1937), p. 23; K. C. Babcock, The Scandinavian Element in the United States 

 (Urbana, 111., 1914), pp. 166-68. 



16. Wisconsin Farmer (Madison), July 24, 1896. 



17. La Follette, Autobiography, pp. 190-91, 207-8. 



1 8. Barton, La Follette' s Winning of Wisconsin, pp. 55-57. 



