(2 of 6)
In Washington, Bob La Follette quickly developed from "the Peter Pan of the Senate" into an eminently capable political technician. As an energetic member of the Senate Finance Committee, he has worked for higher income, estate and business profits taxes, Government ownership of banks and utilities. As head of the Senate Civil Liberties Committee, he conducted its spectacular investigation of violence in steel strikes, industrial espionage and vigilante groups. In 1932, he broke with the Republican Party, of which his father's Progressive movement had been a wing, supported Franklin Roosevelt so vigorously that as recently as last summer not a few observers got the impression that "Young Bob" was likely to be the President's personal choice as his successor. Meanwhile, in Madison, Phil La Follette made Wisconsin a testing ground for the reforms his brother was pushing nationally. Wisconsin passed the first State Unemployment Insurance Act during his first term. Defeated by former Governor Walter Kohler in 1932, Phil won back his Governorship in 1934, proceeded to give Wisconsin a State Labor Relations Act, Home and Farm Credit Administration, public power system. Together the La Follettes have made an impressive political team, kept their father's old party in power with 48 out of 100 seats in the State Assembly, 16 out of 33 in the State Senate. Bob, who stayed in Washington last week to fight the Big Navy Bill, is the more polished and socially adroit of the pair. Phil, who came back from Sweden in 1936 talking vaguely but enthusiastically about the "middle way," still looks and thinks a little like a provincial pedagogue —which, as a University of Wisconsin lecturer, he used to be. Both brothers are married. Both have two children. Phil likes playing bridge or chess, Bob likes watching big-league baseball games. Both enjoy polite but informal evening entertainment, enjoy casual stops at night clubs when visiting in New York.
National relaunching of La Follette Progressivism last week was neither a surprise nor an improvisation like Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party in 1912. It was the culmination of a series of carefully planned preliminary moves, the preface to a series of equally carefully planned steps designed to make Wisconsin Progressivism a real factor in the 1940 campaign.
This spring, in Madison, Phil La Follette began conducting a series of 17 informal lunch-table conferences to which came a total of 1,200 men and women—mostly political, pedagogical and journalistic folk, first from Wisconsin, later from all over the U. S. At a recent conference were: Leon Green, dean of Northwestern University Law School; Paul Hutchinson, managing editor of the Christian Century; Carl D. Thompson, director of the Public Ownership League of America; Ellis S. Hillner, president of the Swedish National Society; Morris Bialis, manager of the Chicago board of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union; Don Harris, Des Moines C. I. O. organizer; John F. Wirds of the United Farmers of America, Professor Robert Morss Lovett of the University of Chicago, Arthur Harlow and Arthur P. McNulty of the American Labor Party.