Like many an editor of the old, hell-raising school, triple-chinned William Theodore Evjue is at his best when he has a mad on. As Wisconsin's loudest personal journalist, he lets his purple rages spill over the front page of the Madison Capital Times in roaring editorial torrents. He does not confine himself to print. The hired hands in his newsroom are inured to his thunderous invective.
Last week, 63-year-old Bill Evjue (pronounced Ev-you) was mad again. What irked him this time was the death of the Progressive Party (TIME, March 25). A faithful disciple of old "Fighting Bob" La Follette, he had been convention chairman at the party's birth at Fond du Lac in 1934. For most of its life, he was the movement's editorial mouthpiece. Confronted with the party's corpse, he refused to call it suicide. It was murder, he cried. He demanded an autopsy, accused the La Follette brothers of killing the party "by kidnapping it into the realm of opportunism and expediency." A few breaths later, he nonetheless promised to support young Bob La Follette for re-election to the Senate "because of [his] distinguished record."
Wisconsinites are used to Editor Evjue's exhaled outbursts and inhaled inconsistencies. Evjue fights on labor's side, but is always fighting with labor. To compose his bristling editorials, he stomps around the office, dictating at the top of his voice to a stenographer across the room. His staffers can't trust him to keep a confidential memo out of print, and take massive doses of his abuse. They had to plead for years to get "desks big enough for three-syllable words." But they never get fired.
Today his paper (circ. 37,000) is the largest in the state, outside of Milwaukee; it makes its combative editor $25,000 to $40,000 a year. Evjue's readers, like his employes, know him for a headstrong, softhearted character who can't help pouring advice and vituperation on friend & foe alike.
Last week irregular old Bill Evjue gave the Progressives some free editorial advice as they re-entered the G.O.P.: "They will need to avoid party regularity like the plague."