The conundrum of Progressive Era reform flowering simultaneously with the institutionalization of Jim Crow, the establishment of the Asiatic Barred Zone, and the introduction of European immigration restriction fascinates historians, even as it agitates them.Footnote ¹ From a contemporary, post-civil-rights-era perspective there is something deeply disturbing—and disappointing—about progressivism and racial and ethnic bigotry apparently going hand in hand. Was progressivism inherently racist and ethnically chauvinistic, or are we dealing simply with a case of practically minded politicians bowing to bigotry to achieve political results? An investigation of the ethnic and racial side of Robert M. La Follette Sr. hardly promises to answer this question fully. The progressive movement remains well-nigh impossible to pin down in exact analytical terms. Still, it may be argued that La Follette was an unusually uncompromising politician who proved willing, at least during the latter part of his career, to sacrifice practical results for idealistic principles.Footnote ² If La Follette's progressivism was of a purer strain than that of many a result-oriented pragmatic politician, was it less bigoted?

A perusal of two works endeavoring to present La Follette's overall political thinking provides us with some first clues to his thinking on race and ethnicity. The first work is his famous autobiography, a series of ten articles originally ghostwritten by journalist Ray Stannard Baker for American Magazine and later (1913) published as an 800-page book following substantial revision and updating by La Follette himself.Footnote ³ The second work is less well-known. The Political Philosophy of Robert M. La Follette came out in 1920 and was edited by Ellen Torelle, using her maiden name and thus not revealing her marriage to Louis B. Nagler, Wisconsin's former assistant secretary of state. Nagler, a German American La Follette supporter, had in 1917 been indicted under the Espionage Act for criticizing the Red Cross and the YMCA.Footnote ⁴ A hodgepodge of La Follette's public utterings, the 400-page The Political Philosophy attempted to provide ideological consistency, if not to La Follette's whole career—only two quotes antedate his emergence as a reformer in late 1896—then at least to his years as a progressive, while also vindicating his war record.Footnote ⁵ That La Follette approved of this work may be seen not only from the fact that Albert O. Barton and Fred L. Holmes—two staunch La Follette supporters—assisted Torelle in editing the book, but also that it was published by the La Follette Company.

As it turns out, each work offers precious little coverage of racial matters. The discussion of African Americans is brief and set in a context antedating La Follette's emergence as a reformer in late 1896. In his autobiography, only two references are made to African Americans. First, La Follette notes that upon his arrival in Washington, DC, in January 1885 as freshman congressman, one of his first acts was to go to Lincoln Park where Thomas Ball's Emancipation Memorial excited him: “There stood Lincoln holding in one hand the Proclamation of Emancipation, the other extended over the head of a kneeling negro from whose wrists the shackles had just parted!” Second, La Follette observes that with the rise of the Granger movement in the 1870s, “[m]inds long fixed upon the slavery question were turning to new affairs.”Footnote ⁶ Notably, he portrays the Granger movement in Wisconsin as an early expression of progressivism.Footnote ⁷ In The Political Philosophy, an 1886 address by La Follette before a graduating class of law students at Howard University—with Frederick Douglass in attendance—is the only speech in the entire book dedicated to African Americans. As noted also by Nancy C. Unger, La Follette exclaimed, “We are one people, one by truth, one almost by blood ” (italics added) and warned, “It is snobbish stupidity, it is supreme folly, to talk of non-contact, or exclusion!”Footnote ⁸ A remark by Belle Case La Follette, who between 1925 and her death in 1931 wrote the first twenty-six chapters of the two-volume biography of her husband, is telling: “It was then only twenty-three years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and the racial question was much more in evidence in Washington than now” (even if “now” refers to the late 1920s and not the Progressive Era).Footnote ⁹

If La Follette's Autobiography and The Political Philosophy have little to offer on African Americans, none of the works states anything about Asian Americans. As far as La Follette's Autobiography is concerned, this may be explained by way of the book's provincial outlook: La Follette apparently viewed his tale of brave battles against corporate evil and political corruption in one state, Wisconsin, as his ticket to the presidency.Footnote ¹⁰ That state contained virtually no Asian Americans—and only very few African Americans. The perspective of The Political Philosophy is broader. This work is structured in part around La Follette's controversial World War I record and his fight against the Versailles Peace Treaty. Discussions of foreign nations abound, including debates on China, India, and the militarily powerful Japan—all three nations reviewed under the heading of “The White Man's Injustice to Asia.”Footnote ¹¹ Still, there is no mention in that work either of Asian Americans.

In La Follette's Autobiography, Native Americans are discussed in some detail but not assigned a prominent place. La Follette has little to say about the substantive Native American issues that confronted him in Wisconsin politics, focusing instead on the federal level. As La Follette explains, twice in his political career was he appointed to congressional Indian Affairs committees, in 1885 in the House and in 1906 in the Senate. On each occasion, as he notes, this happened against his personal wish. In La Follette's view, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs figured among a group of committees “occupied by a multiplicity of unimportant legislation.” Even so, he avers, both in the House and in the Senate he fought the good fight, challenging railroad, lumbering, and coaling interests that threatened to cheat Native Americans of their lands. Indeed, his experiences on the House Committee on Indian Affairs helped shape his understanding of the need to cleanse government of corruption and make it truly representative of the people.Footnote ¹² In The Political Philosophy, Native Americans are hardly mentioned at all. A 1906 speech under the heading of “Indian Coal Lands” focuses more on the greed of the railroad companies than on the plight of Native Americans.Footnote ¹³ La Follette, it emerges, focused only on Native Americans to the degree that he could fit them into his progressive narrative of battling against political fraud and corporate evil.

Neither La Follette's Autobiography nor The Political Philosophy devotes much attention to those groups that in later parlance would be called “ethnic.” To be sure, La Follette's overall description is positive. In his autobiography he claims that he was often asked the question, how he expected to make Wisconsin a progressive state “with its foreign-born, foreign-bred, slow-moving population?” He maintains, however, “The spirit of liberty stirring throughout Europe in the late forties and early fifties gave us the best of Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, Ireland.” These immigrants together with Puritan Yankees arriving from New England “produced a courageous, progressive race of men in whom the spirit of democracy dominates.”Footnote ¹⁴ He especially emphasizes the role played by German and Scandinavian immigrants. Not only did Germany send forth to Wisconsin thousands of “hardy peasants,” but she also provided La Follette's home state with intellectual capacities like Carl Schurz. Indeed, Wisconsin's recently enacted insurance law was based on German ideas.Footnote ¹⁵ Scandinavian immigrants are treated in equally friendly fashion. One Norwegian-born politician is described as “a fine representative of the best Scandinavian type—tall, strong, virile, with something of the Viking quality in his character.” More generally, Scandinavians are characterized as “liberty-loving.”Footnote ¹⁶ Other ethnic groups are barely mentioned. La Follette does point out that Chief Justice Edward G. Ryan of Wisconsin—a man whom he admired immensely—was of Irish background and was of “an erratic, impulsive and passionate temperament,” adding that this never influenced his judicial decisions.Footnote ¹⁷ La Follette also notes that Emanuel L. Philipp—a political enemy and soon-to-be governor of Wisconsin—was of Swiss and Italian ancestry and refers to him, among other things, as “swarthy,” yet without in any way expanding negatively on that point.Footnote ¹⁸

With one notable exception, ethnic groups are offered even less room in The Political Philosophy.Footnote ¹⁹ The exception is German Americans. Even though The Political Philosophy was published in the aftermath of World War I, a 1902 speech by La Follette welcoming Prince Henry of Prussia to Milwaukee is included in the book: “The German-American's love for his native land, its heroic past, its majestic presence, its language, its traditions, its literature, its song, serves only to foster those elements of character which intensify his allegiance, his loyalty, his devotion to the land of his adoption.”Footnote ²⁰ Although this address hardly was controversial in German-dominated Milwaukee in 1902, by the time of its publication in The Political Philosophy—on the threshold of what John Higham called the “tribal twenties”—it sounded like the negation of all recent, super patriotic calls for “one hundred percent Americanism.” It praised exactly that type of “hyphenated” American identity—in this case, German and American—which Theodore Roosevelt only a few years earlier had spoken out against in no uncertain terms. In fact, in a very down-to-earth manner La Follette's address portended Randolph Bourne and Horace Kallen's concept of cultural pluralism.Footnote ²¹

Judging alone from La Follette's Autobiography and The Political Philosophy, racial and ethnic matters were not central to Robert La Follette's political thinking. This revolved instead around the idea of restoring, as he saw it, political power to “the people” and battling “the interests.” The essence of the progressive movement—a term he began to use as early as 1902—“lies in its purpose to uphold the fundamental principles of representative government.”Footnote ²² When he spoke of “the people”—which he did incessantly—La Follette used the term in a fairly expansive manner. One searches in vain in the two books for racially exclusive words like “Aryan,” “Nordic,” or “Teuton,” not to speak of “mongrelization,” “race suicide,” or “miscegenation.” The term “Anglo-Saxon” is used once, to describe the populations in Britain's self-governing dominions. On the other hand, “the human race,” an inclusive term, is used on seven occasions in The Political Philosophy. Indeed, in speaking to his African American audience at Howard University in 1886, La Follette exclaimed, “A new century is bursting upon you. There never was such an opportunity for leadership in the history of the human race.”Footnote ²³ In a speech in 1919 he noted that “Asia's contribution to the world has been the principle of human brotherhood.”Footnote ²⁴

This essay does not claim that La Follette was immune to racial stereotypes. As noted, Scandinavians were portrayed as masculine. Scandinavian and German immigrants were portrayed as blending well with “Yankees” who, in turn, were associated with such qualities as ingenuity, shrewdness, restlessness, courage, commercialism, Puritanism, and a progressive spirit.Footnote ²⁵ Such characteristics were not ascribed to Native Americans nor to African Americans. They were portrayed as much more passive. Native Americans were depicted as victims in need of the protection of white reformers like La Follette. African Americans were invested with a certain capacity for (internal) leadership, yet Lincoln emerged as the true hero of black history. No close link was offered between progressive reform and African American politics. Even so, judging by these two works, La Follette's views on race and ethnicity appear remarkably benign.

La Follette's Autobiography—a heavily biased personal account—and The Political Philosophy hardly provide us with the full picture of La Follette's racial and ethnic views. In private, La Follette on at least one occasion referred to an African American as a “coon” and a “blamed nigger,” if only for humorous effect.Footnote ²⁶ Neither of the two works reveals how La Follette during the gubernatorial campaign of 1900 toned down his reform rhetoric, toed the national Republican Party line, and came out strongly in favor of American imperialism.Footnote ²⁷ By 1913, to be sure, La Follette had emerged as a leading anti-imperialist and at least in private could suggest to his wife Belle Case—a more energetic proponent of civil rights than himself—that if “the Lord would only let us out of the Phillipino [sic] mess and keep us out of Mexico we might in the course of time pay off the debt we owe to the black man.”Footnote ²⁸ Still, this quotation also makes it clear again that La Follette hardly viewed the fight for African Americans' civil rights as his top priority. To be sure, he did criticize the segregation policies of the Woodrow Wilson administration.Footnote ²⁹

Mostly, as La Follette's Autobiography and The Political Philosophy suggest, La Follette's fight for African Americans' rights took place on the chronological margins of his career. In a congressional speech in 1889 he condemned a South Carolina election law that in his view was depriving an African American Republican of his rightful seat in Congress.Footnote ³⁰ The following year La Follette supported the unsuccessful federal elections bill sponsored by a later nemesis, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, to ensure an unhampered black vote in the South.Footnote ³¹ In 1924—at the other chronological extreme, when La Follette ran for the presidency on a Progressive Party ticket—W. E. B. Du Bois declared, “The statement in the Progressive Campaign Text Book on the negro suits me exactly: I wrote it.”Footnote ³² During that same campaign, however, even as La Follette wrote an open letter denouncing the recently resurgent Ku Klux Klan, he left no doubt about his ultimate priorities: “But first and before all else, I am bound to say that in my view the one dominant, all-embracing issue in this campaign is to break the combined power of the monopoly system over the economic life of the American people.”Footnote ³³ Indeed, the Progressive Party platform of 1924 contains no specific mention of African Americans and their issues.Footnote ³⁴ La Follette offered no direct link between his version of the progressive movement and civil rights. The latter remained on La Follette's backburner.

Neither La Follette's Autobiography nor The Political Philosophy provides us with a full picture of La Follette's views on Native Americans. The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 shaped Native American issues in Wisconsin during La Follette's later terms as governor, but he does not discuss the fact that he was on the House Committee on Indian Affairs when this misguided reform became law.Footnote ³⁵ Viewed today as the culmination of the federal government's attempt to assimilate Native Americans, the act broke large tracts of tribal lands up into individual farming parcels while conferring citizenship on the new owners. Substantial areas were declared surplus and sold to white purchasers.Footnote ³⁶ Because the Dawes Act was passed by the House of Representatives without any roll calls, La Follette's stance remains uncertain. Had La Follette been outraged by the statute, surely he would have told his political supporters so, especially after confronting the disarray it caused while Wisconsin governor and U.S. senator.Footnote ³⁷ In his autobiography, La Follette quoted Commissioner of Indian Affairs John D.C. Atkin that a completely different bill, a proposed pine timber land grab from Menominees in Wisconsin, was “a little the worst Indian bill I ever saw.”Footnote ³⁸ This latter measure fit better into La Follette's heroic progressive narrative of his struggle against “the interests” than did the Dawes Act, especially because the Menominee bill was apparently the brainchild of Senator Philetus Sawyer, La Follette's despised rival, in his view the personification of political corruption in Wisconsin Republican politics.

In the twilight of his political career, La Follette confronted once again two of the main principles incorporated in the Dawes Act: the parceling out of tribal lands and the conferral of citizenship on Native Americans. This time—unlike 1887—he could choose between the two principles. In 1923 he took a lead in the Senate in defeating the “Omnibus Bill,” which aimed at ending federal direction of Indian affairs and individualizing remaining tribal property. The following year he supported passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, which granted citizenship to all Native Americans.Footnote ³⁹ Still, there was no mention of Native Americans in his Progressive Party platform of 1924.

Even though Asian Americans were neither touched upon in La Follette's Autobiography nor in The Political Philosophy, in late 1916 the issue of immigration from Asia came up in the Senate, forcing La Follette to show his hand. As it turns out, although La Follette voted in favor of restriction, he supported efforts to make it at least de jure colorblind. Thus, La Follette joined a majority in the Senate in creating the Asiatic Barred Zone as a geographical entity, “instead,” as the New York Times noted, “of naming the races or nationalities,” as had been done in the House version of the bill.Footnote ⁴⁰ When Senator James Phelan of California asked for reconsideration of an amendment whose real purpose was to exclude Japanese picture brides from entry into the United States, La Follette voted aye but was overruled by the Senate majority.Footnote ⁴¹ To La Follette, it would seem, Japanese immigrants remained beyond the pale of citizenship. When an amendment came up proposing the exclusion of “all persons who are not eligible for citizenship under the existing laws of the United States”—an obvious allusion to Chinese and Japanese immigrants—La Follette again voted in the affirmative, even though one senator warned that the wording of the amendment constituted an affront to imperial Japan. The amendment was defeated.Footnote ⁴² La Follette did, however, join the majority in rebuffing an amendment barring the immigration of blacks from Africa.Footnote ⁴³

Both La Follette's Autobiography and The Political Philosophy hardly tell the full story of La Follette's attitude to the role of ethnicity in politics. Still, the overall lack of attention to ethnic factors in those works mirrored his basic conviction that in politics they ought to be kept to a minimum. All citizens—including those of immigrant background—were to be accepted on equal terms as part of “the people.” This is not to deny that La Follette, during the pre-World War I part of his career, engaged in coalition-building with Scandinavian American politicians and voters, in effect recognizing the ethnic group as a distinct interest, and that he during and after World War I practiced a rather similar approach to German Americans. In so doing, however, La Follette's strategy was to level the playing field so that ethnics would enjoy the same political rights and influence as native-born white Americans and not be relegated to symbolic niches as “Scandinavian Americans” or “German Americans” with sharply circumscribed access to nominations and to patronage.Footnote ⁴⁴ As La Follette himself claimed proudly in July 1906, shortly before the direct primary was put to its first test in Wisconsin, “In the last ten years great changes have taken place in this commonwealth. Principles have become more important than party names. Issues have towered above men. The nationality and the location of candidates have become less important than the character and ability of the individual.”Footnote ⁴⁵ Thus, when Scandinavian Americans and later German Americans enthusiastically rallied around La Follette, in reality they were supporting a politician who saw it as one of his missions to reduce the role of ethnicity in politics. To La Follette, Scandinavian and German ethnics were simply part of “the people” and as such should be invited to participate in the all-out battle against “the interests.”

On at least two occasions, La Follette's attitude to the ethnic factor did attain Americanizing overtones. In the congressional elections of 1890—years before he emerged as a reformer—La Follette, along with most of the Wisconsin Republican ticket, went down to defeat due in large measure to the Bennett law, an English-language school law adopted the previous year by the Republican-dominated Wisconsin legislature and supported strongly by Governor William Dempster Hoard. That year the Wisconsin Republican Party suffered large German Lutheran defections, whereas many Scandinavian American voters—usually reliable Republicans—stayed home. Even though La Follette did not himself campaign aggressively for the law, for years he suffered politically among German Americans for his close relations with Hoard.Footnote ⁴⁶ In 1906, when he supported the progressive Swedish American Irvine L. Lenroot for the Republican gubernatorial nomination over the not-quite-so-progressive Norwegian-born incumbent Governor James O. Davidson, La Follette appeared once again to pose as an Americanizer. In his frustration over what he obviously perceived as ethnic clannishness, he was reported to have blurted out to an audience of mainly Norwegian Americans: “What is the matter with you Norwegians. Can't you throw off your social prejudice and be good Americans?”Footnote ⁴⁷

La Follette's Americanizing tendencies should not be exaggerated. His was usually a type of Americanization by inclusion rather than exclusion, an offer to groups that until recently had been considered outsiders to come on in and participate in politics on terms of full equality rather than merely through symbolic representation. His 1902 pluralist eulogy to German Americans before Prince Henry of Prussia displayed the character of La Follette's Americanizing tendencies. “Had they [the German Americans] not been for generations imbued with patriotism and undying affection for the fatherland, they could not in nature have so soon become loyal American citizens.”Footnote ⁴⁸ If in 1902 the speech constituted yet another effort by La Follette to prove to German Americans that he did not support the Bennett law, its inclusion in the 1920 The Political Philosophy went to prove that La Follette's broad conception of what constituted “loyal American citizens” antedated the World War I era by many years. In the years following World War I, La Follette would continue to sing his praise of German Americans.Footnote ⁴⁹ That effort, however, did not simply constitute a cynical attempt by a vote-grabbing politician to make major inroads among a vast ethnic group, even if La Follette did realize, of course, the value of winning their support. Rather, La Follette's appeals on behalf of German Americans should be viewed as part of his endeavor to safeguard their civil liberties and thus guarantee their place within his inclusive conception of American citizenship. Only because they were under threat did he speak about them in terms more specific than “the people” against “the interests.”

During the Progressive Era, both Scandinavian Americans and German Americans were viewed as part of the “old” immigration from Europe. In La Follette's Autobiography, as well as The Political Philosophy, on the other hand, there are extremely few references to the “new” immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. In the racialized discourse of the early twentieth century, the latter were commonly assailed viciously and pronounced unfit for citizenship. Notably, such members of La Follette's University of Wisconsin brain trust as Professors Edward A. Ross and John R. Commons—both mentioned favorably in La Follette's Autobiography—participated aggressively in that discourse.Footnote ⁵⁰ La Follette himself did not. In the Senate, however, the issue of immigration restriction was forced on him. When that happened, he did in fact prove willing to support some types of immigration restriction but worked simultaneously to establish special guarantees for political refugees.

In 1917, the literacy test, propagated by the Boston-based Immigration Restriction League and promoted by Lodge for decades, finally survived a presidential veto and became law. This formed one leg of the Immigration Act of 1917 whose other leg was the Asiatic Barred Zone. As it turns out, La Follette supported the literacy test initially and later voted to override President Wilson's veto.Footnote ⁵¹ In the negotiations over the bill, however, La Follette worked to strike out a clause relating to the admission of aliens who “advocate or teach the unlawful destruction of property.” “Such a provision,” he claimed, “would have prevented the promoters of such movements as the Boston Tea Party from coming here had their action been taken in another country.” As the New York Times noted, “He believed there ought to be no bar against sincere revolutionists.”Footnote ⁵² An amendment to La Follette's liking was ultimately adopted.Footnote ⁵³ As he reported to his family, he “got in on the immigration bill and helped kill a few snakes.”Footnote ⁵⁴

In 1921, La Follette once again came out for restriction, this time by supporting the Immigration Quota Act, which imposed a 3 percent quota on each European nation based on the number of immigrants of that nationality present in the United States in 1910. It passed the Senate in early May by an overwhelming 78 to 1 vote. Prior to that, La Follette helped defeat an amendment that would have imposed a two-year ban on all immigration to the United States. As in 1917, La Follette once more worked to secure the rights of refugees, this time by supporting an amendment introduced by fellow progressive Republican Hiram Johnson of California to admit aliens who could prove that “they are actually subjects of religious or political persecution.” The amendment was defeated by a 60 to 15 vote.Footnote ⁵⁵ Unlike 1917 and 1921, La Follette did not cast a single vote when the Senate debated immigration restriction in 1924, leading to the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act, which tightened the quota system in the short term and introduced the national origins principle on a permanent basis.Footnote ⁵⁶ During the presidential campaign of 1924, however, La Follette rejected the role of race in immigration policy: “I stand firmly on the necessity for controlling the tide of immigration for economic reasons, but I am opposed to the fixing of immigration quotas on a basis of racial discrimination.”Footnote ⁵⁷

Almost certainly a stab at the national origins principle, La Follette's 1924 statement aptly summarized his view of European immigration policy. Even though he supported the literacy test and the 1921 quota act, in all likelihood his motivation was economic rather than ethno-religious or racial. In 1914, after all, he had unsuccessfully supported a Catholic for junior senator of Wisconsin.Footnote ⁵⁸ In 1924, it is true, La Follette had to fight charges of anti-Semitism following the abuse of his franking privilege by a colleague who had circulated material critical of Jews. In defending himself, however, La Follette pointed out that besides having worked to sever diplomatic relations with Czarist Russia in the wake of anti-Jewish pogroms, he had fought enthusiastically in the Senate for the confirmation of Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court. He added, “I gave my personal support to Solomon Levitan, the Progressive State Treasurer of Wisconsin, when the fires of racial intolerance were burning highest.”Footnote ⁵⁹

That same year, speaking to an almost exclusively German American audience in New York City, La Follette exclaimed, “The real test of American citizenship is not the family tree. Nor does it lie in being able to trace ancestry back to Colonial origin. The real test is the citizen's enthusiasm and determination to share in the every-day work of making the Government of the United States serve its original purpose.”Footnote ⁶⁰ In La Follette's view, Native Americans and African Americans passed that test, if only barely and with the help of whites. Immigrants from Japan, however, did not, even as he spoke of Asia's contribution to the principle of human brotherhood. Thus, as well-intentioned and enlightened as La Follette usually was in an age “obsessed with race,” he cannot be taken completely off the racist hook.Footnote ⁶¹ That being said, a main conclusion arising from the present investigation of the ethnic and racial side of La Follette is that in his purist conception of progressivism, ethnic and racial considerations belonged on its margins, not at its center. La Follette's version of progressivism did not draw its sustenance from racism or from ethnic bigotry, nor was ethnic or racial problem-solving central to it. For many white ethnics this was advantageous. As it seemed, La Follette aimed simply to level the political playing field, so that everyone could participate. Especially for African Americans, however, La Follette's understanding of progressivism confirmed by and large their general post-Reconstruction experience: Even the most enthusiastic and well-intentioned white progressive politicians tended to be blind to the desperate needs of racial minorities, unless, for some other reason, those needs fit into their political struggle.