"Wisconsin Senator" Robert La Follette Jr Hand Signed TLS From 1946

Description: Up for auction "Wisconsin Senator" Robert La Follette Jr Hand Signed TLS Dated 1946. ES-9273 Robert Marion "Young Bob" La Follette Jr. (February 6, 1895 – February 24, 1953) was a U.S. senator from Wisconsin from 1925 to 1947. As an outspoken son of Representative, Senator, and Wisconsin Governor Robert M. La Follette, co-founder of the Progressive Party and ally of the Farmer-Labor Party in adjacent Minnesota, La Follette kept the Progressive Party alive in the US Senate until his defeat by Joseph McCarthy in 1946. La Follette was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Robert M. La Follette Sr. and Belle Case La Follette. La Follette had two siblings, Philip La Follette and Fola La Follette. He attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1913 to 1917 but he did not graduate because of illness. (He received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1938.) The same illness kept him out the military during World War I. La Follette served as his father's private secretary between 1919 and 1925. With his brother Philip he formed the Wisconsin Progressive Party in 1934, and for a time the party was dominant in Wisconsin. He was reelected with the Progressive Party in 1934 and 1940. One of the Senate's leading isolationists, La Follette helped found the America First Committee in 1940. When the Wisconsin Progressive Party dissolved, La Follette returned to the Republican Party in 1946. He helped to draft and win passage of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 that modernized the legislative process in Congress. La Follette was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection as a Republican in 1946. He ran an isolationist campaign against the United Nations and was critical of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin; he ended up narrowly losing to Joseph McCarthy in the Republican primary, by 207,935 votes to 202,557. While La Follette initially started with a large lead in the polls, that lead gradually dwindled, and on the primary election day, the results of the final county to report polls tipped the scales in McCarthy's favor. La Follette sent a one-word telegram saying "Congratulations" to McCarthy. La Follette made several decisions that hurt his primary campaign. Disbanding the Progressive Party and seeking election on the Republican ticket that same year cost him the support of many progressive supporters that belonged to the former, while the more conservative Republicans were also suspicious of La Follette, for he had previously run against them. Being initially confident of victory, he further hurt his chances by staying on in Washington to draft and win passage of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 rather than returning to Wisconsin to campaign for re-election.[ La Follette faced an aggressive campaign by McCarthy and failed to refute the latter's charges, several of which were false. McCarthy attacked La Follette for not enlisting during the war, although La Follette had been 46 when Pearl Harbor was bombed and would have been too old to be accepted. McCarthy played up his own wartime service, using his wartime nickname "Tail-Gunner Joe", and the slogan "Congress needs a tail-gunner". McCarthy also claimed that while he had been away fighting for his country, La Follette had made huge profits from investments; the suggestion that La Follette had been guilty of war profiteering was deeply damaging. (In fact, McCarthy had invested in the stock market himself during the war, netting a profit of $42,000 in 1943. La Follette's investments consisted of partial interest in a radio station, which earned him a profit of $47,000 over two years.) Arnold Beichman later stated that McCarthy "was elected to his first term in the Senate with support from the Communist-controlled United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, CIO", which preferred McCarthy to the anti-communist Robert M. La Follette. This allegation, however, has never been proved. After his defeat by McCarthy, La Follette was a foreign aid advisor to the Truman administration. In a Collier's Weekly article of February 8, 1947, La Follette reported infiltration of Communists onto Congressional committee staffs. He wrote, "I know from firsthand experience that Communist sympathizers have infiltrated into committee staffs on Capitol Hill in Washington." He cited his own former subcommittee, as well as the Kilgore Subcommittee on War Mobilization and the Murray Social Committee on Small Business. He named some half-dozen CIO affiliates as being openly pro-Communist: United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE), International Fur & Leather Workers Union (IFLWU), United Public Workers of America (UPWA), Transport Workers Union, Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (MMSW), the Farm Equipment and Metal Workers, the United Furniture Workers of America (UFW), and the American Communications Association. He also stated that the difficult people to deal with were not "avowed Communists" but "fellow travelers" because "There is no litmus-paper test for these people." The only people he named were union leaders: Abram Flaxer of the UPWA, Reid Robinson of the MMSW, Ben Gold of the Furriers, Michael Quill of the TWU, and Joseph Ryan of the IL. In August 1947, Washington-based columnist Marquis Childs reported that La Follette was "comfortably established in his own offices in Washington as an economic consultant to several large corporations."

Price: 129.99 USD

Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

End Time: 2025-01-16T12:51:36.000Z

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