"Wisconsin Senator" Robert La Follette Jr Hand Signed TLS Dated 1946 for Sale

"Wisconsin Senator" Robert La Follette Jr Hand Signed TLS Dated 1946 For Sale

When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

"Wisconsin Senator" Robert La Follette Jr Hand Signed TLS Dated 1946:
$129.99

Up for sale"Wisconsin Senator" Robert La Follette Jr Hand Signed TLS Dated 1946.

ES-9273
Robert Marion "Young Bob" LaFollette Jr.(February 6, 1895 – February 24,1953) was aU.S. senatorfromWisconsinfrom 1925 to 1947. As an outspoken son ofRepresentative, Senator, and Wisconsin GovernorRobert M. La Follette,co-founder of theProgressive Partyandally of theFarmer-Labor PartyinadjacentMinnesota, La Follette kept theProgressive Party alive in the US Senate until his defeat byJoseph McCarthyin 1946.La Follette was born inMadison, Wisconsin, theson ofRobert M. La Follette Sr.andBelle Case La Follette. LaFollette had two siblings,Philip La FolletteandFola La Follette. He attended theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madisonfrom 1913 to 1917 but hedid not graduate because of illness. (He received thehonorary degreeofLL.D.from the University of Wisconsin in 1938.) The sameillness kept him out the military duringWorld War I.LaFollette served as his father's privatesecretarybetween 1919 and 1925.With his brother Philiphe formed theWisconsinProgressive Partyin 1934, and for a time the party was dominant inWisconsin. He was reelected with the Progressive Party in 1934 and 1940. One ofthe Senate's leading isolationists, La Follette helped found theAmerica First Committeein 1940.Whenthe Wisconsin Progressive Party dissolved, La Follette returned to theRepublican Party in 1946. He helped to draft and win passage of theLegislativeReorganization Act of 1946that modernized the legislativeprocess in Congress.LaFollette was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection as a Republican in 1946.He ran an isolationist campaign against theUnited Nationsand was critical of Soviet dictatorJoseph Stalin; he ended up narrowly losing toJoseph McCarthyin the Republican primary, by 207,935votes to 202,557. While La Follette initially started with a large lead in thepolls, that lead gradually dwindled, and on the primary election day, the resultsof the final county to report polls tipped the scales in McCarthy's favor. LaFollette sent a one-word telegram saying "Congratulations" toMcCarthy.LaFollette made several decisions that hurt his primary campaign. DisbandingtheProgressive Partyandseeking election on the Republican ticket that same year cost him the supportof many progressive supporters that belonged to the former, while the moreconservative Republicans were also suspicious of La Follette, for he hadpreviously run against them. Being initially confident of victory, he furtherhurt his chances by staying on in Washington to draft and win passage oftheLegislativeReorganization Act of 1946rather than returning to Wisconsinto campaign for re-election.[ LaFollette faced an aggressive campaign by McCarthy and failed to refute thelatter's charges, several of which were false. McCarthy attacked La Follettefor not enlisting during the war, although La Follette had been 46 whenPearl Harborwas bombed and would have been too old to beaccepted. McCarthy played up his own wartime service, using his wartimenickname "Tail-Gunner Joe", and the slogan "Congress needs atail-gunner". McCarthy also claimed that while he had been away fightingfor his country, La Follette had made huge profits from investments; thesuggestion that La Follette had been guilty ofwar profiteeringwas deeply damaging. (In fact, McCarthyhad 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 aradio station, which earned him a profit of $47,000 over two years.) Arnold Beichmanlater stated that McCarthy "was electedto his first term in the Senate with support from theCommunist-controlledUnited Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers,CIO",which preferred McCarthy to the anti-communist Robert M. La Follette. Thisallegation, however, has never been proved. After his defeat by McCarthy, LaFollette was aforeign aidadvisorto theTrumanadministration.InaCollier's Weeklyarticleof February 8, 1947, La Follette reported infiltration of Communists ontoCongressional committee staffs. He wrote, "I know from firsthandexperience that Communist sympathizers have infiltrated into committee staffson Capitol Hill in Washington." He cited his own former subcommittee, aswell as the Kilgore Subcommittee on War Mobilization and the Murray SocialCommittee on Small Business. He named some half-dozen CIO affiliates as beingopenly pro-Communist:UnitedElectrical, Radio and Machine Workers(UE),InternationalFur & Leather Workers Union(IFLWU),United Public Workers ofAmerica(UPWA),Transport Workers Union,Mine, Mill and SmelterWorkers(MMSW), the Farm Equipment and Metal Workers, theUnitedFurniture Workers of America(UFW), and theAmericanCommunications Association. He also stated that the difficult peopleto deal with were not "avowed Communists" but "fellow travelers" because "There is no litmus-papertest for these people." The only people he named were union leaders:Abram Flaxerof the UPWA,ReidRobinsonof the MMSW,Ben Goldof the Furriers,Michael Quillof the TWU, andJoseph Ryanofthe IL.InAugust 1947, Washington-based columnistMarquis Childsreported that La Follette was"comfortably established in his own offices in Washington as an economicconsultant to several large corporations."