10 September 2024: Due to technical disruption, we are experiencing some delays to publication. We are working to restore services and apologise for the inconvenience. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/about-us/news-and-blogs/cambridge-university-press-publishing-update-following-technical-disruption
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2011
La Follette's Autobiography: A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences is a remarkable primary document of the Progressive Era. Originally published in 1913, it remains in print today and has the dubious honor of being one of Richard Nixon's three favorite books. It illuminates the crucial role that La Follette's home state of Wisconsin played in molding La Follette as a man and as a politician, thereby influencing his national progressive agenda; but it also reveals much more.
1 Thelen, David, Robert M. La Follette and the Insurgent Spirit (Boston, 1976), 152Google Scholar.
2 Subscribers to The Progressive are routinely asked for donations to help the magazine through its financial difficulties. For the magazine's debt in La Follette's day, see Robert M. La Follette to Alfred Rogers, Aug. 7, 1911, box 106, Robert La Follette Papers, Library of Congress.
3 Although La Follette's daughter maintained that Baker assisted only in the editing process, it is clear from the correspondence between La Follette and Baker that La Follette, pressed for time, was, by the sixth installment, reduced to editing (albeit aggressively) what was ghostwritten by Baker. See Robert M. La Follette to Ray Stannard Baker, Dec. 9, 1911, box 107, La Follette Papers.
4 Unger, Nancy C., Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer (2000; Madison, 2008), 200–20Google Scholar.
5 Robert M. La Follette to Gilbert Roe, Feb. 17, 1912, box 107, La Follette Papers.
6 Ray Stannard Baker to Robert M. La Follette, Aug. 10, 1912, box 71, La Follette Papers.
7 Clyde Tavenner, “Capital Comment,” Rock Island Argus, Apr. 25, 1913, box 322, La Follette Papers.
8 Thompson, Charles Willis, “A Political Mystery,” New York Times, May 25, 1913Google Scholar, BR309; “Book Notes,” Political Science Quarterly 28 (Dec. 1913): 160–61.
9 “Books and Reading,” New York Post, May 19, 1913, box 322, La Follette Papers.
10 Thompson, “A Political Mystery.”
11 La Follette, Robert M., La Follette's Autobiography: A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences (Madison, 1913), 609Google Scholar.
12 La Follette, Belle C. and La Follette, Fola, Robert M. La Follette (New York, 1953), 471–72Google Scholar.
13 Allan Nevins, foreword to La Follette, Robert M., La Follette's Autobiography: A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences (repr. Madison, 1960)Google Scholar, viii.
14 La Follette, La Follette's Autobiography, ix–x.
15 Ibid., 64.
16 Ibid., 760.
17 Ibid., 67–68.
18 Torelle, Ellen, ed., The Political Philosophy of Robert M. La Follette, (Madison, 1920), 31Google Scholar.
19 Strother, French, “The Death of the ‘Wisconsin Idea,’” World's Work 50 (October 1925): 622Google Scholar.
20 Torelle, The Political Philosophy, 111–12.
21 Thompson, “A Political Mystery.”
22 La Follette, La Follette's Autobiography, 472.
23 Ibid.
24 William Allen White, unaddressed letter, July 17, 1911, Book M, 11–15, William White Papers, Stanford University Special Collections, Stanford, CA.
25 Allan Nevins, foreword to La Follette's Autobiography, viii.
