Ebb Tide

For a half century the dream of a great liberal Third Party stirred yeastily in the minds of Wisconsin's farmers and laborers.

In the early days, before tractors, radios and paved rural roads, it had been a kind of Wisconsin religion, and fierce-eyed, thick-maned Robert Marion ("Fighting Bob") La Follette was its prophet. When he railed against the "interests" and Wall Street, when he called for public ownership of railroads, labor legislation and farm relief, he was speaking for thousands of poor, proud, stubborn, toiling men. They elected him governor thrice, sent him to the U.S. Senate for four terms as an insurgent Republican.

But to the nation as a whole, La Follette the elder was a radical. Twice he bolted the G.O.P. to raise the Progressive banner and seek the presidency. Twice he was rejected. Wisconsin Progressivism remained a rip tide of political thought in the Republican sea. To be elected, La Follette had always to return to the G.O.P. But Fighting Bob believed that the nation would eventually embrace the Wisconsin Idea; he trained his two sons to follow; in his footsteps. When he died, plump, quiet, sleek-haired Bob Jr. went to Washington and took his father's seat in the Senate. Old Bob's second son, flashy Philip Fox La Follette, soon became governor. Both the La Follette boys were elected under the Republican banner.

The Crest. Then, in 1934, the great opportunity beckoned. The Roosevelt landslide of 1932 had shaken Republicanism to its foundations. In rural Wisconsin, prices and incomes were down. When the La Follettes left the G.O.P. to found the Wisconsin Progressive Party, the restless voters rallied solidly behind them. By 1936 most of Wisconsin's state officers were Progressives, and the new party boasted Bob Jr. in the Senate, seven men in Congress, 16 in the State Senate and 48 in the State Assembly.

But the new wave of Progressivism toppled almost as soon as it surged. Many of the old Progressive ideals became fact under the New Deal, and Bob La Follette Jr. was no fierce-eyed prophet. A Democratic-Republican coalition broke Progressive control in Wisconsin; Phil was defeated as governor and only the backing of Franklin Roosevelt saved Bob Jr.'s Senate seat in the election of 1940.

This week the era of the Wisconsin Idea came to an end. Delegates representing the last of the Progressives met in a frame hall at Portage, Wis., to disband the party, return to the G.O.P. Young Bob was facing another election--and he could win only as a Republican. There were still men who wanted to go defiantly on. Said Scandinavian-born Farmer Ole Lund: "When we discard a piece of machinery on the farm we think twice before we hitch on to it again." But there was no choice. The Democrats could offer no hope of victory. Quietly the delegates voted to join up with the Republicans, and went home.

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