National Affairs: In LaFollette-Land | TIME

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“Crow is not our dish. Only a man with the might of right can force it upon us.

“But that is just what this ‘sidewalk-reared Prince’ has done. He served us our first dish as we sat in the rain at Albany and listened to his acceptance speech. And he has kept us on a steady diet of crow ever since.

“Every time he spoke in the West whether in Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, Montana, Minnesota or Wisconsin— straight as the crow flies there came back to us, with the compliments of the progressive Governor of New York, an additional supply of crow.”

So said, last week, the People’s Legislative Service of equivocal, critical Wisconsin, whose 13 electoral votes may point the way for neighboring States of the un-settled Northwest. Earlier, this service had decried Nominees Smith and Hoover in one breath as “unprogressive.”

It was a significant bit of “crow-eating” because the People’s Legislative Service is the voice of LaFollettism in Wisconsin. It was founded by the late great Robert Marion LaFollette as the official organ of his Progressive Republican movement. The statement came, moreover, two days after an editorial declaration for Smith by the Madison, Wis., Capital-Times. The backer and chief stockholder of the Capital-Times is Alfred Thomas Rogers, law-partner of the late great La-Follette. Another stockholder is Senator Robert Marion LaFollette Jr.

Mr. Rogers proceeded to take charge of an organization whose shingle, blazing on a Madison hotel, read: “Progressive Republican Headquarters, Alfred E. Smith for President.”

Young Senator LaFollette said nothing committal. It was still possible for Nominee Curtis, who went stumping through Wisconsin last week, to endorse the young man’s candidacy for re-election to the Senate. “That brilliant young man,” Nominee Curtis called him, in what seemed an importunate plea to keep the Progressives of the Northwest in line for the Hoover-Curtis ticket.

But “that brilliant young man” was believed to be holding his fire. He had more to gain, for his own cause of getting Progressives elected to Congress throughout the Northwest, by waiting for a more dramatic moment to declare himself. He had much to lose from his reputation for square-speaking if he did not ultimately declare himself. Because, besides the utterances of the LaFollette organs, there were other elements and developments.

Senator LaFollette had declared against Walter Jodok Kohler, regular Republican candidate for Governor. LaFollette’s Progressive Republican wing was backing the Democratic candidate, Albert George Schmedeman, Madison’s mayor.

Senator LaFollette’s colleague and fellow Progressive, Senator John J. Blaine, had declared for Smith while stumping for Senator LaFollette’s renomination (TIME, Sept. 10).

The Democratic nominee opposing Senator LaFollette for reelection, a man named M. K. Reilly, withdrew and gave the Senator a clear field against William H. Markham, a Hooverite who announced his candidacy after the primary result was known.

Finally, committing him as to appearances if not morally and politically, there was Senator LaFollette’s able, notable brother, Lecturer Philip LaFollette of the University of Wisconsin’s law faculty. Brother Phil had gone up and down the State speaking for Brother Bob and he, too, had said some very pro-Smith things.

This other, less nationally known La-Follette brother is a young man to whom Wisconsin voters point with prophecy and pride every time there is an election. After LaFollette Sr.’s death, and again last spring, they said that Phil LaFollette would run for Governor. This year, at least, it was real “draft” talk. But he did not let it get very far. He insisted that he was “too young.” (He is 31, two years younger than the Youngest Senator.) He wanted to go on with his teaching and his law practice. It was for that, and not to be “available” for greater things, that he relinquished the district attorneyship of Dane County, which he helped a young assistant in his office to inherit at the last election.

Four years ago, in the father’s presidential campaign, both LaFollette sons were on the touring train. Observant people noticed then that there was “mo; of the old man” in Brother Phil than in Brother Bob. It was in his longer, square-cut face; Brother Bob’s face is chubby-round, more like that of his stateswomanly mother, Belle Case LaFollette. It was in his voice, a sharper, stronger, more whip-cracking voice than Brother Bob’s. It was in his bodily movements — quick, alert, crisp; Sculptor Jo Davidson, troubled about the hands of his statue of Old Bob, caught exactly the expression he wanted when Young Phil sat down in the Davidson studio in Paris last summer and gripped the arms of the chair with a single firm movement exactly as Old Bob would have done. It is even in the hair — and the hair is important in a LaFollette. Old Bob had a grey, upstanding mane that shook and tossed and needed sweeping back between periods of an oration. Young Bob’s mane is thick and gets swept back between periods. But it is soft and curly. Young Phil’s mane is thick and straight and it tosses higher and harder, for Young Phil is the greater orator. He did speechmaking on the 1924 trip while Young Bob did staffwork behind the scenes. He went in for debating at college, when Young Bob, who left college early, was being his father’s secretary in Washington.

Temperamentally, too, the father is more present in his younger son. Brother Phil is the artist, Brother Bob the scientist, of politico-social activity. Both are intense, but in Brother Phil the intensity is more apparent. He is less facile at repartee, which Young Bob turns off almost automatically. When they were children, their oldest sister, Fola LaFollette, found small Robert sitting gloomily on the porch. She asked what the trouble was. He explained that Philip and the other sister, Mary, had found a little dead bird and were having a funeral for it. He had been crying because “they wouldn’t let me come to the funeral. They said I’d laugh at ’em.”

Whatever crystallizes in Wisconsin next fortnight will be memorable. Walter Jodok Kohler, welfare-working plumbing man, will probably be elected Governor. Young Bob will almost certainly be re-elected Senator. There will be fights all down the line for other offices, the bitterness of which is daily being transmitted to the Presidential campaign in Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas and Nebraska, where LaFollettism’s determined foster-father, Senator George William Norris, was last week preparing an “important announcement” for his coming national radio hookup. Afterwards, the 20-year-old fight between “regular” and “progressive” Republicans in Wisconsin was sure to continue. “As far as I am concerned, I have just begun to fight,” said Brother Bob last month. Since the “regulars” are stronger now than they have ever been since 1908, it would not be surprising to see Brother Phil pitch in as a candidate in some election soon, if and when needed.

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