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- Today we are pleased to introduce Nancy C. Unger as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum's History Sandwiched In lecture series. The opinions expressed today are those of the presenters and are not necessarily those of the Wisconsin Historical Society or the museum's employees. Nancy C. Unger is a professor of history at Santa Clara University. Her works on the La Follette family include the prize-winning biography "Fighting Bob La Follette: the Righteous Reformer," as well as the brand new book "Belle La Follette: Progressive Era Reformer." Her op-eds applying the progressive tradition to present-day challenges have appeared in newspapers and websites including CNN.com, the Chicago Sun Times, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, and Kansas City Star. She has been featured on C-Span and National Public Radio and has worked as a consultant for PBS. Here today to discuss the Unexpected Belle La Follette, please join me in welcoming Nancy C. Unger. 
(audience applause)

- Thank you for that nice introduction, and thank all of you for taking time out of your day to come. So I am really delighted to have this opportunity to be back at History Sandwiched In and talk with you about the Unexpected Belle La Follette. Now I spoke here about her just last year but a lot has changed since then. In the process of researching and writing this new book, I found that, like many before me, I had seriously underestimated her. Although the New York Times eulogized Belle Case La Follette in 1931 as perhaps "the most influential of all American women "who have had to do with public affairs in this country," she faded quickly from popular memory. And when she is recalled, it's usually in relation to her husband and sons. And I am afraid that I contributed to this approach to her in my biography of her husband fighting Bob La Follette. And I have to say in my own defense, he started it. 
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 The minimization of his wife's own accomplishments began when this progressive giant famously called her "my wisest and best counselor." Now, Bob openly deferred to Belle's judgment throughout his storied professional life: as a district attorney, a congressman, three-term governor of Wisconsin, and, most significantly, during his 19 years in the U.S. Senate. According to their son-in-law, playwright George Middleton, "Except John Adams with his Abigail, "no man in public life was to have so equal a mate." Books, articles, essays, a short film, and plays, including a full length musical, all hail Belle La Folletteas the little woman behind the great man. Only a few go so far as to recognize her as an important reformer in her own right. And no account 
(until now!)

 reveals the depth and range of her interests, ambitions, and activism, and the contributions she made to meaningful progressive reform. Upon her death in 1931, newspapers across the nation praised Belle La Follette for her selflessness, her willingness to remain out of the public eye, her contentment in eschewing a career for herself in favor of carrying out a higher calling, that of wife and mother. "She had a masculine mind," one backhanded accolade conceded, but quickly praised her for being "essentially feminine and maternal." 

It's one of those "You know, you don't sweat much "for a fat girl kind of compliments." Another tribute concluded, "Hers is an interesting career "for those women who, of necessity, "must remain in the background." Famed journalist Lincoln Steffens, a family friend who really should have known better, painted La Follette as a self-sacrificing woman who consciously surrendered her own ambitions "she could act, he said, "but she was content "to beget action and actors. "She played, herself, the woman's part, "she sat in the gallery in the Congress "or at home with the children and the advisors. "She could but she did not often "make the speeches or do the deeds." Although this "helpmate-behind-the-scenes" assessment came to dominate the historical record, in reality, Belle La Follette exhibited considerable political leadership. Although she and her husband worked together to promote the many progressive goals they shared, she was far from being merely his assistant. She held no elected office and could not even cast a ballot until she was sixty-one years old, yet she overcame her natural shyness to wield tremendous influence as a journalist and a public speaker, activities she took on not only out of idealism, but because her family needed the money. All those who joined Lincoln Steffens in identifying her primarily as what he called "The Victorious Mother," did her a grave disservice. She did, in truth, make the speeches and do the deeds, and the nation improved because she did.

Belle Case, Born Belle Case in 1859, she grew up in the farming community of Baraboo where her commitment to feminist principles was cemented at a young age. Men and women carried out jobs that were both so indispensable to the success of farm life that few couples quibbled over whose work was more important. As she put it later, "While traditions and laws fixing the legal disabilities "and the inferior status of women prevailed, "their great practical usefulness, and highly developed "judgment placed them for all practical purpose, "all practical purposes,on an equal footing with men." Such a perspective was consistent with her family's religious views. When her mother, Mary Case, heard Anna Howard Shaw lecture at the family's Free Congregationalist church concerning women's right to vote, she was captivated by the words of this pioneering minister and physician. Mary Case later told her daughter that she felt "very indignant" that women did not have the same rights as men. Belle's brother agreed, stating matter-of-factly, "I do not see any reason why "I should vote if Belle does not." Belle Case refused to accept the deferential, meek role assigned to girls. A friend recalled that young Belle Case "frequently discomfited her teachers and fellow pupils "by questioning and challenging things "that were taught and accepted," and "was fearless in insisting on things being understood "and being worthwhile before accepting them." Acceptance into the University of Wisconsin fueled her fearlessness. 

As one professor recalled, "Miss Case, with her eagerness for knowledge "and her readiness to pay the price in hard work, "profited to the full by the University's opportunities."

Her University of Wisconsin classmate Bob La Follette pursued Belle Case avidly. It was at her insistence that their engagement remain a secret, and Bob grew increasingly frustrated when Belle seemed far more interested in pursuing her career than planning a life with him. Only after Belle completed two years of teaching did she marry Bob on New Year's Eve in 1881 in a ceremony conducted by a Unitarian minister, who honored the bride's request that the word "obey" be omitted from the marriage vows.

Eight months and ten days later, count them, Belle gave birth to the first of their four children, a daughter, Flora Dodge, called Fola. Although Belle La Follette believed that "the supreme experience in life is motherhood," she also remained convinced that there is "no inherent conflictin a mother's "taking good care of her children, developing her talents, "and continuing to work along lines adapted "to conditions of motherhood and homemaking." As a new mother, La Follette refused to waste her time on the activities that most people assumed should take uep the day of a middle-class wife. La Follette believed in "simplicity and ease" in dress, furnishings, even food, asking, "What custom could be more "barbarous than a ten course dinner?" She advocated "less kinds of food, "fewer courses, less work."

She denounced the elaborate furnishings that were the current rage in home decorating, and spoke in favor of homes featuring simplicity, sunshine, and ventilation. 

La Follette rejected the expectation that women would cling to outmoded conventions at the same time that men flocked to new conveniences that made their lives easier and more efficient. As the telephone came into popular use, for example, she found it absurd that women were criticized as both lazy and extravagant for phoning in their grocery orders, while men were praised for their efficiency in transacting business over the phone. "Why is it," she asked sardonically, "that those who are most deeply convinced that 'woman's place is in the home' are the most "concerned when women stay at home and telephone "for supplies instead of going to the market?" Following the advent of the typewriter, she complained, women "apologize for a type-written personal letter "as though it were an offense even when the deciphering "of their handwriting is a most nerve-wracking process." She believed that women should embrace any innovations that might spare them from unnecessary labor. And to those who bemoaned the loss of woman's personal touch, she responded in favor of preserving women's time, health, and energy: "Many precious associations "with the homemade and the handmade "are necessarily sacrificed to the greater gain." Belle La Follette further defied convention by abandoning stays and corsets for more comfortable, looser fitting garments, and urged other women to do the same. She noted with disgust, "The man who said "women ought not to vote "as long as they cannot fasten their own gowns "made the best anti-suffrage argument I've ever heard. "It is certainly humiliating that we submit "to the tyrannies of dress as we do." La Follette reserved special scorn for the time women were encouraged to waste bemoaning their inability to live up to unrealistic bodily standards. 

Although she struggled her whole life to keep her own weight in check, she strove not to obsess about it, but to focus instead on remaining fit. In 1912 she still routinely ran three miles before breakfast, and in 1914, at the age of fifty-five, the Washington Post celebrated her scaling of Mount Irasu, a 12,000 foot volcano in Costa Rica.

La Follette's always passionate belief in "the growing desire of women of leisure "to employ themselves worthily, "and to share in the work of the world" was reinforced in 1911 by the publication of Olive Schreiner's feminist treatise Woman and Labour. La Follette heralded it as being "like an epic poem, majestic, powerful, and thrilling." Schreiner described women who lived empty lives and were wholly dependent upon their husbands' incomes as "parasitic," a term La Follette would use repeatedly in her demands that women be allowed equal opportunities and useful occupations. Early in their marriage Belle so enjoyed helping Bob with his legal studies that she took up the law course as well, becoming, in 1855, the first woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin Law School. She's not hard to pick out in this picture. A passion that was not shared was life in the nation's capital once Bob was elected to Congress in 1888. To the query, "What do Washington women talk about?" Belle La Follette complained: "Altogether too much about the weather. 

"An exceeding graciousness and desire "to please pervades every function, "like having all the meals only dessert." "We," she tartly reminded her sisters in Washington's official life, "are not supposed to belong "to the butterfly and parasitic class."

Belle La Follette urged all women to start recognizing that problems they thought of as personal were in fact political, and therefore required women's political activism: She said, "How much we pay for coal, food, and clothing "is very largely determined by the control "of natural resources, the tariff, the distribution of tax, "and by the regulation of the great "private monopolies and freight rates. "These are women's concerns." Belle La Follette strenuously opposed her husband's plans to begin a magazine in 1909. But once the die was cast, she devoted herself to making La Follette's Magazine, which is published today as The Progressive, a meaningful voice of progressivism. In an article entitled "Foolishness," she railed against the narrow range of superficial topics others deemed suitable for women readers. She concluded, "Let's fool these men publishers "and put our time on the world's events." In countless columns in the magazine's "Home and Education" pages, La Follette introduced, defined, expanded, celebrated, and promoted progressive reforms. And women readers responded with gratitude, and other journalists celebrated her innovative approach. 

Selene Harmon of the Cincinnati Enquirer noted, "One of the cleverest and most readable woman's pages "in the country is edited by Belle Case La Follette "She was probably the first editor of a woman's department "to go on a strike against the conventional formulas "for hair dye and accepted recipes for beauty." La Follette, marveled Harmon, was "always independent and fearless "in her expression of opinion." In 1911, The North American Press Syndicate engaged La Follette to provide brief articles for syndication six days a week. Her series "Thought for the Day," which covered topics including suffrage, economics, dress, children, women's work, and health, appeared in fifty-seven newspapers in more than twenty states. In addition to the standard slate of progressive goals, including labor protection, natural resource conservation, and tariff and tax reform, Belle La Follette advocated a wide range of less conventional innovations, such as women's appointment to university boards of regents. She supported the right of a woman to not take her husband's name upon marriage. She promoted the Montessori system of education, opposed corporal punishment for children, and supported sex education, sex education. She saved special ire for capital punishment, which she termed, "a survival of barbarism whose "existence is contrary to the best thought "and practice of modern civilization."

Belle La Follette advocated cleaner railroad cars and depots, and schedules designed to shorten layovers. She also proposed postponing presidential inaugural ceremonies until April, writing in 1912, "Must we go on forever, suffering the inconvenience of dates "so badly adjusted to our present-day life, "just because they were written "into the Constitution over a hundred years ago?" 

In this way, she saw women's lack of personal experience as working to their favor, because they were less conditioned to accept outmoded traditions. In 1930, the National League of Women Voters honored seventy-one women, including La Follette, for their service to the League and to the American Woman Suffrage Association. When her name was inscribed on a bronze tablet housed in the national headquarters in Washington, D.C., La Follette protested that she did not deserve such an honor. Yet her contemporary, Alice Paul, called her, called La Follette "the most consistent supporter "of equal rights of all the women of her time." And in 1912 a suffrage story in the New York Times, the headline declared simply "Mrs. La Follette is Leader." Looking back on the battle she waged for suffrage in Wisconsin that year, La Follette admitted, "Well, I spoke seven days a week in succession, "usually three or four times a day, sometimes six or eight." During one twelve-day tour she gave thirty-one speeches in fourteen different counties.

Belle La Follette marched in the great suffrage parade in New York City on May 4, 1912. Less than a year later she testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Women's Suffrage that she said, granting women the vote was "a simple matter of common sense." 

She concluded, "You know how "Lincoln defined government at Gettysburg. 'Ours is a government of the people, 'by the people, for the people.' "And are not women people?" According to The National Magazine, "Mrs. Robert M. La Follette made a remarkable "and forcible address," and the audience hung upon her words. They didn't get the vote, but they hung upon her words. Early in the first term of the Wilson administration, Belle La Follette was a member of the contingent of suffrage advocates that met with the president. Although Wilson listened respectfully, they were hurried out of the White House after ten minutes. Having failed to persuade the U.S. Senate or the president, Belle La Follette took her case directly to the American people. She spoke for sixty-three consecutive days in July and August of 1914 in a tour that included Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. 

The Senate finally approved the suffrage amendment on June 4, 1919, with Belle La Follette observing from the visitors' gallery. "We...shed a few tears," La Follette recorded, noting with pride that Wisconsin was the first state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Bob La Follette confided to their children that Wisconsin "beat 'em to it' on the suffrage amendment" "because of "your smart mother." Belle La Follette, worried that Illinois would "try to steal first honors," wired representatives in her home state to be sure that Wisconsin acted first. As soon as a telegram of confirmation was received, reported Bob, "I went on the floor and had it read "into the Congressional Record.. "Mamma and all of us feel good, you bet." Belle La Follette was widely acknowledged within the African-American community nationwide, but especially in Washington, D.C., as a dedicated and fearless leader in the fight for racial equality. Beginning in 1913 she wrote a series of searing articles decrying the efforts of the Wilson administration to racially segregate federal services. She urged to action her Washington female readers in particular, revisiting her oft repeated assertion that privileged wives were "not supposed to belong "to the butterfly and parasitic class," but she said, "should represent "the earnest, intelligent womanhood of the nation" and fight for equality for all.

As La Follette denounced the injustice and violation of democratic principles imposed by the new orders, she skewered the hypocrisy of whites who supported segregation. "It seems strange," she observed caustically, "that the very ones who consider it a hardship "to sit next to a colored person on the streetcar, "entrust their children to colored servants, "and eat food prepared by colored hands." On January 4, 1914, Belle La Follette spoke at the "colored" YMCA on 12th Street in Washington, D.C. It was an electrifying event. Wild cheering by the one thousand people present, all most all of whom were African American, interrupted her speech several times.

According to the Washington Post, in a front page story headlined "She Defends Negroes-Wife of Senator La Follette "Denounces Segregation-Says U.S. Government Errs," La Follette "advised negroes to keep up their fight and said there would be no 'constitution of peace' "until the question is settled " and settled in the right way." An ovation of several minutes followed her remarks. An African-American woman noted the "tremendous effect upon all who heard" La Follette's stirring speech. It was, she reported, "the topic "which overshadows all others" in the black community. She concluded her message of thanks, "May God continue to bless you, may He continue to lead you, "may He continue to give you courage "to do and to dare."

La Follette delivered essentially the same speech to the annual banquet of the NAACP in New York City, offering solutions, not just outrage: "This race issue, like the suffrage question, " the sex question, or any other perplexing, "unsettled problem disturbing society today, "should be freely and seriously discussed "in private conversations, in the public press, "and from the pulpit. 

"The situation does not call for violence, "but it demands determination, loyalty, courage, "persistence, unfaltering faith in well directed efforts." She added that integration was "in no way a matter of social privilege. "It is a matter of civil right." One anonymous writer warned her that "for a white lady to address a Negro Audience "is out of place," adding," it does not raise you very much "in the estimation of decent white people." A correspondent from Tennessee denounced her for her "idiotic demands." Others exhibited far less restraint. One reader termed Belle La Follette "disgraceful to the white race," and suggested that the only true reason for her actions was that she herself was black- but only "a little light in color." It was signed, "A real white person "with no black stripes down the back like you." La Follette's efforts also generated support. A white employee of the Government Printing Office, and a Civil War veteran concluded his lengthy tribute to his African-American colleagues by addressing La Follette directly: "Again I thank you. 

"The black race needs such as you to aid them. "And the white race needs you to bring it to its senses." Navy Department auditor Ralph Tyler, a national organizer of The National Negro Business League, wrote to La Follette that he read her column "The Color Line" "each time with renewed inspiration, "and with renewed courage, because "it clearly indicated to me that my race "that my race still has good, strong, and eminently fair "white friends in this day of threatened segregation, "just as we had in the dark days of subjugation "before our emancipation ...I thank you for your article, "and I know I but voice the sentiment "of my race in so doing."

In 1914 La Follette spoke to a predominantly black audience at the National Trade and Professional School for Women and Girls in Washington, D.C. When she was introduced by African-American activist Nannie Helen Burroughs as "the successor of Harriet Beecher Stowe," lawyer James H. Hayes bowed his head and said, "Amen."

Speaking for his race, Hayes told La Follette, "We thank God for such a white woman as you. "We thank God for sending you to us "and we thank you for coming. "A few more like you would awaken "the sleeping conscience of this nation."

At the same time she was writing the family magazine, fighting racism, and campaigning for women's suffrage, Belle La Follette took up a new cause, ultimately becoming one of the most recognized leaders in the crusade for world peace. 

Her ability to articulate that movement's values and aims made her particularly effective in inspiring people to think critically about war, its causes, its futility, and its prevention. She became a pacifist in her late twenties upon reading Die Waffen Nieder 
(Lay Down Your Arms)

 by Austrian peace activist Baroness Bertha von Suttner. La Follette widely promoted recognition of war's futility and the practical possibilities of world peace through binding arbitration. Her impassioned advocacy would bring a rain of denunciation, including questions of her patriotism during World War I, but she steadfastly refused to modify or soft pedal her beliefs. La Follette's argument was that "in the struggle for balance of power, "this idea that war is the only way of settling differences "among nations is a survivor of the dark ages." On January 10, 1915, Belle La Follette was one of three thousand women who gathered in Washington, D.C., at a meeting that culminated in the formulation of the Women's Peace Party which four years later became the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Theodore Roosevelt was outraged. On April 16, 1915, the Chicago Herald published his scathing assessment of the Women's Peace Party in which the still enormously popular former president called the party's platform "silly and base," "influenced by physical cowardice," "vague and hysterical," "foolish and noxious," an "ignoble abandonment of national duty," containing "not one particle of good," which "exposes our people to measureless contempt." Belle La Follette fired back in La Follette's Magazine that Roosevelt assums "that War is the only means "of settling international differences and moreover "that War is bound to settle them right. 

"History demonstrates that even imperfect and temporary "plans of mediation, conciliation, and arbitration have been "more effective than war in securing justice, ''and therefore the enlightened and progressive thought "of the age should be organized to eradicate the madness "of war and be concentrated upon the future settlement "of international disputes by an international tribunal." Roosevelt's charge that the party was cowardly and foolish particularly rankled. "Was Christ cowardly?" she countered, "How long did the agitation against human slavery last "before it was abolished?" To Roosevelt's earlier assertion that "by war alone "can we acquire those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life," La Follette observed, "The problem with Mr. Roosevelt is that he is intoxicated by a false idea of war." History, La Follette urged, showed that people were capable "of changing how they coped with disagreements. "More enlightened forms of resolution ultimately replaced "dueling, for example, which had been considered "an honorable way to settle differences." In a speech on Peace Day 
(May 18, 1915)

, La Follette reminded her listeners that about 70 percent of the national income each year went to either paying for past wars or building up arms for future wars. She put this in terms that she felt her audience would best understand: " What would you think of a housekeeper who was afraid " of burglars and who, instead of working together "to get a communal police organization "to protect her home with all other homes, "let her obsession destroy her, "and she would take seventy percent of all the household " budget and put it toward iron fences, iron doors, " and high walls which shut out all the light "and then had only thirty percent left of her income "to clothe and feed her children? "When the children of the woman in this scenario died "because of her misallocation of resources," La Follette asked, "Wouldn't you consider such housekeeping, "such mothering, sheer insanity? "And yet that is exactly the kind of housekeeping "our great nation...is engaged in." Women's call for peace, La Follette concluded, "is not sentimental rebellion against "the inevitable toll of life, "it is calm recognition of the utter futility of this method "of solving differences between nations, "that gives us today a deep and burning determination to contribute all our powers toward the end of "international warfare, to cease the inevitable retardation "for the development of humanity and civilization."

The vilification endured by her entire family for the peace activism of herself and her husband during the war years did not curb Belle La Follette's postwar efforts to reject military preparedness, which she denounced "the awful folly of wasting " the billions in dollars that should go " towards education and human betterment." Belle La Follette toured fourteen cities in 1921 urging voters to reject any candidate not committed to the reduction of preparedness and arms. She called the week-long speaking tour one of the greatest experiences of her life. When criticized for efforts publicly denounced as futile, if not un-American, La Follette took the long view to counsel against discouragement: "every effort of this kind is slow in actual results "Democracy, slavery, suffrage." 

When La Follette learned that Secretary of State Charles Evan Hughes opened the Washington Naval Conference in November of 1921, by proposing a fifty percent reduction in the great navies of the world, it took her breath away. She was also thrilled when Idaho Senator William Borah credited the public opinion that she had been so central in generating as the motivating factor behind Hughes's proposal. The conference resulted in three major treaties and a number of smaller agreements. The most important to La Follette was the Five Power Treaty, which involved the major naval powers including Britain, the U.S., and Japan.

La Follette also worked to gain the release of Americans imprisoned for their criticism of the country's role in the war. After La Follette helped obtain the release of labor leader Eugene V. Debs on Christmas Day 1921, he hailed her as "a gifted woman of extraordinary "of vision and understanding, "superb moral courage, a deep love of humanity, "and a profound sense of obligation to her fellow-beings " and to the cause of the common people." Belle La Follette turned next to military recruitment. In 1923 she spoke in Washington, D.C., before the annual meeting of the American section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She criticized the militarists' determination to conflate patriotism with military training. 

"To read the conspicuous posters and look "at the alluring pictures that confront us on the streets, "we would think that the Army and Navy "offer one long life of gaiety." The same year, she wrote admirably of some of the changes she witnessed firsthand in the newly created Soviet Union, and in 1924 she broke precedent as a political wife by formally campaigning for her husband's final presidential bid. Following the death of Robert La Follette in 1925, a petition circulated among members of the Wisconsin legislature asking Belle La Follette to become a candidate to fill her husband's unexpired term. She could easily have become the first woman senator, but she chose not to run. Many women of Wisconsin were "not merely disappointed" but "dismayed" when she declined to meet with a large contingent of Wisconsinites intent on changing her mind. A petition signed by hundreds of women asked, "Dear Mrs. La Follette, will you, can you, turn away "from your heritage, your people, "your shepherdless flock?" Those who knew her best thought her refusal to run in favor of her son was a typically shrewd political move. Wisconsin author Zona Gale observed, "Belle La Follette "will stand as one who, ambitious for her husband and sons, "was ambitious first of all for their ideals "of social justice, which were also her ideals, "and that these must prevail." According to Phil La Follette, his mother recognized that her term would be granted more as a tribute to her late husband than a serious political investment. 

Therefore, "the field would be wide open "for one and all in 1928." By virtue of his sex as well as his age, Robert Jr., would be far more likely than his mother to be repeatedly re-elected and could therefore lead the La Follette progressive movement for years to come, further cementing its legacy. With his mother serving as his campaign manager, Robert La Follette, Jr., was indeed elected to the senate seat, which he would occupy for the next twenty-one years. Following her husband's death, La Follette not only kept the family magazine, which she had always hated, but she kept it alive, she served as chief advisor to both Robert, Jr., and her other son Phil, elected in 1930 to the first of three terms as Wisconsin's governor. She also continued to advise Wisconsin Congressman James Frear, urging him "to remind the folks "over and over again of the cost of the world war "and to give them concrete suggestions "as to ways and means of preventing another."

Although she claimed that writing her husband's biography was her top priority, as the nation sank deeper into the Great Depression, she could not resist continuing to campaign for progressive solutions to problems old and new. She denounced President Herbert Hoover for doing too little to alleviate the growing unemployment, criticizing him publicly for being a "friend of the Power Trust." 

She championed absentee voting, campaigned to "Save the Children's Bureau," and wrote admiringly of Mohandas Gandhi, particularly his dedication to woman's equality. Only her death, in 1931, brought an end to her activism. Belle La Follette deserves recognition for contributing significantly to the political achievements of her husband and sons. But the determination to provide that recognition has obscured the contributions that she made in her own right to causes of her own choosing, blocking recognition of her full legacy. A closer look reveals an unexpected Belle La Follette: a passionate feminist dedicated to peace, civil rights, and making her nation a better place through a variety of innovative reforms. Thank you very much. 
(audience applause)