Founded in 1909 by Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette
as an organ for the independent progressive movement that
he was helping to lead, the Progressive is best known today
for the legal battle over whether it would be permitted to
publish an article on the “secret” of the hydrogen bomb.
Initially called La Follette’s Weekly Magazine, the debut
issue promised to “hit as hard as we can, giving and taking blows for the cause with joy in our hearts.” “Fighting
Bob” La Follette hoped the magazine would not only bolster the progressive cause, but also turn a profit. (Running a
political organization and maintaining two households was
expensive, and La Follette did not have access to the family
wealth or campaign contributions enjoyed by his Senate colleagues.) However, the magazine never attracted the circulation or advertising La Follette had hoped for, and as a result
ran at a substantial deficit. At its peak, the weekly reached
some forty thousand subscribers, and in 1914 it was scaled
back to a monthly tabloid. In 1929, the La Follettes entered
into a partnership with Madison [Wisconsin] Capital Times
publisher William Evjue, expanding the four-page newspaper to weekly publication and renaming it the Progressive.
Evjue and the La Follettes parted ways during the build-up
to World War II, and in 1947 the editors announced that
they were suspending publication. Three months later, after
distraught readers sent in more than $40,000 in contributions, the Progressive was reborn as a monthly magazine
issued as a nonprofit venture.
The magazine’s early years were dominated by the La
Follettes. La Follette’s wife Belle co-edited the women’s section, and wrote articles condemning racial segregation. His son, Robert Jr. (who succeeded him in the Senate)
wrote from Washington on national politics. But La Follette
and the progressive movement he sought to spearhead were
both on the decline. La Follette’s quest for the Republican
presidential nomination never gained traction, and his 1924
independent campaign left his health broken (he died eight
months later) and his political reputation in tatters.
Evjue shared the La Follettes’ roots in Midwestern progressivism, but under his control the Progressive increasingly served as the Capital Times’ regional weekly edition.
When the La Follettes resumed control in 1940, they hired
political writer Morris Rubin to take the editorial helm—a
position he held for the next thirty-three years. Rubin rebuilt
the circulation from the five thousand mostly Wisconsin
readers he inherited from Evjue with a heavily political
magazine, featuring extensive commentary, articles on current events and foreign policy, and an extensive book review
section. Committed to “the fight for a genuine program of
progressive democracy,” the Progressive gave space to sitting senators but also to Socialist Party standard-bearer
Norman Thomas. It proclaimed its commitment to civil
liberties and attacked Senator Joseph McCarthy (who had
ousted La Follette Jr. from his Senate seat), but agreed that
the government had every right to blacklist Communist
Party members. But in the 1950s, the Progressive published
articles criticizing U.S. nuclear policy, clandestine CIA
activities, calling for recognition of China, and championing minority rights.
In 1973, Rubin retired (becoming publisher), and was
replaced by Washington editor Erwin Knoll. Knoll’s Progressive featured more in-depth investigative and explanatory journalism, such as a 1984 report on Central American
death squads. But it is probably best remembered for “The
H-Bomb Secret: How We Got It, Why We’re Telling It,”
published in November 1979 after several months battling
a government injunction against publication. The article,
entirely compiled from publicly available sources, was
intended to lift the cloak of secrecy Knoll and author Howard Morland believed was stifling a much-needed debate on
nuclear weapons policy. The battle cost the Progressive a
quarter of a million dollars, and while the injunction was
ultimately lifted this was not on Constitutional grounds,
but rather because the “secrets” at issue were published in
other papers while the case was pending. Knoll edited the
magazine until his death in 1994, when he was succeeded
by Matthew Rothschild, who has in many ways returned
the Progressive to its roots as a journal of commentary and
analysis, although one open to much more radical politics
than its founders would have been comfortable with.
Further Reading
Thelen, David P. Robert M. La Follette and the Insurgent Spirit.
Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1976.
Weisberger, Bernard A. The La Follettes of Wisconsi, Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.
Jon Bekken