“The path we have chosen is not strewn with roses. No magazine or newspaper that sets out to speak fearlessly and truthfully about the wrongs committed in the name of Big Business and Big Politics finds the way smooth and the profits certain.” —Bob La Follette on the first anniversary of his publication.
January 9 marks the 109th anniversary of the first issue of this publication. The Progressive magazine has been a strong voice for economic justice, peace, and racial equality since our founding by Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette Sr. more than a century ago. On the very first page of the very first issue of the magazine (then called La Follete’s Weekly Magazine), La Follette laid out the magazine's central idea in words so contemporary that they might sound familiar to supporters of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign:
“In the course of every attempt to establish or develop free government, a struggle between Special Privilege and Equal Rights is inevitable.”
“La Follette denounced the corporate-owned newspapers of his day as the handiwork of ‘hired men who no longer express sincere and honest conviction, who write what they are told, and whose judgments are salaried,’” wrote our current managing editor, Bill Lueders, in a 1984 tribute. The article continued: “He had high regard, however, for the various independent muckraking journals that ‘strode like a young giant into the arena of public service.’
La Follette’s Weekly, its founder declared, was meant to be “a publication that will not mince words or suppress facts, when public utterance demands plain talk,” and it became the vanguard of the insurgent progressive movement. La Follette died in 1925 and the magazine was renamed The Progressive in December 1929.
To see the cover of that first issue, along with the covers of twenty-three other issues from this magazine’s storied history, check out our brand new 2018 Hidden History of the United States wall calendar, available for purchase or free with a new subscription to The Progressive:.
After the first year of successful operations, on January 8,1910, La Follette penned these congratulatory words: “We know you are interested in LA FOLLETTE’S. We know you want it to succeed; to become a greater power in the struggle for equality of opportunity and decency and honesty in government. The letters you have written us during the year, bearing messages of encouragement and good will, have told us that. The generous help you have given by going among your friends and telling them about the magazine has shown the depth and sincerity of your interest ... This interest, this loyalty that you have manifested is the best assurance we have of success.”
He looked forward to the future, eyes wide open: “The path we have chosen is not strewn with roses. No magazine or newspaper that sets out to speak fearlessly and truthfully about the wrongs committed in the name of Big Business and Big Politics finds the way smooth and the profits certain. . . . We shall go on getting out the best and most attractive paper that our means will permit, stimulated by the knowledge that there are thousands and ever-increasing thousands of independent, thinking citizens who are with us heart and soul.”
“The path we have chosen is not strewn with roses. No magazine or newspaper that sets out to speak fearlessly and truthfully about the wrongs committed in the name of Big Business and Big Politics finds the way smooth and the profits certain.”
The magazine was a bold effort, launched with the power of conviction, and the optimism of a vision for a better future. Many of the struggles of the early 1900s can be heard echoing in the pages of the magazine today.
As La Follette famously wrote: “Democracy is a life, and involves continual struggle. It is only as those of every generation who love democracy resist with all their might the encroachments of its enemies that the ideals of representative government can ever be nearly approximated.”
Norman Stockwell is publisher of The Progressive.