Wisconsin Magazine ^ of History A Light Look at Frank Lloyd Wright HERBERT JACOBS Franklin Welles Calkins: Romancer of the Wilderness JOHN T. FLANAGAN William Langer: A Maverick in the Senate LAWRENCE H. LARSEN Julia Grace Wales and the Wisconsin Plan for Peace WALTER I. TRATTNER Published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin / Vol. XLIV, No. 5 / Spring, 1961 STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN LESLIE H. FISHEL, JR., Director OflScers ROBERT B. L. MURPHY, President GEORGE C. SELLERY, Honorary Vice-President WALKER WYMAN, First Vice-President GEORGE HAMPEL, JR., Treasurer MRS. HOWARD GREENE, Second Vice-President LESUE H. FISHEL, JR., Secretary LUCIUS BRYAN DABNEY, Honorary Vice-President Board of Curators Ex-Officio GAYLORD NELSON, Governor of the State MRS. DENA A. SMITH, State Treasurer ROBERT C. ZIMMERMAN, Secretary of State CONRAD A. ELVEHJEM, President of the University GEORGE E. WATSON, Superintendent of Public Instruction MRS. SILAS SPENGLER, President of the Women's Auxiliary Term Expires 1961 M. J. DYRUD JIM DAN HILL MRS. RAYMOND J. KOLTES FREDERIC SAMMOND Prairie du Chien Superior Madison Milwaukee FRED H. HARRINGTON E. E. HOMSTAD CHARLES MANSON DR. WILLIAM STOVALL Madison Black River Falls Madison Madison A. EUGENE HATCH MRS. VINCENT W. KOCH EUGENE W. MURPHY WALKER WYMAN Ripon Janesville La Crosse River Falls Term Expires 1962 GEORGE BANTA, JR. HERBERT V. KOHLER WILLIAM F. STARK JOHN TORINUS Menasha Kohler Pewaukee Green Bay GEORGE HAMPEL, JR. ROBERT B. L. MURPHY STANLEY STONE ANTHONY WISE Milwaukee Madison Milwaukee Hayward SANFORD HERZOG GERTRUDE PUELICHER MILO K. SWANTON CLARK WILKINSON Minocqua Milwaukee Madison Baraboo Term Expires 1963 SCOTT CUTLIP MRS. ROBERT FRIEND JOHN C. GEILFUSS WILUAM B. HESSELTINE Madison Hartland Milwaukee Madison W. NORMAN FITZGERALD EDWARD FROMM MRS. HOWARD T. GREENE JAMES RILEY Milwaukee Hamburg Genesee Depot Eau Claire J. F. FRIEDRICK ROBERT GEHRKE DR. GUNNAR GUNDERSEN CLIFFORD SWANSON Milwaukee Ripon La Crosse Stevens Point Honorary Honorary Life Members WILLIAM ASHBY MCCLOY, Winnipeg PRESTON E. MCNALL, Madison MRS. LITTA BASCOM, Madison DOROTHY L. PARK, Madison MRS. LOUISE ROOT, Prairie du Chien Fellows Curators VERNON CARSTENSEN (1949) HJALMAR R. HOLAND, Ephraim MERLE CURTI (1949) SAMUEL PEDRICK, Ripon The Women's Auxiliary OFFICERS MRS. SILAS SPENGLER, Stoughton, President MRS. MILLARD TUFTS, Milwaukee, Vice-President MRS. WILLIAM H. L. SMYTHE, Milwaukee, Secretary MRS. E. J. BIEVER, Kohler, Treasurer MRS. RAYMOND J. KOLTES, Madison, Ex-Officio VOLUME 44, NUMBER 3/SPRING, 1961 Wisconsin Magazine of History Editor: WILLIAM CONVERSE HAYGOOD A Letter to the Postmaster General 162 A Light Look at Frank Lloyd Wright 163 HERBERT JACOBS Franklin Welles Calkins: Romancer of the Wilderness 177 JOHN T. FLANAGAN A Piece of Frontier Strategy 184 FRANICLIN WELLES CALICINS William Langer: A Maverick in the Senate 189 LAWRENCE H. LARSEN German Timber Farmhouses in Wisconsin: Terminal Examples of a Thousand-year Building Tradition 199 RICHARD W. E. PERRIN Julia Grace Wales and the Wisconsin Plan for Peace 208 WALTER L TRATTNER Readers' Choice 214 Accessions 232 Contributors 240 Published Quarterly hy the State Historical Society of Wisconsin THE WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY is published not assiuue responsibility for statements made by contribu­ quarterly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 816 tors. Second-class postage paid at Madison, Wisconsin. State Street, Madison 6, Wisconsin. Distributed to members Copyright I96I by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. as part of their dues (Annual membership, $5.00; Family l*aid for in part by the Maria L. and Simeon Mills Editorial membership S7.00; Contributing, $10; Business and Profes­ Fund and by the George B. Burrows Fund. Wisconsin news­ sional, S25: Life, $100; Sustaining, $100 or more annually; papers may reprint any article appearing in the WISCON­ Patron, $1000 or more annually). Single numbers, SI.2.5. SIN MAC;AZINE OF HISTORY providing the story carries Microfilmed copies available through University Microfilms, the following credit line: Reprinted from the State Histori­ 313 North First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Communica­ cal Society's Wisconsin Magazine of History for [inseit the tions should be addressed to the editor. The Society does season and year which appear on the Magazine^. THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN 816 sT.-v'rj-: si'RKJ-rr MADLSON 0, WISCONSIN March 15. 1961 Honorable J. Edward Day Postmaster General of the I nited States Post Office Department Washinelo'5^ n 25. D. C. Dear Mr. Day: Together with colleges and historical agencies all over the United States, the State Historical Society of Wisconsin respectfully suggests and will support the issuance of a special commemorative postage stamp during the year 1961 to honor the historical pro­ fession and a great movement in American history. This year marks the centennial of the birth of one of the greatest historians this nation has produced, one whose influ­ ence as a teacher and a scholar has been world-wide, Frederick Jackson Turner. Frederick Jackson Turner (November 14, 1861-March 14, 1932) first came into nalional prominence in 1893, when he read his epochal "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" before a special meeting of the American Historical Association. He developed a hypothesis which marked a significant interpretation of American history. In this essay and in subsequent historical writings he pointed out that men behave differently in a free environment as compared to their behavior under social and economic coercion, that equality of opportunity gave a substance to democ­ racy in politics, that the social and governmental institutions which the frontier created were a constructive amalgam of the old and the new, and that the frontier as it moved from east to west, left a legacy of freedom with responsibility of which our nation can be proud. Dr. Turner believed that the frontier was less a place than a process which swept the American continent. Noting that by 1893 much of the physical frontier was gone, he foretold a future much different from the past insofar as the open physical frontier had been a positive force. His belief in the quality and power of the American demo­ cratic experiment permeated his work. We would like to suggest a stamp of the size and horizontal arrangement of the re­ cent "Conservation Series,'' a portrait of Dr. Turner to occupy its central panel to be flanked by right and left line drawings of Bascom Hall of the University of Wisconsin, where Dr. Turner taught, and of the building of the State Historical Society of Wis­ consin, which collected and housed the library and archival materials upon which Dr. Turner's monumental thesis was established. It was the man, the materials, and the necessity for communicating to the future through students of the day which brought about the doctrine, and in honoring the man and the two institutions the whole pro­ fession of historian will be honored. We would like further to suggest that design, engraving and printing of the stamp— whatever form its final design may take—be hastened so that the stamp may be issued in Madison, Wisconsin, on the centennial of the date of the birth of Frederick Jackson Turner, No\ember 14, 1961. Very truly yours, LESLIE H. FISHEL. ,7R. 162 A LIGHT LOOK AT FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT By HERi5Eirr JACOBS TN writing of Frank Lloyd Wright I want tory, reproving, sometimes downright savage •*- to make it clear at the beginning that I am —and the genial gaiety of his less public ap­ dealing with only one aspect of the man: his pearances among clients and friends. faculty of self-critical evaluation; or his sense Let us remember that he was as much ad­ of humor, if you prefer a blunter term. I aim vocate as architect: a perennial and highly ar­ to show the man, not the demigod. ticulate partisan for a new kind of architec­ It is a light look because my trade is enter­ ture—which has now largely prevailed, one tainment, and this deals with Wright's less needs to remind oneself. But along the way serious side. It is light also because it touches he was battling conformity, ignorance, preju­ only a few of the high spots in a field so rich dice, the god of Things As They Are, and this that one could truly say, "Here is God's is seldom an endearing role. plenty!" Light also in the hope that it will I am not going into a discussion of the wis­ shed some. dom or the necessity of his role as architectural Among the nine categories of architectural prophet, but some commentators feel that he endeavor—domestic, church, commercial, etc. could not have acted differently in trying to —Frank Lloyd Wright has built outstanding steer America toward something more in tune examples in each of the divisions. He has been with our own life and times than what our an­ acclaimed, bemedaled, and honored probably cestors brought over from England and the more than any other Wisconsin native. The continent. jury verdict of the world is pretty well in, and It was my fortune to cover many a speech I am not qualified to add to it. in which Mr. Wright laid about him with his I speak from personal experience of Wright's cudgel. Perhaps two samples of the platform architecture. He designed three houses for me expressions will remind you of his approach. and my family, two of which were built in Wis­ Addressing the Chicago Real Estate Board consin. I knew him fairly closely as a friend in 1938 he said: "If real estate were to go be­ for the last quarter of a century of his life; fore some bar of judgment where human val­ and in news stories covering twenty-five years ues were uppermost, it would be taken out and of speeches, parties, and other events I have shot at sunrise as it stands.