of the federal government and prohibiting company unions. In March 1940 a federal grand jury indicted 104 companies, unions, and individuals on charges of conspiracy to freeze high plumbing prices. Among the companies named were the nation's three largest plumbing companies, including Kohler. The following month, Kohler died of a sudden heart attack. Friends and relatives attributed the death to the strike and to the federal government's challenge to his personal integrity. A second Kohler Strike broke out in 1954, becoming the longest labor-management dispute in national history. As governor Walter J. Kohler was a gubernatorial candidate in 1928. The Republican Party had dominated Wisconsin since its founding in the mid-nineteenth century, and winning the Party's nomination was tantamount to election. Still, it was badly split between conservative Stalwarts and La Follette Progressives. Kohler was a Stalwart who been active in the GOP since being named a presidential elector in 1916. Kohler put on a vigorous campaign, noting his success in business, his lifelong commitment to hard work, and promising to ignore the spoils system when making appointments and promotions. He invited voters to come to Kohler and view working conditions and the industrial village. Many did. Walter was the first political candidate to travel through the state by airplane, covering in one two-week stretch. He also traveled by automobile, trying to reach the l.5 million voters in a 3 million population. Progressives condemned him for his "anti-union shop" attitude, but he countered with the fact that Company wages were 28.9 percent higher than the average state factory level, that 92 percent of all married men in Kohler owned their own lots and homes, and that 75 percent of them owned their own cars. Kohler won the nomination by a large margin and went to Madison, Wisconsin, where he and the legislature eliminated a deficit estimated at $3.5 million, streamlined state bureaucracy, built roads and state parks, and kept taxes low. But the Great Depression ended his political career. Kohler seemed too much like his friend President Herbert Hoover, and most voters wanted change. Progressive Philip La Follette won the primary and election in 1930, joining the state's two Progressive Senators in a popular attempt to end the financial collapse that was wreaking havoc throughout the nation and much of the world. Kohler ran again in 1932 and won the GOP nomination for governor. He voiced strong support for President