"I am not a liberal. I am what I want to be — a radical." —Floyd B. Olson to the 1934 Farmer-Labor party convention
The convergence of Floyd B. Olson's election in 1930 as Minnesota's first Farmer-Labor governor and the collapse of the state and national economies forever transformed the state's politics and government. In politics, it dramatically ended the dominance of the Republican party during the first half of the state's history (18 Republican governors occupying the governor's chair over 63 years compared with only 4 Democrats over 10 years); and no Democratic candidate for president carried Minnesota until 1932. In governance, Olson expanded the reach of the governor's office by asserting emergency powers and using government as an instrument to bring about economic and social change.
The Farmer-Labor party, a loose and, at times, tenuous coalition of farmers, workers, socialists, isolationists and progressives, coalesced around the idea that working together they would bring about a fairer distribution of income for themselves and increase social justice for the larger society. Moving Minnesota to the left and leading the party to its greatest victories, Olson won three two-year terms in 1930, 1932 and 1934 by winning percentages of 57, 50 and 44 against Republican and Democratic candidates.
During his first term (1931-33) Olson faced conservative majorities in both houses (the legislature then was elected without party designation and divided into conservative and liberal caucuses) that rejected most of his program except for funding a major highway-building program.
As he began his second term in 1933, with Herbert Hoover still in the White House and Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration two months in the future, the Great Depression had deepened: one of four Minnesotans was without a job; personal savings evaporated as banks failed; and farmers, one-third of the work force, were being crushed by falling prices for land and crops, a severe drought and rising debt. As sheriffs held foreclosure sales, strikes by farmers increased. Olson took the extraordinary step of breaching the separation of powers and ordering a halt to such sales and declared a bank holiday.
"We are assembled during the most critical period in the history of the Nation and our state," declared Olson in his second inaugural address. "An army of unemployed; some 200,000 homeless and wandering boys; thousands of abandoned farms; an ever-increasing number of mortgage foreclosures; and thousands of people in want and poverty are evidences not only of an economic depression but of the failure of government and our social system to function in the interests of the common happiness of the people. Just beyond the horizon of this scene is rampant lawlessness and possible revolution. Only remedial social legislation, national and state, can prevent its appearance."
To finance state government during its first 75 years (1858-1933), Minnesota relied on a tax base of property taxes (real and personal), supplemented by levies on inheritance, mortgages, railroads, iron ore, liquor, cigarettes, motor vehicles and gasoline. Olson's 1933 budget proposal took aim at this time-honored system of taxation that failed to produce adequate income to run a state facing a mushrooming deficit with an increasing number of "red ink" counties and school districts unable to pay their bills. Twenty counties had exhausted their budgets for relief in the form of welfare. The centerpiece of his taxation reform was a state progressive income tax. Testifying before legislative committees he pleaded, cajoled and at times intimidated the conservative Senate majority.
Olson demanded quick action, issued sweeping executive orders, pressured the legislature and appealed for public support in order to secure emergency, remedial and reform legislation. His program faced a divided legislature: a House with a liberal majority caucus of 74 (comprising Farmer-Laborites, Democrats and a few progressive Republicans) opposed to a conservative minority caucus of 56. In the Senate, just the reverse: a conservative majority of 38 versus a liberal minority of 29. Against a statewide press largely opposed to his program, Olson nevertheless succeeded brilliantly in securing most of its passage, relying on his personal charisma, powerful oratory and mastery of the new media of radio.
He emerged from the 1933 legislature with a stunning array of reforms: the state's first income tax, a tax on chain stores, bank reorganization, municipally owned liquor stores, ratification of the federal amendment prohibiting child labor, large appropriations for relief, a two-year moratorium on farm foreclosures, an old-age pension system, incentives to form business cooperatives, a ban on injunctions in labor disputes, limiting hours worked by women in industrial jobs to 54 per week, creation of 13 state forests and the beginning of state protection over what became the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. His losses were few: defeat of unemployment compensation and a state-owned hydroelectric plant and the freezing of state employee salaries (which he opposed). The additional revenue raised by the income tax was used, first to retire debts of the school districts, and then to meet the state's current financial demands.
Olson personally settled two bitter strikes-at the Hormel Company in Austin in 1933 and, with help from President Roosevelt, the violent Minneapolis truck drivers strike the following year. In the Hormel strike he showed great skill at keeping a foot in both camps during negotiations and emerging with a settlement that included revenue sharing for workers-a national landmark in labor relations. During the truck drivers strike that witnessed the death of three workers, he declared martial law to maintain public order. His intervention promoted union recognition by employers and preceded the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
It was also during his second term that Floyd B. Olson became a favorite of the left and a national figure. Promoted as a presidential candidate for a national third party, his fiery rhetoric revealed a lifelong and abiding dislike of the existing American economic system. In his public speeches and statements his radical rhetoric ran far ahead of his pragmatic actions as governor ("Minnesota is definitely a left-wing state"; "If the so-called depression deepens, the government ought to take and operate the key industries of the country.") Journalist Lorena Hickok, in 1933, wrote, "This boy Olson is, in my opinion, about the smartest 'Red' in the country." "A third party must arise," Olson wrote in Common Sense in 1935, "and preach the gospel of government and collective ownership of the means of production and distribution." "Whether there will be a third party in 1936," Olson told an interviewer, "depends mainly on Mr. Roosevelt." As for its leadership: maybe Bob La Follette or Burton Wheeler; "I think I'm a little too radical," Olson conceded. "How about 1940?" the interviewer persisted. "Maybe by then I won't be radical enough," Olson replied.
In spite of his flirtation with the "third party" idea, he kept the Farmer-Labor party linked to the New Deal and supported FDR's re-election in 1936. Olson's early actions relieving farm bankruptcy, rescuing failed banks and relief measures foreshadowed those of the New Deal, most of which Olson endorsed. Heading toward a victory in a race for a U.S. Senate seat in 1936, his rising political star ended with his death by stomach cancer 10 weeks before the election; he was 44.
Olson left a huge legacy. He wrought a fundamental change in the state's tax system in a progressive direction, stabilized state finances and shored up public education. While neither he nor FDR solved the unemployment problem, they achieved notable success in relieving widespread suffering by fashioning an enduring welfare safety net-Social Security, unemployment compensation, bank deposit insurance and old-age pensions. To ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-clad Minnesotans, Olson brought material relief with rare humanity in a time of turmoil. The vast relief programs of the New Deal on which nation and state collaborated (federally funded and state-administered) brought to Minnesota buildings, highways, libraries, hospitals, playgrounds, surveys of and preservation of cultural resources, writers' and theater projects and noteworthy creative work by artists. In the area of conservation alone, between 1933 and 1936, under various emergency relief projects, including the Civilian Conservation Corps, 50,000 enrollees were given work in Minnesota at a cost of $55 million.
The greatest tribute to Olson's governorship came from his successors, Republican and Democratic-Farmer-Labor alike, as they not only accepted his reforms and those of the New Deal, but improved and added to them with changing times. Seventy-five years later Minnesota is a far different place than in Olson's day-more urban and suburban, with three times as many people, fewer farm families, more government and a far more diverse economy and culture. While his governorship passed into history long ago, for courageous and creative leadership, his example, among Minnesota's 39 governors, remains the gold standard. L&P
—Russell Fridley is the former director of the Minnesota Historical Society.
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