CREDIT: St. Paul Daily News/Minnesota Historical Society
FLOYD OLSON was the 20th century’s most successful third-party politician. Running on the Farmer-Labor Party (FLP) ticket, a progressive alliance of rural farmers and urban workers, Olson won three terms as Minnesota’s governor, defeating Democratic and Republican candidates. He served as governor from 1931 until his death in 1936. “I am not a liberal,” Olson said. “I am what I want to be—a radical.”
Like his predecessors and fellow governors, Robert M. La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin and Hiram Johnson of California, Olson viewed state government as a laboratory for progressive ideas, many of which would later be adopted at the national level. Had he not died of stomach cancer at age forty-four in August 1936 during his third term as governor, his record, reputation, and legacy would be better known.
Olson was born in Minneapolis in 1891 to poor immigrant parents—a Swedish mother and Norwegian father, a railroad worker. After graduating from high school in 1909, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota but got in trouble constantly for refusing to participate in mandatory Reserve Officer Training Corps drills and for wearing a derby hat in violation of university rules. After a year, he dropped out. He took series of odd jobs in Canada and Alaska before moving briefly to Seattle, Washington, where he worked as a stevedore on the docks and joined the Industrial Workers of the World. These experiences, along with his appetite for reading, radicalized Olson.
Olson returned to Minnesota in 1913 and attended law school at night. He graduated at the top of his class, earned his degree in 1915, and began to practice law. In 1919, at age twenty-eight, he was appointed Hennepin County’s assistant attorney and the next year became county attorney, a position he held for ten years. He was also active in the American Civil Liberties Union. Olson made a name for himself prosecuting corrupt businessmen and the Ku Klux Klan, which was making a comeback in some northern cities. With his reputation for honesty and courage, he won reelection in 1922 and 1926. Olson joined the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, which was founded in 1918 and quickly gained strength as part of an upsurge of radical populism, particularly in the Midwest. Some of its key leaders had been active in the Socialist Party (which had elected mayors in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and other states), the Non-Partisan League (a progressive political organization of farmers), and the Duluth Union Labor Party. The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party’s platform called for protection of farmers and labor union members, government ownership of some industries, and old-age insurance. By the 1920s and 1930s the FLP had successfully challenged the Republican Party’s longtime domination of state politics. In those decades, the FLP elected three governors, four US senators, and eight US representatives.
In 1924, while serving as Hennepin County attorney, Olson ran for governor on the FLP ticket but lost to the Republican candidate. By the time he ran again in 1930, Minnesota’s workers and farmers—their livelihoods and self-confidence destroyed by the Depression—were ready for his radical platform. He won election with 57 percent of the vote, garnering support from white-collar professionals and small business owners as well as from workers and farmers. The six foot two, handsome, and charismatic Olson easily won reelection twice. The FLP’s 1934 platform called for a “cooperative commonwealth” that included public ownership of all industry, insurance, banking, and public utilities and tough regulation of business.
Despite Olson’s popularity, the FLP never controlled the Minnesota legislature during his three terms as governor, and he was constantly at odds with the conservatives in the State House. Despite this, he often outmaneuvered the legislature by mobilizing union members, farmers, and small businesspersons to lobby for progressive bills that expanded public works, regulated securities, promoted consumer- and worker-owned cooperative enterprises, and conserved natural resources. Like Franklin D. Roosevelt, he used his oratorical skills through the new medium of radio to broadcast his views and rally rural and urban voters to win elections and lobby the legislature for his progressive agenda.
During his first term (1931–1933), the conservatives in the legislature thwarted most of Olson’s programs except the funding of a major highway building program. By the time he began his second term in 1933, the Depression had gotten much worse. A quarter of Minnesotans were out of work. Farmers were devastated by falling prices, rising debt, and a serious drought. Farmers organized protests to stop sheriffs from carrying out foreclosures. In his second inaugural address, Olson outlined the situation in dire terms:
We are assembled during the most critical period in the history of the Nation and our state. 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.
Olson immediately took bold action. He ordered a halt to all foreclosure sales and declared a bank holiday to keep Minnesotans from withdrawing their savings and destroying the financial system.
With the state government, county governments, and school districts unable to pay their bills, Olson proposed—and the legislature reluctantly passed—a progressive income tax, Minnesota’s first. Emboldened, Olson continued to press for and won more reforms. According to historian Russell Fridley in an article in Minnesota Law and Politics:
[Olson’s reforms included] 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: his plans for unemployment compensation and a state-owned hydroelectric plant were defeated, while the legislature voted to freeze state employee salaries (a measure he strongly opposed).
Olson used the power of his office to negotiate an end to the meatpackers strike against the Hormel Company. The settlement included revenue sharing for workers—a significant milestone in US labor history To end a bitter truck drivers strike that had led to the death of three workers, Olson declared martial law. Having the governor on their side helped the workers win union recognition from a reluctant employer.
Ordinary Minnesotans admired Olson for his working-class roots and his common touch. He used fiery rhetoric to inspire and mobilize his followers and to win support for his progressive programs. He said, “Minnesota is definitely a left-wing state,” and he observed, “If the so-called depression deepens, the government ought to take and operate the key industries of the country.” In a 1935 article in Common Sense, Olson wrote, “A third party must arise and preach the gospel of government and collective ownership of the means of production and distribution.” At the same time, Olson was friendly with many wealthy Minnesotans who opposed his political views but who mingled with him socially at summer resorts and country clubs.
Many of Olson’s supporters wanted him to run as a third-party candidate for president in 1936. He flirted with the idea. “Whether there will be a third party in 1936,” Olson told an interviewer, “depends mainly on Mr. Roosevelt.” He thought that Bob La Follette Jr. (the progressive Republican senator from Wisconsin and son of the late governor) or Burton Wheeler (the Democratic senator from Montana) might be the best third-party candidates. “I think I’m a little too radical,” Olson acknowledged. “How about 1940?” the interviewer asked. “Maybe by then I won’t be radical enough,” Olson replied.
Despite the rhetorical teasing, Olson admired FDR and was not interested in challenging him. Instead, he decided to leave the governorship and run for the US Senate seat, hoping to serve as a progressive pro–New Deal voice in Washington. He was favored to win, but in late 1935, he was diagnosed with cancer. He died in August 1936, his political career cut short, forgoing a more visible role on the national stage that, some predicted, could have eventually led to the White House.
Olson’s popularity, political skills, and policy program moved Minnesota decisively to the left. Under subsequent FLP governors and (after the FLP merged with the Democratic Party in 1944) under Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party leaders, Minnesota remained one of the nation’s most progressive states. Olson expanded the state’s public education system and created a social safety net and a government jobs program that, in tandem with the New Deal, cushioned the pain of the Depression for Minnesotans and left a legacy of buildings, highways, libraries, hospitals, conservation projects, and playgrounds that improved life for decades afterward. Olson also shaped Minnesota’s ideological direction, cementing his enduring reputation for supporting high taxes, robust public services, and social compassion.