Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party

The Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party was a political party in the United States state of Minnesota, the most successful and longest-lasting of the constituent elements of the national Farmer–Labor Party movement, which had a presence in other states. The Minnesota FLP was founded in 1918, with roots in the Non-Partisan League and the Duluth Union Labor Party^[1]; and eventually merged with the Minnesota Democratic Party in 1944.^[2]

The party had a good deal of success in Minnesota as a statewide third party, with three governors, four U.S. senators and eight Representatives serving during the 1920s and 1930s. The party platform called for protection for farmers and labor union members, government ownership of some industries, and social security laws. There were attempts to combine the party with other similar movements into a national Farmer–Labor Party from 1920 well into the early 1940s.

One of the primary obstacles of the party, besides constant vilification on the pages of local and state newspapers, was the difficulty of uniting the party's divergent base and maintaing political union between rural farmers and urban laborers who often had little in common other than the populist perception that they were an oppressed class of hardworking producers exploited by a small elite. According to political scientist George Mayer:

“The farmer approached problems as a proprietor or petty capitalist. Relief to him meant a mitigation of conditions that interfered with successful farming. It involved such things as tax reduction, easier access to credit, and a floor under farm prices. His individualist psychology did not create scruples against government aid, but he welcomed it only as long as it improved agricultural conditions. When official paternalism took the form of public works or the dole, he openly opposed it because assistance on such terms forced him to abandon his chosen profession, to submerge his individuality in the labor crew, and to suffer the humiliation of the bread line. Besides, a public works program required increased revenue, and since the state relied heavily on the property tax, the cost of the program seemed likely to fall primarily on him.

At the opposite end of the seesaw sat the city worker, who sought relief from the hunger, exposure, and disease that followed the wake of unemployment. Dependent on an impersonal industrial machine, he had sloughed off the frontier tradition of individualism for the more serviceable doctrine of cooperation through trade unionism. Unlike the depressed farmer, the unemployed worker often had no property or economic stake to protect. He was largely immune to taxation and had nothing to lose by backing proposals to dilute property rights or redistribute the wealth. Driven by the primitive instinct to survive, the worker demanded financial relief measures from the state.”^[3]

The Minnesota Democratic Party, led by Hubert Humphrey, was able to merge the Farmer–Labor party with the Minnesota Democratic Party on April 15, 1944. Since 1944, the two parties together make up the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party.

• Governors of Minnesota who were Farmer–Labor
  • Floyd B. Olson (1931–1936)
  • Hjalmar Petersen (1936–1937)
  • Elmer Austin Benson (1937–1939)

• United States Senators from Minnesota who were Farmer–Labor
  • Henrik Shipstead (1923–1941); later became a Republican
  • Magnus Johnson (1923–1925)
  • Elmer Austin Benson (1935–1937)
  • Ernest Lundeen (1937–1940)

• United States Representatives from Minnesota who were Farmer–Labor
  • William Leighton Carss (1919–1921, 1925–1929)
  • Ole J. Kvale (1923–1929)
  • Knud Wefald (1923–1927)
  • Paul John Kvale (1929–1939)
  • Henry M. Arens (1933–1935)
  • Magnus Johnson (1933–1935)
  • Ernest Lundeen (1933–1937); had previously served as a Republican Representative (1915–1917), also served in the Senate
  • Francis Shoemaker (1933–1935)

References

External links

• Article on the Minnesota Farmer–Labor party from The Progressive Populist
• Minnesota Farmer–Labor
• Farmer–Labor information page
• The Farmer Labor Party 1918–1924 Organizational history of attempts to form a national Farmer–Labor Party. Marxist Internet Archive. Retrieved May 26, 2006.
• TOWARD THE COOPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH: AN INTRODUCTORY HISTORY OF THE FARMER–LABOR MOVEMENT IN MINNESOTA (1917–1948). 232 page online copy of Thomas Gerald O'Connell's 1979 Phd thesis from The Union Institute.
• Luoma, Everett E.: The Farmer Takes A Holiday. Exposition Press, 1967.