Vol. 2 - May - No. 25
Radical Third Parties: Minnesota Farm-Labor Party
During the 1930s in Minnesota, discontented agrarians and urban workers organized the Minnesota Farmer-Labor (MFL) party and elected Floyd Olson to the governorship in 1930, 1932, and 1934. As the intensity of his attack on the New Deal grew, so did Olson's popularity. "I am not a liberal," he declared in 1934. "I am a radical….I want a definite change in the system." In an attack on the industrialists who ran the National Recovery Administration (NRA), he noted, "I am not satisfied with tinkering….I am not satisfied with hanging a laurel wreath upon burglars and thieves and pirates and calling them code authorities." When Olson died of cancer in 1935, Elmer Benson picked up the MFL banner and led the party to gubernatorial victory in 1936.
learn more about this fascinating subject:
Floyd B. Olson
Toward the Cooperative Commonwealth: An Introductory History of the Farmer-Labor Movement in Minnesota (1917-1948)
St. Paul Labor History Map
National Recovery Administration
