Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party political banner atop a car, circa 1925
The Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party emerged from the Non-Partisan League (NPL), which had expanded from North Dakota into Minnesota in 1918,[2] and the Union Labor Party (ULP) of Duluth, Minnesota, which was founded in February 1918.[2] In 1919, the NPL reorganized as the Working People's Non-Partisan League (WPNPL). In February 1920, the ULP joined the WPNPL.
In 1936, the FLP was informally allied with the New Deal coalition and supported the reelection of President Franklin Roosevelt.[3] Roosevelt was building a national coalition and wanted a solid base in Minnesota, where the Democrats were a weak third party.[4] Roosevelt had a deal with Governor Olson whereby the FLP would get federal patronage, and in turn the FLP would work to block a third-party ticket against Roosevelt in 1936.[5]
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 maintaining 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. A powerful pro-Communist element wanted fusion during World War II to ensure solidarity between the USSR and the USA, as partners against the Nazis.[6]
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.
The New Deal farm programs made the American Farm Bureau Federation the main organization for farmers. It was hostile to the FLP, leaving the FLP without power regarding farm economics.[8]
^ abcHudelson, Richard; Ross, Carl (2006). By the Ore Docks: A Working People's History of Duluth. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 143–150. ISBN0-8166-4636-8.
^William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 (1963) p. 190.
^James S. Olson, ed. Historical Dictionary of the New Deal (1985) pp 164-165.
^Clifford Edward Clark, ed. Minnesota in a Century of Change: The State and its People since 1900 (1989). pp 375–379.
^Arnold A. Offner, Hubert Humphrey: The Conscience of the Country (Yale University Press, 2018) pp. 25, 40–43.
^George H. Mayer, The Political Career of Floyd B. Olson, (Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987) 86-87.
^Richard M Valelly, Radicalism in the states : the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American political economy (1989) p. 15.
^Hubert H. Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man. My Life and Politics (1976) pp 84-85.
Further reading
Benson, Elmer A. "Politics in My Lifetime." Minnesota History 47 (1980): 154-60. online
Delton, Jennifer. Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (2002) focus on how Humphrey used race issue to take over FLP..
Garlid, George W. "The Antiwar Dilemma of the Farmer-Labor Party." Minnesota History (1967): 365-374. in JSTOR
Gieske, Millard L. Minnesota Farmer-Laborism: The Third-Party Alternative (1979) 389pp
Haynes, John Earl. Dubious alliance: the making of Minnesota's DFL Party (U of Minnesota Press, 1984)
Haynes, John Earl. "Farm Coops and the Election of Hubert Humphrey to the Senate." Agricultural History (1983): 201-211. in JSTOR
Haynes, John Earl. "The new history of the communist party in state politics: The implications for mainstream political history." Labor History (1986) 27#4 pp: 549-563.
Hyman, Colette A. "Culture as Strategy: Popular Front Politics and the Minneapolis Theatre Union, 1935-39." Minnesota History (1991): 294-306. in JSTOR
Lovin, Hugh T. "The Fall of Farmer-Labor Parties, 1936-1938." Pacific Northwest Quarterly (1971): 16-26. in JSTOR
McCoy, Donald R. Angry voices: Left-of-center politics in the New Deal era (1958; reprint 2012)
Mayer, George H. The Political Career of Floyd B. Olson (1987)
Mitau, G. Theodore. "The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Schism of 1948." Minnesota History (1955): 187-194. in JSTOR
Naftalin, Arthur. "The Tradition of Protest and the Roots of the Farmer-Labor Party." Minnesota History 35.2 (1956): 53-63. online
Rude, Leslie G. "The rhetoric of farmer‐labor agitators." Communication Studies 20.4 (1969): 280-285.
Sofchalk, Donald G. "Union and Ethnic Group Influence in the 1938 Election on the Minnesota Iron Ranges." Journal of the West (2003) 42#3 pp: 66-74.
Valelly, Richard M. Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American Political Economy (University of Chicago Press, 1989)
