Floyd Björnstjerne Olson (November 13, 1891 –
August 22, 1936) was an American politician. He served as the 22nd Governor of Minnesota from January 6, 1931 to August 22, 1936. He died in office from
stomach cancer. He was a member of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, and was the first member of the Farmer-Labor Party to win the
office of governor in Minnesota.
Early life
Floyd B. Olson was born on the north side of Minneapolis, Minnesota to a
Norwegian father and a Swedish mother. He was an only child.
After graduating from North High School in Minneapolis in 1909, Olson went to work for the
Northern Pacific Railway. The next year, Olson enrolled at the University of Minnesota, but left after only a year, during which he was constantly in trouble
for wearing a derby in violation of school rules and for refusing to participate in required
ROTC drills.
Heading west, Olson worked a series of odd jobs in Canada and Alaska before settling briefly in Seattle, Washington, where he
became a stevedore and joined the Industrial
Workers of the World. During this time, Olson read widely and began to adopt a populist,
semi-socialist philosophy which he would retain for the rest of his life.
Returning to Minnesota in 1913, Olson enrolled in Northwestern Law
College, a night school, and earned his Juris
Doctor in 1915. That same year, he met and married Ada Krejci in New Prague,
Minnesota and became a practicing lawyer.
Hennepin County Attorney
In 1919, Olson was hired as an Assistant Hennepin County Attorney and, by
the following year, had himself become the Hennepin County Attorney after his former boss was fired for accepting
bribes.
During that same time period, he made his first foray into politics when he helped form the "Committee of 48," an organization
that attempted to draft Senator Robert M.
La Follette, Sr. to run for president on a third party ticket. The effort proved unsuccessful, but La Follette would later run on the
Progressive Party ticket in 1924. That same year, Olson ran in
the Democratic primary for
the local seat in the House of Representatives, but lost.
As Hennepin County Attorney, Olson quickly earned a name for himself as a stern prosecutor
who relished going after crooked businessmen. He took on the Ku Klux Klan in a well-publicized case that brought both respect and death
threats and was re-elected to the position in 1922 and 1926.
Candidate for governor
In 1923, Olson brought a case against the leaders of the Minnesota Citizens Alliance, a
faux-grassroots organization dedicated to preserving "right-to-work" laws, after they hired a hitman to
dynamite the home of a union leader. Olson's vigorous
pursuit of the Citizens Alliance made him a hero to the local labor movement, which
encouraged him to run for the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party's gubernatorial
nomination.
Having secured the endorsement of the Hennepin County Farmer-Labor Central
Committee, Olson narrowly won the nomination in a bitterly-fought primary. Buoyed by the presidential campaign of Senator La
Follette, who endorsed Olson and vice-versa, he received 43% of the vote, losing to Republican candidate Theodore
Christianson's 48%. The Democratic candidate came in a distant third with 6%.
Four years later, in 1928, the new "Farmer-Labor Association" (which had changed its name to avoid being linked with local
communists) attempted to draft Olson to run for governor again. Although the party committee
once again endorsed him and this time guaranteed that he would not face a primary battle, Olson declined to run. That year, the Farmer-Labor candidate lost in the Republican landslide that
accompanied Herbert Hoover's election to the presidency.
By 1930, however, the stock market had crashed and the Great Depression had begun. After the party's newspaper urged that
Olson be drafted, he easily won the nomination. Forming a coalition of farmers, organized labor, and small businessmen, Olson swept to a landslide
victory in the election, receiving 59% of the vote in a four-way race and winning 82 of the state's 87 counties.
Olson as Governor
At the time Olson assumed his office, Minnesota's legislature was officially
nonpartisan, but was, in reality, dominated by conservative Republicans who opposed most of what Olson stood for.
Nevertheless, Olson soon proved himself skilled at the art of politics and he managed to fulfill the vast majority of his
campaign promises. During his three terms as governor, Olson proposed, and the legislature passed, bills that instituted a
progressive income tax, created a social
security program for the elderly, expanded the state's environmental
conservation programs, guaranteed equal pay for women and the right to
collective bargaining, and instituted a minimum
wage and a system of unemployment insurance.
Despite these successes, the thing that Olson wanted the most, a bill that would have put Minnesota's electric utilities, iron mines,
oil fields, grain elevators, and meatpacking plants under state ownership, never saw the
light of day, as the legislature balked at what they saw as socialism and Olson insisted was
"cooperativism."
As the platform of his party grew successively more radical, Olson's support amongst
the middle class gradually began to erode. His support with labor and agriculture, however,
remained unchecked and he was easily re-elected in 1932 and 1934.
Final days
As the 1936 election neared, Olson ruled out the
possibility of running for president as a third party candidate, and instead announced his intention to run for Minnesota's
U.S. Senate seat.
Unbeknownst to Olson, however, his health was beginning to fail. Having suffered from severe ulcers ever since his election, Olson went to the Mayo Clinic in December of
1935, where he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Although the cancer was
malignant and would eventually prove fatal, Olson was not told of the seriousness of his
condition, as was the practice of the day.
Thus "reassured" of his "good health," Olson proceeded to further weaken himself by not only resuming his duties as governor,
but also beginning to organize his party's state convention and returning to his
senatorial campaign. As he stumped across the state, promising to support federal ownership of monopolies and to back President Franklin Roosevelt's
court-packing scheme, he further weakened his immune system, allowing his cancer to metastasize.
Olson last made a public appearance on June 29, 1936, giving a
stump speech in Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis. The next day, he returned to the Mayo
Clinic for treatment, but it was too little, too late. He died there on August 22. He was 44
years old.
Monuments
Olson Memorial Highway statue
Since his death, dozens of statues of Olson have been constructed throughout the state, many
of which declare him to be the state's "greatest governor."
Shortly after Olson died, Minnesota State Highway 55 (a highway that was then being constructed) was renamed the "Floyd B. Olson Memorial Highway" in his honor. A
proposal by the Taxpayer's League in late 2004 to rename the highway after
the recently-deceased President Ronald Reagan met with widespread public condemnation and
was soon abandoned.
In 1974, Olson's home at 1914 West 49th Street in Minneapolis was listed on
the National Register of Historic Places.
References
Further reading
The Political Career of Floyd B. Olson by George H. Mayer, The University of Minnesota Press (1951)
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