The
Farmer-Labor Party was formed in 1920 by John Fitzpatrick, leader
of the Federation of Labor in Chicago.
Party leaders put forward a semi-Socialist program that attempted
to gain the support of small farmers and industrial workers. Parley
Christensen, co-founder of the Utah Labor Party, won over 265,000
votes when he ran for president in 1920. Christensen won 19% of the
vote in South Dakota. He also did well in Washington (19%) and Montana
(7%).
Henrik
Shipstead from Minnesota who won a seat in the Senate in 1922.
Other victors included Magnus Johnson, Ernest Lundeen and Elmer Benson.
In the 1924 presidential election the party's leader, Jacob
Coxey, decided not to run and instead supported Robert
La Follette and the Progressive Party.
In
1930 Floyd B. Olson, a member of the
Farmer-Labor Party, was elected as Governor of Minnesota. He told
voters: "I am not a liberal, I am what I want to be - I am a
radical." Olson won 82 of the state's 87 counties and beat the
candidate of the Republican Party
by 200,000 votes. Olson was expected to be the party's presidential
candidate in 1936 but unfortunately was diagnosed with stomach cancer
and died later that year.
Olson
had been very important in holding together the coalition of farmers,
trade unionists and small business people. After his death the party
began to disintegrate and in 1944 the organization was absorbed into
the Democratic Party. Former supporters
of the Farmer-Labor Party, Hubert Humphrey,
Eugene McCarthy and Walter
Mondale, all became important political figures after the Second
World War.
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