The Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party (FLP) was a left-wing American political party in Minnesota between 1918 and 1944. The FLP largely dominated Minnesota politics during the Great Depression. It was one of the most successful statewide third party movements in United States history and the longest-lasting affiliate of the national Farmer–Labor movement. At its height in the 1920s and 1930s, FLP members included three Minnesota governors, four United States senators, eight United States representatives and a majority in the Minnesota legislature.
In 1944, Hubert H. Humphrey and Elmer Benson worked to merge the party with the state's Democratic Party, forming the contemporary Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party.[19]
The Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party emerged from the Non-Partisan League (NPL), which had expanded from North Dakota into Minnesota in 1918,[20] and the Union Labor Party (ULP) of Duluth, Minnesota, which was founded in February 1918.[20] In 1919, the NPL reorganized as the Working People's Non-Partisan League (WPNPL). In February 1920, the ULP joined the WPNPL.
The FLP ran on a platform of farmer and labor union protection, government ownership of certain industries, and social security laws.[20]
In 1936, the FLP was informally allied with the New Deal coalition and supported the reelection of President Franklin Roosevelt.[21] Roosevelt was building a national coalition and wanted a solid base in Minnesota, where the Democrats were a weak third party.[22] 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.[23]
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.[24]
According to political scientist George Mayer:[25]
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.[26]
The Minnesota Democratic Party, led by Hubert Humphrey, was able to absorb the Farmer–Labor Party on April 15, 1944, creating the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party. Humphrey and his team expelled the Communist element from the new organization.[27]
However, in 1918, the NPL expanded into neighboring Minnesota, where it joined forces with city worker-focused groups to form the Farmer-Labor Party (FLP).
In the 1920s, members of the national left-wing populist movement called the Nonpartisan League stood for election under a new banner, the Farmer Labor Party.
The Farmer-Labor movement founded the most successful third party in U.S. political history. This progressive movement elected candidates and advanced political change in Minnesota from 1917 until it merged with the Democrats in 1944, to form the DFL, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
Documentary about the history of the progressive Farmer-Labor movement in Minnesota from 1915 to 1944, when the party merged with the Democrats to form the DFL, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
The FLP developed a political viewpoint that was to the left of both the New Deal of the 1930s and the Democratic Party of the early 2000s. FLP activists supported a more equal distribution of wealth through an economy based on small businesses, cooperatives, and public ownership.
Though the state's dominant political force at the time was the Republican Party, the populist Farmer-Labor Party had managed to do better than the Democrats… But the Farmer-Labor party wasn't formed to represent agricultural interests or rural interests. Rather, it was founded as a populist party with a socialist flavor, one that grew out of the Nonpartisan League, an effort by small farmers to fight the power of the grain conglomerates and the railroads, wrote Augsburg University professor Michael J. Lansing in his history of the movement, "Insurgent Democracy."
The FLP movement continues to influence Minnesota politics. Its progressive populism led to the liberalism of such DFL leaders as Humphrey, Walter Mondale, and Eugene McCarthy.
In fact, the program that La Follette ran on — taxing the rich, cracking down on Wall Street abuses, empowering workers to organize unions, defending small farmers, breaking up corporate trusts, strengthening public utilities — fueled a resurgence of left-wing populist movements across the upper Midwest: the Non-Partisan League of North Dakota, the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota and the Progressive Party of Wisconsin.
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The story of Minnesota's Farmer-Labor Party in the early 20th century is instructive for the Left, especially in light of this week's election results… The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) is one of only two state-level parties affiliated nationally with the Democratic Party to use a unique name. The other is the North Dakota Democratic–Nonpartisan League Party. These two parties actually share a common history, and this history explains the reasons for the distinction. Now, decades later, these names are all that remains of that history and of the populist movement that once flourished in the upper Midwest… As the party merged into the Democratic machine, its populist energies were chewed up and spat out. As the DFL's star ascended, the populist elements that had made up the Farmer-Labor Party became a distant memory.
Minnesota's Farmer-Labor Party (FLP) represents one of the most successful progressive third-party coalitions in American history.
Though he died of a heart attack less than a year after the election, La Follette's success inspired other progressive movements and campaigns around the country, including farmer-labor parties in Minnesota and North Dakota, the Progressive Party in Wisconsin, and the American Labor Party in New York City.
However, poor economic conditions for farmers and workers led to the emergence of the Farmer-Labor Party in 1918, one of many parties with socialist influences in the United States.
But the Farmer-Labor party wasn't formed to represent agricultural interests or rural interests. Rather, it was founded as a populist party with a socialist flavor, one that grew out of the Nonpartisan League, an effort by small farmers to fight the power of the grain conglomerates and the railroads, wrote Augsburg University professor Michael J. Lansing in his history of the movement, "Insurgent Democracy."
The FLP carried on the NPL's mission while adding labor union protection to its platform, creating a broad, working-class movement statewide.
Only a complete reorganization of our social structure into a cooperativecommonwealth will bring economic security and prevent a prolonged period of further suffering among the people. ... We, there-fore, declare that capitalism has failed and immediate steps must be taken to abolish capitalism in a peaceful and lawful manner and that a new, sane and just society must be established, a system where all natural resources, machinery of production, transportation and communication shall he owned by the government and operated democratically for the benefit of the people and not for the benefit of the few.?
However, the cooperation alienated some of the more radical elements in the coalition, such as the Socialists.
By and large, neither faction among the Finns became involved with the Nonpartisan Leagues or the forming Farmer-Labor Party until the Popular Front period beginning in 1936. At this time, the communists began to play an active role in Farmer-Labor politics and in the election of John Bernard to Congress, who won immediate fame for his lone vote against the Neutrality Act of 1937, an act which hamstrung aid to Republican Spain to the advantage of Francisco Franco.
The FLP developed a political viewpoint that was to the left of both the New Deal of the 1930s and the Democratic Party of the early 2000s.
[…], but still radicalism remained implicit in their planks as they gravitated toward being a left wing of the New Deal.
In all but name, Minnesota's left opposition had become the Democratic Party.
In the majority of these states, during either the 1890s or interwar years, left-wing third-party movements—the Populist Party, Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, North Dakota Nonpartisan League, and Wisconsin Progressive Party