Floyd Bjerstjerne Olson was an American politician and lawyer. He served as the 22nd Governor of Minnesota (1931-1936).
Background
Floyd Bjerstjerne Olson was born on November 13, 1891, in the "northside" slum area of Minneapolis, Minnesota, the only child of Paul A. and Ida Maria (Nelson) Olson. His father, who came of poor Norwegian peasant stock, had emigrated from Norway to Minnesota, where he met his future wife, who had recently arrived from Sweden. The older Olson lacked ambition but worked regularly enough as a railroad checker to avert poverty. His wife, however, aspired to a better economic status; her nagging disposition and authoritarian manner perhaps helped to make her son a rebel against order and conservative values, while his northside environment stamped him with a lasting sympathy for the underprivileged.
Education
After attending grammar and high school in Minneapolis, Olson put in a restless, unproductive year at the University of Minnesota and then embarked upon a "Wanderjahr, " working as a salesman, fisherman, miner, and longshoreman in Alberta, Alaska, and Seattle; while in Seattle he joined the Industrial Workers of the World. Upon his return to Minneapolis, in 1913, he entered the Northwestern Law College, a night school, and supported himself by working as a law clerk. He graduated in 1915.
Career
After graduation Floyd Olson entered the law firm of Larrabee and Davies. Olson quickly developed a fine reputation as a trial lawyer, but his vigorous personality soon drew him into public life. Thus, although he began his public career as a Democrat, unsuccessfully seeking election to Congress from the 5th Minnesota district in 1918 and 1920, he remained on good enough terms with Minneapolis Republicans to secure an appointment as assistant county attorney of Hennepin County in 1919 and county attorney in 1920. He was elected to full terms as county attorney in 1922 and 1926. Meanwhile he had joined in the organization of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor party, an outgrowth of the Nonpartisan League, and had been its candidate for governor in 1924. Although he played up his membership in the progressive "Committee of Forty-Eight" and accepted Communist support, Olson also appealed to conservatives by sidetracking his party's program of government ownership of railroads and power utilities. He ran strongly but was defeated.
In 1930, however, Olson won the governorship by a wide margin. Although his pronouncements were usually more radical than his policies, in this campaign he forced the suppression of the government-ownership, income-tax, forty-hour-week, and unemployment-insurance planks of the Farmer-Labor party's platform and toned down the public-works and primary-law proposals. His first administration was even more conservative than his campaign had portended, though intra-party fights and Republican dominance in the legislature would in any case have precluded more aggressive efforts. With his reelection in 1932, however, Olson effected a political alliance with Franklin D. Roosevelt, and thereafter his policies generally reflected those of the New Deal. Despite a hostile legislature, he secured large appropriations for the relief of the unemployed, a two-year moratorium on farm mortgage foreclosures, and measures to extend conservation. In 1933 he joined a delegation of northwestern governors demanding agricultural price relief in Washington, and his intervention in the Minneapolis truck strike of 1934 was probably decisive in forcing employers to grant union recognition.
Olson won a second reelection in 1934, this time primarily with the backing of urban labor and reform forces and with a more radical program. In general, however, Olson was a follower rather than a leader of popular demands, a fact which continually embroiled him with more doctrinaire Farmer-Laborites. He also had trouble maintaining the informal alliance with President Roosevelt which provided Democratic support for Farmer-Laborites in state elections and Farmer-Labor support for Democrats nationally. Despite this, he steadfastly urged the reelection of Roosevelt in 1936, though he himself was repeatedly talked of as a presidential candidate on a national third-party ticket. Olson's career and his control of his party had been continually jeopardized by severe stomach ulcers, and for eight months before his death he had been fighting a pancreatic cancer - meanwhile, characteristically, carrying on an active campaign for election to the United States Senate. He died at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, at the age of forty-five. He was buried in Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis, after a moving display of public grief.
Achievements
Floud Olson served as the Hennepin County Attorney (1920-30).
Olson was the 22nd Governor of Minnesota (1931-1936), and the first member of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party to win the office of governor.
During his tenure 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.
Membership
Floyd Olson was a member of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor party.
Personality
A persuasive orator, Olson was also a master of sarcasm. His personal charm, handsome and almost boyish countenance, flashing blue eyes, and infectious grin often won him the support of persons with whom he disagreed on many issues
Connections
In 1917 Olson married Ada Krejci of New Prague, Minnesota, who bore him one daughter, Patricia.
