Background
Johnson was born on September 19, 1871, in Karlstad, Sweden, the son of Johannes Janson, reputedly a substantial middle-class farmer and ship captain, and Elizabeth (Pierson) Janson.
Johnson was born on September 19, 1871, in Karlstad, Sweden, the son of Johannes Janson, reputedly a substantial middle-class farmer and ship captain, and Elizabeth (Pierson) Janson.
Educated in the public schools of his native land, Johnson was apprenticed at the age of sixteen, several years after his father's death, as a glass blower.
Following the death of his mother, Johnson began dreaming of coming to the United States; and in 1891, at the age of twenty, he made his way to relatives in Wisconsin and temporarily settled in La Crosse, where he worked as a lumberjack. About 1894 he moved to Meeker County, Minnesota, and began farming. In 1899 he became a naturalized citizen.
Johnson reached the Middle West when the Populist movement was at its peak. He heard the complaints of the farmers against the grain trade and the numerous arguments in behalf of farmers' cooperatives and quickly became associated with that group of Scandinavian-Americans which formed the hard core of political and economic radicalism in the upper Mississippi Valley.
Johnson soon became a homespun spokesman of the "dirt farmers" and as such attracted attention in the political arena. In 1914 and again in 1916 he was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives, and in 1918 and 1920 to the state senate. In 1922 he made a strong showing in a bid for the governorship of Minnesota as the candidate of the newly founded Farmer-Labor party. Next year, running against both Republican and Democratic opponents, he won election to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Knute Nelson. Johnson's victory came as a great shock to many conservatives, but not to those who kept a close watch on sagging farm prices, mounting farm indebtedness, and the efforts of the Nonpartisan League and the Farmer-Labor party to weld the farmers and laborers into an effective political coalition. Johnson drew his support from this agricultural discontent. His success raised the hopes of progressives for the 1924 campaign; but those hopes proved short-lived. In 1924 the Progressive candidate for the presidency, Robert M. La Follette, made a poor showing in most of the Middle West. In Minnesota, Johnson, running for the regular Senate term, lost to the Republican candidate, Thomas D. Schall. He lost by only a narrow margin, however, and ran well ahead of La Follette in Minnesota.
After another unsuccessful quest for the governorship on the Farmer-Labor ticket in 1926, Johnson resumed farming near Kimball, Minnesota. With the revival of third-party strength in the depression years of the 1930's Johnson returned to politics, winning election to Congress in a statewide contest in 1932. He spent two uneventful years in Washington supporting New Deal legislation. Meanwhile a redistricting law had put him into the 6th congressional district with the popular Republican Congressman Harold Knutson, who defeated Johnson for reelection in 1934. The leadership of the Farmer-Labor party had now passed into the hands of Gov. Floyd B. Olson. When it became apparent that Olson would run for the Senate in 1936, Johnson spearheaded a movement to prevent Olson from naming his successor; and although the Farmer-Labor convention endorsed Elmer A. Benson for governor, Johnson entered the party primary for the governorship. An automobile accident and a bout with pneumonia incapacitated him during much of the campaign, and he was defeated by a wide margin. He died of a second attack of pneumonia in Litchfield, Minnesota, on September 13, 1936, and was buried in the Dassel Cemetery.
From 1911 to 1914 Johnson was president of the Minnesota Union of the American Society of Equity, which originally sought to organize the spring-wheat growers; and from 1912 to 1926 he served as vice-president of the Equity Cooperative Exchange, reputedly the first grain cooperative to function successfully on a terminal market.
Johnson was a man blessed with a powerful set of lungs which he attributed to his career as a glass blower, a voice described as a cross between a foghorn and a loud speaker, and a pronounced Swedish accent.
On December 14, 1895, Johnson married Matilda Boreen. She died a few years later, and on February 7, 1900, he married Harriet Dorman, the daughter of a neighboring farmer. It was a source of pride with him that his second wife's family came from native American stock and traced its ancestry to Revolutionary days. His wife and their six children survided him.
