The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Schism of 1948

DR. MiTAU is professor of political .science and cochairman of his department in Macalester College at St. Paul. He is actively interested in state politics, and he is thus especially well qualified to write about Minnesota's recent political history. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor PARTY SCHISM of 1948 G. THEODORE MITAU BEHIND the lively events of the Demo Thus the fervor for social justice and cratic-Farmer-Labor party schism of 1948 a economic opportunity has long had organ long and complex background of political izational expression in Minnesota, even protest can be traced. As one writer has put though success in national elections has it, Minnesota "through most of its history been rare and erratic. Along with other has shown symptoms of political schizo Midwestern states, Minnesota witnessed the phrenia. On the one hand, it was the staid well-known patterns of protest, genuinely dowager, as reliably Republican as its down- active, rich in condemnation of the rail East Yankee sisters; on the other, it had skit roads, monopolies, and Wall Street, and tish moments during which it produced a proud of the righteous blasts from such brood of third parties or helped raise the "tribunes of the people" as Ignatius Don radical offspring of its neighbors."^ Espe nelly, A. C. Townley, Magnus Johnson, and cially in periods of economic depression, Floyd B. Olson. The quest for success at the voices of agrarian and urban protest, often polls, which would translate platform and discordant and intense, have risen from the program into actual pubhc policy, caused mining pits of the Mesabi Range, from the leaders of the Populist movement to experi slaughterhouses and railroad shops of the ment with various types of political tactics. cities, and from the debt-ridden farms of At times it led them to support a major the Red River Valley to find expression in party contestant, such as John A. Johnson, the platforms and conventions of Minne who ran for governor on the Democratic sota's third and minor parties. Through the ticket in 1904, and Charles A. Lindbergh, Anti-Monopolists and the Greenback party Sr., candidate for the Republican nomina of the 1870s, and the Nonpartisan League tion for governor in the primaries of 1918; and the Farmer-Labor party of the present at other times it led them to advocate fusion century, this tradition of protest has con with emerging national parties, as in 1912 tinued to exert pressure on state politics. and 1924; and in other campaigns, like that of 1892, all fusion attempts were spurned and Donnelly was called upon to head a ^ Donald F. Warner, "Prelude to Populism," in state Populist ticket as that party's candi- Minnesota History, 32:129 (September, 1951). Spring 1955 187 date for governor. During the dark, un extinction when it was fused with the Dem happy days of the depression in the 1930s ocratic party in the Democratic-Farmer- the voices of protest rose to a crescendo. In Labor party"; and he describes "the fusion their commitment to left-wing radicalism, of 1944" as "simply the requiem for a death the Farmer-Labor platforms of that period that had occurred in 1938."* are perhaps unmatched by those of any other American party which has been suc WHAT, in retrospect, can be inferred from cessful at the polls.^ Those were, of course, these events? Minnesota's eleven electoral bitter times, and the remedies proposed by votes never have and probably never will the Farmer-Labor administration and party determine the balance of presidential for leaders were sharp and dogmatic curatives tunes. Nevertheless, traditions of protest for deeply felt economic ills, offering many politics make Minnesota a most fascinating a strange combination of Marxism, agrarian laboratory for the study of political dy egalitarianism, and Utopianism. namics of agrarian and labor discontent. But even in the perilous 1930s, when the Most populist movements have been moti party had the popular Governor Olson to vated by an urge to broaden the base of argue on its behalf, Farmer-Labor policies socio-political and economic privilege seemed to have reached the limits of their through such state interventions as a par acceptability. Olson's legislative program ticular grievance seemed to demand. What encountered major modification, some fea these movements lacked in the doctrinaire tures incurring intense hostility and some qualities of a European pattern of challenge meeting with outright defeat. This hap was counterbalanced by the American tra pened, moreover, in sessions like those of dition of practical and selective state inter 1933 and 1937, when Olson's party had vention.^ control of the lower house of the legisla Most of this protest, then, was genuine, ture. Then in 1938 the electoral fortunes necessary, creative. Especially relevant in of Farmer-Labor protest reached a new low. a study of the fortunes of the protest tradi Governor Elmer Benson was swept out of tion after the Democratic-Farmer-Labor office by Harold Stassen, the relatively un fusion of 1944, however, is the fact that known county attorney from South St. Paul, some of the protest lacked these qualities. after a campaign which stressed charges Largely through union infiltration, the long of administrative incompetence, corruption, arm of the Thffd Internationale seemed at and blindness to Communist infiltration. times to reach all the way to the North Star The wave of popular indignation left Ben State when efforts to exploit real grievances son with a mere 387,263 votes to the amaz and to confuse, disrupt, and subvert the ing and overwhelming total of 678,839 for the Republican party's nominee.' '' On Governor Johnson's many progressive rec The Farmer-Labor party lost its one-time ommendations to the Minnesota legislature during broad popular support, according to one his administration, see WiUiam W. FolweU, A His tory of Minnesota, 3:286-289 (St. Paul 1926). scholar, largely because it could not com See also Theodore Saloutos and John D. Hicks, bat the undermining tactics used by inter Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West, 187 nal quarreling factions, and because it (Madison, 1951); Hicks, The Populist Revolt, 258 (Minneapolis, 1931); and George H. Mayer, The failed to provide necessary policy direction Political Career of Floyd B. Olson, 171 (Minne through executive and legislative leader apolis, 1951). ship. The same writer concludes his anal ' Minnesota, Legislative Manual, 1953, p. 333, 'Arthur Naftafln, "The Farmer Labor Party in ysis of the "great debacle of 1938" with the Minnesota," 382, an unpublished doctor's thesis sub observation that "the next six years were to mitted at the University of Minnesota in 1945. see the final disintegration of the Farmer- " Currin V. Shields, "The American Tradition of Labor party, culminating in its vfftual Empirical Collectivism," in American Political Sci ence Review, 44:104-121 (March, 1952). 188 MINNESOTA HistOTy WALLACE addressing a meeting in Minneapolis, 1947 COURTESY ST. PAUL DISPATCH democratic processes were made in Minne The attitude of the Democratic party — sota. An early example of a truly dramatic and more particularly its so-called liberal clash within the ranks of the Farmer-Labor New Deal wing — toward the political far movement took place between the doc left presented a major ideological problem trinaire and highly disciplined forces of left- not only for Minnesotans but for the nation wing Marxism and the indigenous and as a whole. The problem was intensified reformist forces of Midwest progressivism in after the Congressional elections of 1946. 1924. At that time such noted leaders as Two mutually antagonistic groups crystal Samuel Gompers and Robert La Follette lized into organizations by the spring of warned theff followers not to attend a con 1947. On the left, the Progressive Citizens of vention in St. Paul, predicting political sui America emerged from a fusion of the Na cide for those who took part in it.^ The tional Citizens Political Action Committee fusion of the Democratic and Farmer-Labor and the Independent Citizens Committee of parties in 1944 did not, and perhaps could the Arts, Sciences and Professions. On the not, eliminate this numerically small, but right appeared the Americans for Demo quite vociferous, segment of left-wing Marx cratic Action. ist radicals. As a matter of fact, the very With spokesmen like Henry A. Wallace presence of some of these radicals within for the left and such well-known New Deal the ranks of the Farmer-Laborites had ers as Leon Henderson, Chester Bowles, caused many old-line Democrats and inde Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Franklin pendents to oppose earlier attempts at D. Roosevelt, Jr., on the right, the issues fusion. soon became clearly drawn. The right-wing "non-Communist liberal" Americans for " Mayer, Floyd B. Olson, 184-222; Saloutos and Democratic Action supported the Marshall Hicks, Agricultural Discontent, 358. On left-wing Plan and President Truman's Greco-Turkish radicalism in Minnesota after 1917, see O. A. Hil ton, "The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety aid program; the Progressive Citizens of in World War I," in Oklahoma Agricultural and America held these to be unwarranted cir Mechanical CoUege, Bulletins, 48:1-44 (Stillwater, cumventions of the United Nations, con Oklahoma, 1951). ceived in support of European forces of 'Wifliam B. Hesseltine, The Rise and Fall of Third Parties, 87 (Washington, 1948). reaction and fascism.'' Whereas the Ameri- Spring 1955 189 the second annual convention of the Pro gressive Citizens of America, the former Minnesota governor declared, "if we retain control of the Democratic-Farmer Labor party at the state convention, Wallace wfll be the nominee and we will present him at the national Democratic convention. ... If President Truman runs in Minnesota, he'll have to run as an independent, or however he wants to label it." ^ Thus plans were made to push Wallace in Minnesota not as a third-party candidate, but as a regular Democratic-Farmer-Labor nominee whose name would go on the party ballot after his faction had captured the state party machinery.

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