James H. Flower Narrator

Tom O'Connell & Steve Trimble Interviewers

February 19, 1977 Minneapolis, Minnesota

[Note: There are other conversations going on in background of this interview, particularly between a woman and a child, so there were moments when verbatim transcription was impossible]

JF: ...originally came to this country prior to the American Revolution,Minnesota on my father's side. My mother's ancestors came here in 1842 from Germany and settledin in Beloit, Wisconsin. The Flower family was kicked out of Tennessee in 1858, there was a large family of us then. It did not own slaves, I think there was 8 Flower boys and I don't 3 girls or something and they just didn't have any need for slaves to manage their little valley farm, but this didn't set good with their neighbors and [unclear] and they were expelled from Tennessee and that's how come they come to Wisconsin and the upshot of it was my dad met my mother and they were married I thinkSociety in 1898 and I was born in 1906, the third of six children. My dad was a foreman inProject Fairbanks [unclear] plant in Beloit, Wisconsin, a plant that made all kind of equipmentRadicalism like windmills, and [unclear] they made scales, everybody had a scale on the farm or every elevator had a Fairbanks scale, it was a big thing you know and my dad was a foreman in the punch press department and his good friend, best friend was foreman in the screw department, his name Historywas Frank Booster. They're sitting out on the bank of the old Rock River one Sunday afternoon, somehowHistorical or other they had got a hold of some socialist literature, this is 1908, theyCentury come to the conclusion that Debs was a good man. They didn't have brains enough in a plant where thereOral was no union or anything and nobody thinking about stool pigeons or anything like that and fellow workers who do you think should be a good guy for president, George or Frank or... But Debs was a good man, this lasted about two weeks when they were both called into the office and told we aren't having any goddamn Debs supporters here, we don't care whether you're foremanMinnesota or what you are, out, you're fired, you're through. But that wasn't only the halfTwentieth of it, they could not find a job outside of maybe some temporary construction work or something in either the town of Beloit or Janesville or Madison, any town within [unclear]_ they were blacklisted as they called it in those days. The result is that my dad had to step father in Minnesota, he was stump farming up here and Booster had a little money and relatives over in western Minnesota, and they both emigrated to Minnesota, those days you could do it you know, you bought a team of horses for a couple of hundred dollars and a plow and a drag and you were in farming, a couple of three dairy cows. So that's how come my dad came to Minnesota in 1909, it didn't take him long of course to understand that in spite of the fact that a lot of his Finnish neighbors were socialists and every township among the Finnish neighborhoods was started out of the Temperance societies that come to this country and they formed cooperatives and so forth. I didn't know for years that my wife's father was the founder of the first cooperative store in the state of Minnesota, Menahga Sampo. TO: Yeah.

JF: Went around and collected $10 from this farmer and $15 from that farmer ‘til they had $170 or something collected and they bought a stock and started up a little store in Menahga, Minnesota. That....but this type of thing, I read, and hear my dad talking socialism, social ownership, great follower of Debs, I used to think he was crazy, you kept your mouth shut and worked hard and went to school and learnt your lesson you could become president of the United States and senator at least without any great crumble at all, you know and...

TO: Do you have a big, did you have a lot of brothers and sisters?

JF: I had two brothers and three sisters, one of my sisters is dead and one of my brothers, youngest brother of course is dead, an older brother lives in Denver, Colorado, and two sisters still live up at Menahga, Minnesota. We have a big family between the wife and I, we raised two families, in fact we raised half the neighborhood around here at times it seems. Well it was a peculiar thing, people like the Andersons who were notorious drunks and when they had threeMinnesota sons they'd go off and leave these kids and they'd be drunk for two weeks at a time and these kids wouldn't have nothing to eat so they'd come over here to sleep and eat and get their clothes washedin and the Mortons who had a big family down the street, down here, why Ruth and her sisters and those kids were half the time when I'd come in the house I didn't know whether, from work late at night you know from driving the cab, the first thing I'd have to do when I come in the door is put the flashlight on to see how many kids I had to step over in the kitchen floor to say nothing of theSociety living room floor and the upstairs floor, but they were all welcome and there's someProject of them come here this summer, one of them lived, one of the Johnson boys lives in Texas now and his oldest brother lives over Northeast, the one that lost the leg in Vietnam, they stuckRadicalism by, they call us father and mother, pa and ma how are you, they stop by every once in a while, people like that, it's nothing, they're not communists of course, I never raised my kids to be communist,History I never thought the day would come after I quit the Communist Party in 1940 when in complete disgustHistorical over what happened out at Cargill and Cargill said that yeah well I could takeCentury care of your black workers, we can use two of them on, to maintain the track and we're going to use threeOral shifts, the [unclear] plants going to run the three shifts and we'll have to have shit house attendants in each one of the toilets, that'd be room for nine more. That's what they offered the black, they couldn't work on the construction of the boats themselves and so forth and I took this to my Party and I said I want to make a major fight out of this, I want to really throw this thing wide open, first of all I'll start right out how Cargill got the Minnesota River bridge for nothing and got the landMinnesota out there for nothing and the policy that's carried on and everythingTwentieth they're doing is cost plus. Of course all of this, this of course [unclear] start the war...

TO: The war effort, yeah....

JF: The same thing of course followed after the WPA strike, when I got the notice that federal grand jury's convening in St. Paul to investigate the actions of the WPA strike, that I am to bring with me the true and correct records as secretary of the Minneapolis Joint Strike Council. A great radical by the name of Walter Frank who ran for alderman and legislator and could spout Karl Marx and [unclear] much better than I could, Walter Frank insisted that we had to revise the minutes to change this and change that and then we had to burn all of my original and minutes and everything and take over the re-written, typewritten minutes and again I went and, to say that the Communist Party didn't know about what was going on is totally wrong because the head of the Communist Party, his wife was a member of the Stenographers Union and whenever I needed a stenographer, she wasn't working full time, as secretary of the Minneapolis Building Trades Council, she was my stenographer, so every word that I said and I always consulted with the Party, they knew exactly what was going on, but nobody said one word to me, so when Walter Frank said he wanted to take the records and burn them, sided by the Trotskyite Goldman who was a part of the committee from the Federal Workers section of 544, and by the way I asked Walter two years ago whether it was his idea or Goldman's to revise the minutes and he wouldn't answer me, he said aw let bygones be bygones and Kenneth Ingle set there and heard him say it, I went down and had lunch with him, Kenneth Ingle called me up and said Walter Frank's in town he wants to have lunch with you. I said okay Kenneth let's go down and have lunch. So we had lunch and I had told Kenneth what I was going to ask him, [unclear] Walter Frank had never admitted why, who put him up to this. The night before I [unclear] take them over to St. Paul, I kept all the records by the way, I put them in a box and I hid them, the original handwritten ones, ones I typed out and sent to everybody including Ernest Lundeen and Mrs. Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and everybody had a copy of the minutes of our WPA strike Joint Action Committee and reports on how the strike was settling and everything. The violence and only violence really that took place, thMinnesotaere was a mattress making concern, where you have a bunch of old ladies making mattressesin down on 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street in a building down there, and that project never wanted to stop, those old ladies wanted to keep on making the mattresses. The Trotskyite Federal Workers Section organized a huge mobilization separate without the endorsement of the committee, to go down there and bar the doors and they had a big fight with the cops and I don't know two or three people got hurt including a couple of cops and when I come back from my speaking tour aroundSociety in Wisconsin and all over the Iron Range and northern Minnesota that was the first Projectthing I seen, this big fight and people injured and everything, stupid, you know, Radicalismwhat you call provocateurism, super-leftism. Anyway... TO: Were the Trots part of this coalition, they were weren't they? [Unclear] the union? History JF: Oh yeah, they had a big, a big unemployed group,Historical the Federal Workers Section of 544 and you couldn't very well, an independentCentury truck rollers, you couldn't very well have a WPA strike without including them. Oral TO: Right.

JF: I controlled the foreman on the job, damn near every foreman on the job was a construction and general labor union member youMinnesota know... Twentieth TO: Sure. Were you a member of the Party then?

JF: Of course I was a member of the Party, I joined the Party in 1932 and I came to Minneapolis with my first wife, she had to constant medical attention with our first baby, had a little money saved up, in those days you could go in Wells Memorial Hospital up on Glenwood and Penn Avenue North, they had a hospital up, a maternity hospital there, you give them $90 and they took care of everything...

TO: Really, you mean pay them ahead and then...

JF: And doctor's bill for delivery was $20, I paid him in advance too, but then she'd go and see doctors...

TO: How old were you then?

JF: And the other day she'd give him a dollar, that was his office call, Dr. Goldman. There's a lot of difference of course, course those days you worked for $50 a month too [unclear] but of course if you got your room and board why you didn't have to spend very much either and that's what we got working on the farm in southern Minnesota was $50 a month, but she did have to have this constant medical attention. I come to Minneapolis and I looked all hell for a job.

TO: Did you move here?

JF: Yeah.

TO: Northeast.

JF: Yeah we moved, there's nothing [unclear] the old Chestnut ApartmentsMinnesota on 12th and Chestnut downtown, shirt-tail relations of my wife was a caretaker, a guyin named Wilson owned all kinds of these old scruddy buildings around town including that one and the one on Chestnut and three of them around on Chestnut and 12th Street there and we owned another one on Grant and Glenwood, half a dozen down around Chicago and 16th Street, a lot of them he still owns, Bross Real Estate I guess they call themselves. I guess the old man must be dead by now,Society but he was a real, he was a real bloodsucker when it comes to it. I went out of the houseProject one day and forgot to give my wife the rent money, oh $7 I guess for the week, little cruddy light housekeeping room with a little kitchen [unclear], it wasn't as though we didn'tRadicalism have the money, I had the money I could just as well have left it but I forgot. He comes there knocking on the door and he wants his rent money right now and she says you'll have to wait til Mr. Flower comes home and then here she is you know sick, eight months pregnant, going to the hospitalHistory everyHistorical day, just balled the living hell out of her, insults her and everything else you know, if the rent isn't due going to get throwed out tomorrow and I don't know what all. CenturyWhen she told me about it, I said Mr. Bross is the [unclear] you're going to [unclear] and I'll probably stay hereOral all winter, the only man I cheated in my life.

TO: That's great. JF: And, well it makes you mad,Minnesota angry, and you do things, in fact I don't think I ever cheated anybody Twentiethin my life except old Bross, I took pleasure there... ST: Let me ask you...

JF: Anyway, I got a job driving a laundry truck for a little laundry up in Camden, I didn't know the city very well but he paid me the magnificent sum of $9 a week for six days work, 10 hours a day. Which was a lot better than nothing you know. I worked exactly four weeks for him, got to work one Monday morning, and he said Jim this here is so and so, forget that name, and he wants to do the same job that you're doing for $7. He said $2 is $2 nowadays, I'll have to let you go unless you want to do it for $7, and I told him what he could do with him job of course. But, [unclear] in the afternoon, very same afternoon I'm walking down old 1st Avenue North right where the old bus depot set in that block, was a building called the Citizens Alliance Employment Office. On the window shop in big letters was 'laborers wanted, 45 cents an hour'. That's for me, I went right in and I signed up to go to work out on the Ford Plant [unclear] the company was building locks out on the Ford Damn...

TO: Gee.

JF: ...locks out there on the Ford Dam. Be there at 8 o'clock and see Samuels, the foreman, the superintendent. I'm there at 7 o'clock, there's nobody there at the entrance there and the gate is open, I drive down the [unclear] plant, park my car down there, after a while showed up and then I worked all day. Come driving up out of there that night and here's a picket line with about 25-30 guys waving banners and yelling scab, dirty rats and I don't know what all and I pulled down the street and went back to find out what this is all about and I discovered that 45 cents an hour was ten cents less than the union scale and they were paying the carpenters $1.25 when the carpenters union scale was 1.45 and iron workers proportionately and it was non-union and the building trades had a banner that said they didn't seem enough building tradesmen, they had an agreement with the Unemployed Council that we would buy union stock for soup, you Minnesotaload a truckload of unemployed off skid row in Minneapolis and they'd go out there and picket and they'd get a big bowl of hot soup, times was tough, they had no problem loading the truck within pickets to go out there, so every day I'd go out there and picket, [unclear] still owed me the day's wages, they didn't mail it to me, I wrote them a letter asking them to but they never mailed it to me, I guess they decided they needed it worse than I did. I never went down to collect it. So we got into a fight out there with the police, the police were there of course to let the scabs through, that was alwaysSociety the role of the police, that's where I first began to get some experience of what peopleProject had tried to form unions and so forth did. Also become acquainted with the leaders of the Minneapolis Building Trades and I discovered that the Unemployed Council consisted almostRadicalism entirely of unemployed single workers who lived down in the skid row district and they had an old cruddy storefront building that somehow or other they was raising $10 a month for. HistoryHistorical TO: Who was organizing itCentury then? JF: Yeah it used, well it used to beOral right close to the courthouse, it was very convenient and I, we had tried to keep people there 24 hours a day, guys slept on benches, didn't have no place else to sleep and people who were really starving and desperate used to come down there right from the courthouse and the relief department, crying, we'd organize a committee and go over and fight with Shurlong about welfare and relief.Minnesota And as secretary of the Unemployed Council I used to be on most of theseTwentieth committees that went over to see Mr. Shurlong. And, got this one particular pitiful case, man, woman and two kids are [unclear] they hadn't ate for three days, some restaurant keeper give the kids some milk or something, but wouldn't feed them, they were all crying, so I march over to Shurlong's office about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, a committee of three, and Shurlong's gonna throw us out, I won't leave, I tell them to stay there all night if necessary, he's going to feed these people, I don't give a damn if they're from Wisconsin or Iowa, where they're from, they're hungry and feed them and issue them an order and find a place for them to stay and then bill the county where they're from, that's the law, and I ain't telling him how to run his business. So he calls the police again for about the third time in a week to throw me out. The other two times I got ushered out, but this time evidently old Carl Winnel who stood about 6 foot 7, must have felt he'd just about had enough of [unclear], he's crying the kids have nothing to eat and the woman crying, must have hit a soft spot in his heart because he shook his big finger in Shurlong's face and said this man is right, it's your duty to take care of these people and bill the county where they come from, he says I don't want to have to be coming down here two and three and four times a week or twice a day or anything else, to throw the people from the Unemployed Council out, they have a right to come in here to represent their clients.

ST: This, who's this tall guy, he was the policeman then?

JF: Yeah, this is the sergeant of police, the desk sergeant down to the courthouse, his name was Carl Winnell. He's dead now, so I can say these things about Carl now. This way I got to know Carl Winnell, I don't think no finer man ever lived, he was an Olson type of a guy, Floyd Olson type of a guy. And, so for years when I used to come to Minneapolis after I left, after the baby was born, after I went up in the country, my wife and I tried to make a living on 40 acres and organized farmers up there and stop farm foreclosures and became the National Secretary of the United Farmers League which was all names and no members. Went to Washington on the 2nd National Hunger March in 1933 and a few other things like that. What happened was then that I used to go out and stay overnight with Carl Winnell. United Farmers League hadMinnesota a newspaper given to them called the Old Producers News, was published in Plentywood, Montana. If anybody knows where Plentywood, Montana is, the asshole of the earth, to get anythingin out of and so one of the first things I suggested is we're going to have a left farm movement, we have to have a centralized newspaper in a place where it can [unclear] so we decided we're going to have a farmer's national weekly edited in Minneapolis with Eric Burt[?] who still writes for the Communist Party as editor, he was just a young man then. This was decided at the First NationalSociety Conventional of the United Farmers League, but by that time in spite of the fact that theProject United Farmers League in a year's time by leading struggles, by going out and stopping farm foreclosures, by making alliances with all kinds of groups that wanted to fight back, Radicalismhad a tremendous support beginning to develop. It introduced the law sponsored by the then governor of the state of Minnesota calling for a nationwide moratorium on farm foreclosuresHistory and on home foreclosures which Floyd Olson done. And that in itself is a story, I have his picture upstairs.Historical Our Party was going around and singing ditties, I remember I sang itCentury going marching down the first unemployed demonstration, I led one of the songs, coined by some of our superOral leftists, [sings] "Governor Olson, [unclear], come on workers let's make a date with Governor Olson, tell him we'll fight, we'll organize and fight for bread until the unemployed are fed" and all the rest of this shit... TO: That's great, great. Minnesota JF: The Twentiethtruth of the matter is that once you got to know Floyd B. Olson you discovered that he knew more about Marxism than any of these goddamn people that I was trying to learn Marxism from.

TO: That's great.

JF: Now this is the truth, see. So I told him that I wanted as head of the United Farmers League, elected in Washington DC at the first National Farmers Conference and Hunger March in 1933, had the office in Superior, Wisconsin was composed of one new typewriter somebody had donated to them and a little box of [unclear] which I found was a duplication of the Finnish Workers Clubs scattered around the country, practically every member was a Finn, was no non-Finns, and not a cent in the treasury, in fact I discovered we owed $5, typewriter had disappeared. Well I tracked the typewriter down and discovered that it was being used by the, what did they call themselves, the Cooperative Unity Alliance or [unclear] it was taken the time when they broke with the co-op movement and they set up their own little separate so-called co-op buying association as a means of trying to hold the Finnish co-op movement as a pay-off for the Communist Party you know instead of keeping people within the mass co-op movement to fight for a line and a position, [unclear] separates, this of course was the Browder policy always. As I came to understand Browder and to understand this, this is where I broke with them, this narrowness, this...they did it in the trade union movement and [unclear] only a tremendous fight on the part of Foster and others.

ST: I've got one question if I could ask, like you were saying that if, like way back when you thought that your father was you know real wrong on socialism, how did you make the switch then to starting to believe that socialism...

JF: How did I make the switch... ST: Well what happened that you... Minnesota JF: What happened was that in 1926 I decided that I would neverin make a stump farmer, that I just hated milking cows seven days a week and so forth, and I wanted to travel and see the country, so me and three other guys took off and headed for the West Coast with very little money and an old broken down Ford. And I can remember yet my impression of the Yellowstone National Park, this was the first time I had ever seen it, and a great Republican that wroteSociety a book by the name of Walter Hickel, [unclear] ideas and mine coincided, I said my GodProject just think I own 200 million part of this, this is mine, this great park, yeah. And this is how I feel about the whole thing, this is ours you know. So after long travels never did get outRadicalism West and I discovered it was no paradise working out there in the valley picking hot, picking fruit and long hours for little or nothing and the slop you had to buy to eat and the housing conditions that was just simply horrible, they didn't exist, you cooked outside over an open fire with a piece of tinHistory you knowHistorical just like animals, you might say, to me it wasn't too bad because I was camping out and I was [unclear] and I was a young kid you know, but I can see how it must have affectedCentury women and kids and others who had to do this thing. And that was a real lesson, and that fall I decidedOral I wanted to work in the woods, so I got a job in...

END TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

TAPE ONE SIDE TWO Minnesota Twentieth JF: ...that every man in this country was equal and should have an equal right and he laid into such a tirade against me that about 2/3 of the people got up and walked out after [unclear] 20 year old kid or so you know and taken up the collection. We couldn't even stay overnight with this guy we worked for, that's how rabid he was and we didn't know that, you would never, you would never have gathered that this big rich guy who owned the oil company in Cottonwood and another one in Marshall and owned this big farm was this kind of a rabid sort of a guy, on the face of things he appeared to be real nice sort of a guy you know. That was my second experience in racism, how it exists in this country. The only thing that I always felt good about [unclear] that they didn't get to take up the collection, I broke up the meeting, and the guy didn't want to pay us either for the lousy three days work we had coming, which didn't amount to much money, finally did because we threatened him with such as law in Minnesota that you have to pay your help you know, we could get a lien against him and so then he finally paid us, we finally did make it down to Marshalltown, Iowa and in Marshalltown we run into a whole stream of relations that we had lost track of for years. When the Flowers came out of Tennessee and immigrated to Wisconsin like I said there was eight brothers. Almost all of them served in the Civil War. Two of them died in Libby Prison, another one died in Andersonville, some of them survived. My dad's father was always sick, he was killed finally by accident at the Northwestern Railroad at Evansville Wisconsin when my dad was 14, and my grandmother married again to a guy named Phil Brown and the Brown Brothers of course if you've ever heard of the Liars Club from Danville, Wisconsin or someplace down there I think they must have been the originers of it because some of the tall tales they could tell were simply amazing and it's still going on, but like I said my folks came to Minnesota in 1909 and it was a real struggle. By 1919 my dad had accumulated enough money so he bought 120 acres of cut-over land with about 7 acres of meadow and a little log house and little log barn on it and start to try to farm and he kept that until 1929 and he built a big modern dairy barn on it, that was only thing about that we did accomplish and a small chicken house which I'd opened up some extra field and stuff, but by that time I had made up my mind that I was not cut out to be a stump farmer, that there had to be a better life. I certainly felt sorry for all these peopleMinnesota for the work that they put on, digging out these stumps and stones and trying to develop thesein dairy farms up in Wadena County and Ottertail County and Hubbard County and many other counties, in fact all across northern Minnesota, I knew what hard work it was. So when the Depression struck and they start to foreclose on first guy then on another guy. There was a guy named Coohaw, had a mortgage on, a neighbor. The original mortgage had been for $3,000, it called for paying $200 on the principle every year and the interest I guess was around 5% or something, the interestSociety [unclear]_, but there was no way that he could raise the $200 in 1933, so Coohaw'sProject gonna get this barn that had been built, this house that had been built, the saunaRadicalism that had been built, all the machinery, the first year in '32 when he couldn't make it, he said well that's all right, John, we'll just include all the cattle and the improvements and everything on the mortgage and let it go you know, for the $200 you can't pay. So 10 cows for $200, young stock, teamHistory of horses, all the machinery and everything you know, he's gonna get the next year for a lousy $200Historical he's gonna foreclose, take everything. There was a lot of talk in the neighborhoodCentury and we had our little club, I guess of about 7 members, my dad and I and a few more, includingOral my wife's brother, called ourselves Communists, [unclear] wife, my dad and I were the only non-Finns, meeting's most of the time was conducted in Finn for Christ sakes, we had to set there and interpret it in our own minds and old Pete Kittle had by that time, the original socialist from Finland was dead, he died of cancer in 1928 I guess it was, but anyway this, pretty near all of thisMinnesota was built around the old Kinnelman family, Oscar Torvinen who married MaryTwentieth Kinnelman and Ed Karu who married Tillie and so on, a lot of this left was built around this one old socialist family that founded the co-op store in Menahga. So it was decided that we should take and make an effort to see how the people felt about allowing that sale to go through. Since Kuhaw wasn't a banker, he was a rich local farmer, we thought that it might not be quite so difficult. So I went down and I talked to the sheriff, had known him for years Sherriff based in Wadena and told him what we were gonna try to do and he said it was no skin off his hind end if people hold no-sale, then there wouldn't be any sale he wasn't about to come up there and have a big fight and a hassle, he had to be re-elected and so that's all that happened was that the day of the sale came and I got up on a chicken crate and I asked all the people there that were in favor that Kuhaw should be allowed to close him out and stop his way of making a living and take everything he worked all his life for, how many were in favor with it and not a damn person raised their hand, how many was opposed to it, every person there raised their hand and I said that's your answer there ain't going to be any foreclosure, there isn't going to be any sale, that's it. Going to have to work out a compromise, and so we worked out a compromise that when the time picked up and cream got to be a different price and so forth and that they should also drop that $200 every year and make it $50 or something and pay the interest you know, it was [unclear] a compromise and everybody was happy and the only trouble was it hit the national newspaper, we had guys coming from Iowa with Cadillacs, wanting to know how in the hell they could save their farms.

ST: Was this like before there had ever been any of the Farm Holiday things?

JF: This is why, this is why they got busy and formed the Farm Holiday and the Iowa Farmers Association...

TO: This was before Iowa, huh?

JF: Yeah, this is [unclear] dirty little communists had started stopping farm foreclosure and everybody's flocking to them so they had to do something about it andMinnesota of course we didn't have brains enough and I don't think our Party had the guts to do it anyway, I don't think they wanted no part of it. in

TO: That's, you know that's... JF: How I got to be elected National Secretary, I wrote an article for Societythe little Communist publication, not the Daily Worker, the monthly organ, it comesProject out somewhat on a similar to Party, political affairs but I think... Radicalism TO: Was it called the Communist? JF: ...in those days it was called Party Affairs.History Anyway I wrote an article telling them exactly how we stopped the farm foreclosure, how it was easily Historicalpossible for workers and that there should be many forms. They didn't alwaysCentury have to take this form, but many times maybe the bankers wouldn't agree. So the result was theyOral made me the National Secretary of the United Farmers League which consisted of nothing, it was in Superior, Wisconsin, with no subsidy, no money in the treasury, nothing. Guy that can't even operate a typewriter you know and a national secretary, so the first thing I did I sat down and wrote an appeal to every person who's name I had please try to send in some money for postageMinnesota and to get some kind of a program out to people. Time I got 45 or 50 letters in the mail here, comes a guy from down near Neillsville, Wisconsin and he says that the lumber companyTwentieth down there was foreclosing on 13 farms in a period of two weeks’ time, farms that had been dairy farms, that had been owned and operated for as long as 40 years by people, and what the hell that could be done about it. Well I said we aren't going to do a damn thing from here about it, I'll have to come down there and we'll have a meeting and we'll find out what the hell we think we can do. So we first of all elected a committee to go in and try to talk common sense to the people at the land dollars[?], and the actual outfit was not in Neillsville, Neillsville was the county seat. Couldn't talk to them, they seen their [unclear] take over, thousands of thousands of dollars in improvements you know, dairy market being what it was and everything to take it back and there was just no talking and pay up or else you know. Almost all of them had the same kind of a thing on that that so much had to paid on the principle every year, with the prices it was just impossible for farmers to do it. So I never will forget that, the day when the sale was to be held, the sheriff was a bad guy out of Neillsville, really a nut, come out and he had six or seven pool hall lounge lizards all armed to the teeth with shotguns and guns under their belt you know, whole carload of them and they're going to go through with the sale, and the farmers said, geez they're all armed Jim what are we going to do now, well I said you know all these young guys, I said go over and be real friendly with them and talk with them, don't make out like there's going to be any trouble and then somebody says now, [unclear] lynch them and said now I said jump them and disarm them, same way with the sheriff, so then we can talk to the guy and no sheriff, [unclear] talk to the guy [child and woman's voice very loud here, cannot do verbatim transcription]...wanted to hang the son of a bitch...the guy [unclear] you know. And it's in the spring of the year, they tied the rope around him and they started dragging, I had to plead with them, they were going to hang him up on the end of the barn but instead they decided to slide him up and down the sloppy old barnyard a few times, by that time he's screaming he'll sign anything and so that's what he did...

TO: Is this Wisconsin? JF: What? Minnesota TO: This was Wisconsin? in

JF: In Wisconsin... TO: Something like that happened in Iowa, too. Society Project JF: Well, yeah, Iowa was great for it but there, of course they went a little overboard. I never had much time for some of those guys in Iowa Radicalismbecause they were super radicals and, but mad enough to try to hold it down, cause these guys thought that just because they owned a deer rifle that the revolution would come tomorrow. I'll just tell you what happened in Mosinee. History ST: Where's that? Historical Century JF: Mosinee, Wisconsin, close to NOraleillsville . Neillsville is the county seat. I went up to Owen, that's about 30 miles and they had a local of the United Farmers League up there composed mostly of Finns, went up there to stay overnight. Four o'clock the phone rung, they were running around picking up the, picked, they'd arrested the guy whose farm we had saved and some of his neighbors that had been identified and theyMinnesota had them in jail and they wanted to know what do we do now. Well I said there's only one thing to do now, I said to get on the phone [unclear] you're doing here now, we'llTwentieth do it from here and we'll try to mobilize everybody we can in Neillsville tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock and demand that everybody be let loose, that's all. And I thought if we were real lucky we'll get a couple of hundred people in front of the courthouse in Neillsville We made it a point from Owen to come about 11 o'clock instead of 10 o'clock and I had a hell of a time to get the Witt Brothers, the guys I was staying with not to take their deer rifles, one of the Witt Brothers lives out, [unclear] federal [unclear] job and he's not all that radical anymore, he had a federal job, he lives out in Alexandria, the other one is dead.

TO: Yeah, I think I got his...

JF: Jack Witt. TO: Jack Witt, yeah, I've heard of him.

JF: Anyway, Jack and these guys they were up near Neillsville and there's the farmer, they got the courthouse locked, setting [unclear] one of those [unclear] machines, [unclear] you son of bitches I'll let you have it, [unclear] you couldn't talk to him at all you know. I don't know, they had 11 people in jail or something, wired the governor for troops...

TO: Geez, that was [unclear] what...

JF: [Unclear]. So what do we do now? I said there's only one thing you can do, I said you got to get the town bankers [unclear] Land and Lumber Company because they've been financing their own goddamn mortgages for 40 years, he hates their guts like poison, if you get him to hate a committee for Christ's sakes, run up and down the street and get 10,000, every businessman in town because you're going to tell them right out that either they're going to stop the troops from coming in or you ain't going to spend another nickel in Neillsville as long as you live, tell them that. Stop the troops from coming in, I said then I think this committee with theMinnesota banker and these guys can go up and reason with the sheriff. Said we got to stay in the backdrop, and then of course that's what happened. By five o'clock we had everything dropped and out inof jail, everybody out of jail and that was the last you heard of it until the milk strike took place when again they got violent down in Neillsville. And you know the upshot of it was I was too conservative, I could never form a United Farmers League that amounted to a shit with either Mosinee or Neillsville, I was too conservative, cause I did not believe that we should start shooting up the courthouseSociety and killing the sheriff and put the [unclear], they wanted to [unclear] the Army, theyProject didn't give a shit if the Army was coming, we've got guns too and they had these old shot guns and deer rifles under their arm. [unclear] from the men. Radicalism

ST: That's great. HistoryHistorical JF: Well this is the truth. Century TO: Was there a, in Minnesota wereOral there United Farmer League chapters in the southern part, or mostly northern.

JF: In Minnesota we had some, we had some for instance down around Rochester, some very good conservative farmers belonged toMinnesota the United Farmers League. We had United Farmers League local out Twentiethat Ortonville, and we had a very good local out at Elbow Lake, remarkable thing, I never will forget the one that I formed at Elbow Lake, somehow or other I read that a subscriber to the Daily Worker out there, so I hitchhiked out there to find the subscriber and it was a woman, she had just died but her son was there and he was a hell of fine guy and so we called in a few of the neighbors and we decided we'd have a meeting in Elbow Lake a week from that night. ‘Bout 60 people showed up and every one of them joined the United Farmers League in Elbow Lake, half a dozen of them kind of held back and wanted to go out and have coffee at this farmer's house, and said well now that we've done the United Farmers League, when do we get to join the Communist Party.

ST: That's great. JF: I discovered that the United Farmers League was synonymous, Clarence Sharp can tell you, have you ever met Clarence?

ST: We've got him on our next get-to list.

TO: [Unclear] address.

ST: Yeah, I've been having trouble finding his address in the phone book cause there's like...

JF: I can give you a letter to Clarence telling that, Clarence by the way is one of the greatest and the best of the, left of the farm movement, of what's left.... [voice trails away]...Clarence's address and tell him that I told him that...

ST: Okay,

JF: That my name is on there, that I told him that I thought you should talk to him. Clarence had a hell of a moment out in South Dakota. After the Central CommitteeMinnesota of the Communist Party in 1934 and we had built the United Farmers League from nothingin to about 10,000 members including locals in Wenatchee Washington and fought the United Fruit growers out there [unclear] of a co-operative and made a United States senator in the state of Washington, that if he was the only guy that had the guts to help them form a cooperative and fight the fruit growers association and the vigilantes existed out there [unclear] they would have killed him if theySociety could have got their hands on him. But I'm used to getting letters from the United FarmersProject League from guys like in Arkansas and Louisiana pleading, pleading you know, come and help them. And I told them, you have a different problem there, you have a tenant Radicalismproblem mainly and what you should do is find your own leadership and set yourselves up a tenants union, a guy named Jackson did, the Arkansas Tenant Farmers [unclear] a tenant farmers union too but as far as I know they were careful about any communist connections, some of them of courseHistory mayHistorical have been communists but it was a [unclear] problem, and you could not deal with all of it, one person alone with no money, with nothing, one of the first things of course Centurythat I did was to get the hell out of the Tremius building in Superior Wisconsin and some guys from GraOralndin, North Dakota was an old time socialist and lived on 480 acres of Red River Valley up there and made money through the racketeering outfit called Pyranium[?] a bunch of them had. They had an office in the Sexton Building that they had paid rent on for a full year and in April the Food and Drug cracked down on them and told them that, they said if you don't sell any moreMinnesota pyranium[?] in the States you know and did allow them to close out their Twentiethstock so they had a multi-graph machine, a good typewriter and all this thing and then we had a new typewriter from, about all we did have up at the old Tremius building, but no stenographer, no nothing. I came in on one of my trips one day and a kid hits me up for a bite to eat, I've got about 35 cents on me, down at the Columbia Restaurant, he hadn't ate for two days, and got to talking.

ST: Was this up in Superior?

JF: No, right here in Minneapolis.

ST: Oh, then you moved down to here. JF: Yeah, we moved, yeah in the process of moving, I had just moved and I'm looking high and low for a stenographer, a person that can take shorthand and can help set up the multi-graph machine, cut stencils and stuff you know and I didn't dare to have a girl in the office, I had no money to pay her in the first place and I had a wife up in the country. And I find that John Wesley Peterson can take dictation, he's 18 years old, a high school graduate, out of upper Michigan and I told him who I was and what I was and I said John you've got a life time job, you can starve with me. You're starving anyway, you might as well starve with me, we'll eat together. I told him who I was and what I wanted and so forth and John and I carried out a very friendly relationship for years. Later on he become recording secretary of the United, of the Construction and General Laborers Union when I was business agent, got him a job through there and he married a Finnish girl on the northside, but John and I were friends for years [unclear]. John was one of the few people who came to me afterwards and wanted to know what in the hell is the reason, why don't you stay in the Communist Party and fight. I said what the hell can you fight, how can you fight bureaucracy and the stool pigeon system that exists within the Party, they come and they lie to you, they come back from the Central Committee meeting and [unclear] you're the only son of a bitch in the whole United States who disagrees with Browder's line and then afterwardMinnesota in a round-about fashion you find out that Browder won by four votes. But in the interests ofin harmony and in keeping peace within the movement on the eve of war breaking out they decided to make the vote unanimous you know. This is no less a guy than Sam Davis that came to them and that's one of the reasons why Sam and his widow recently rejoined the Communist Party, I'll tell you frankly [unclear] feels the place to die is in the Communist Party the same as I feel. I never had no intentions of rejoining the Communist Party. In 1968 I run into Gus Hall, an old buddy of mineSociety out to the airport, here he's coming out with his two followers you know, in those daysProject they used to have two follow Gus everywhere he went. Radicalism TO: This is 1968. History JP: And I put Gus right up in the front seat of the limousineHistorical with me and otherwise I had the limousine full and these twoCentury guys of course got in the seat right behind us and [unclear] is giving me the eye you know and... Oral ST: The FBI people you mean...

JP: Yeah, and I said Gus, I said I've never been anti-socialist, anti-communist, I said I just don't have any place in the method youMinnesota operate. So he says come up and see me tomorrow at the SheratonTwentieth Ritz Hotel and I said I don't think it'd do me any good, Gus, and I didn't go. But then a week or two later here come a little old lady over to the house named Mrs. Hanson and she wants me to read this pamphlet, Political Affairs or something, the latest by Gus Hall and I read and I didn't agree with, and I wrote and told him why I didn't agree with it and I thought it was a crock of bull, and the next time he come to town he made it a point to call me in the Sheraton Ritz Hotel and said he'd like to meet with me at 10 o'clock and I went down and I met with him, and I damn near broke a coffee table pounding that you expelled Browder in 1946, but you're still carrying on the Browder policy, hiding the place of the Party. When are you going to start to conduct elections, when is the Party going to start to come forward with a Communist program, there you are a Communist Party, this boring from within shit that Browder always talked about is what killed the Party and I said the only thing I can say Gus and you'll probably have to agree with me, following this policy about the only thing that has damn disappeared is the Communist Party and I'd say that one half of the present membership of the Communist Party is probably FBI agents. Well, well, I don't think it's that bad, well I said I do. I said I get more goddamn people I said snooping around where I work and hinting to know where I stand on the Communist Party, you wouldn't beleive it. And I said as far as I know they're all double dealers and snoops for the company and snoops for this person or that person, and I told him right out how the FBI came around here first of all my son was over in Vietnam, my oldest son joined the Army at 18, and two guys knock on the door one day and we're from Army Intelligence. Right away I think that Army Intelligence must be something to do with my son James, come on in and have a seat and they said you used to belong to the 4th Ward Farmer Labor Club, I said so what. Well you were chairman, I said that's right. You were also a member of the District Committee of the Communist Party, I said that's right. I never done anything in my life I'm ashamed of, well he said we have here a letter signed by Mrs. Blanche McIntosh and Edith Olson in which she claims that a Dr. Evans who was up for a colonelcy, a promotion in the United States, this is '52, he's been in since in the '40s, was either a member of the Communist Party or very close to the Communist Party. Now as a member he said of the Communist Party of that period he said and the chairman of the 4th Ward Farmer Labor Club which Dr. Evans belonged to, we want a truthful answer from you. Minnesota And I laughed, I said I don't mind giving you a truthful answer because Dr. Evans was neverin a communist, he was here with his wife, they weren't even very sympathetic, they said they hated Blanche McIntosh's guts like poison cause she was a Republican disguised as a Farmer Laborite within the Farmer Labor Party, she was chairman of the 4th Ward Farmer Labor Club, she did more I said to keep the ward split and divided. Society TO: She's still around [unclear] Project

JF: Yeah, Blanche McIntire, she's still around,Radicalism yeah sure. I see she's on [unclear] some committee headed, I was surprised she's an alternate to this meeting I was to the other night over to the Bethune, she wasn't there, but anyway I've knownHistory Blanche for 40 years and her husband got so mad at me cause... Historical Century END TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO Oral TAPE TWO, SIDE ONE

TO: Did the Party [unclear] Minnesota JF: Yeah,Twentieth the Party sure worked out compromises with people even [unclear] not make enemies of them you know.

TO: Do you think that had a lot to do with the splits that started occurring [unclear]?

JF: Yeah, it has a lot to do with the split, it also had a lot to do with the fact that they had made up their mind they're going to unload the powers that be. One of the standard stories I tell from 1940 when I was on the War Services Committee which was already being formed before the United States entered the war, I mean we were building the plants and so forth and when Elmer Benson was governor, big limousine load of us, two labor patriots and myself and one of the Pillsburys and I don't remember who the other guy [unclear] Benson at a meeting that lasted about an hour and Benson was telling about why he rode in the anti-war parade in New York and all the rest of it and coming back one of the guys said you know he said Floyd Olson used to talk about the cooperative commonwealth he said and shit like that, but this son of a bitch means it.

TO: Right.

JF: Talking about Elmer Benson you know, and I thought well it was a hell of a big compliment.

TO: Really.

JF: We have Floyd Olson's picture upstairs on the wall...

ST: I was [unclear]

JF: I was going to tell you about my first real experience with Floyd Olson and this ditty, this ditty that, and I didn't agree with it.

ST: Can I take a picture of the two of you while we're talking? Minnesota in JF: I don't [unclear]

ST: [Unclear] JF: The thing, the Floyd Olson I knew was a very peculiar guy in manySociety ways, I went over in my dirty Farmer Labor clothes to appeal to him that somehowProject or other he should come out for a farmer's moratorium against farm foreclosure sales, that we were sick and tired of holding nickel and dime auction sales and fighting the sheriffsRadicalism here and fighting there, that we'd much rather have peace and if he'd come out for a federal moratorium on foreclosures of homes and so forth that maybe other politicians would fall in line andHistory it would stop, this [unclear]__ and I pointed out to him how people were getting so desperate they wereHistorical ready to take guns in their hands and in Iowa they were going to jail for greasingCentury and beating up on a federal judge and so forth, a thing which I positively warned the people and theyOral practically escorted me out of Iowa and I was too damn conservative and to this day some of them want nothing to do with me. I was down to the last stover's[?], next to the last stover's convention, while they was claiming to be glad to see me, didn't allow me to talk to his people, didn't even want to raise the question of the Native American people. You got to say one thing for Stover,Minnesota he was the only farm paper that come out against the war... ST: KoreanTwentieth War.

JF: ...in Vietnam.

TO: War in Vietnam, right.

JF: On this question he [unclear].

TO: Does that have young people in it too, or is it, is it pretty much...

JF: It has now become mainly an old fogey's reminiscent society, too much of it, too much of it exists by the way. ST: I know someone I'd like to ask you [unclear]

JF: What I would like to do, what you [unclear] must do is to take and show you the kind of people that I am trying to develop a relationship with and they are the people that are going to make the social revolution, it's guys like, people, young people I'm working down in the courthouse, young people in the neighborhood, Karen Darian[?]...

TO: I know Karen, I worked for Karen...

JF: ...and some of the other, some of the other people, these are the people that are going to, and like yourselves, you're going to make the social revolution, I'm not. All I am going to do...

TO: You can help.

JF: ...all I am going to be able to do so help me is to try to teach you the way that you haven't got, [unclear] of organization, perhaps [unclear] and you have to learn the difference between falling for class lines and class collaboration and a direct class line. When weMinnesota go down before the winterization committee the first thing this committee of five hintingin around how they're going to get around the high wages of the construction workers to underwrite winter's [unclear] and I tell them flatfooted and I'm in the wrong committee if you think if you're going to include me in such a project. I said if I wanted to fight the American Federation of Labor I would have accepted the $90 a week that John L. Lewis and his brother Denny offered me with allSociety expenses paid when I was working as a cab driver for $45 a week to try to split the MinneapolisProject trade union movement, as former secretary. So I'm not that, what is needed in the trade union movement and what is needed in the world is unity, that is what is needed,Radicalism and an understanding and above all you have to have an understanding of all of these wild-eyed groups that are going around calling themselves communists. They are not communists, Lenin wrote a book about them, there would have been no Hitler if the German communists had listenedHistory to him.Historical ST: Which is that the Left CenturyWing Communism... Oral JF: Left Wing Communism and Infantile Disorder, in which he points out. Here's Trotsky, would there have been a socialist Soviet Union if Trotsky had been allowed to have his way, that the communists should appoint the officers of the trade union movement, huh? Minnesota TO: I didn'tTwentieth know that's what he wanted. JF: You know what Lenin said, he said if a communist doesn't deserve, isn't doing enough work and doesn't deserve to be elected, then goddamnit he won't be elected and we'll have to compromise and work for the people that are elected and they had to do it with the railroad men, believe me they had to go through the railroad men or with the barge workers. They were anti-communists, they still had to work out compromises, a few maybe they had to throw in jail, outright traitors [unclear]

ST: You have to be able to convince people that you're right, rather than pushing into it you know or...

JF: The interesting, the interesting thing that I find when I go out and make a few talks for the Party here and there apparently, I'm very, I'm very much disappointed in most of the narrow sectarianism and the afraidness, I went out to the West High School fall because we had nobody else to speak, I went to Lakeside High School and the funny part of it was, here they got posters you know and I saved the one they made for the Communist Party, it hangs in [unclear] down at 1929 Chicago, here are all these kids, 20, 30, 40 deep around the Communist candidate speaking for the Communist candidate, I've never been a candidate for anything, I run just to prove that it is possible to run candidates in 1972, that Irwin Marquit to run as Governor and myself as Lieutenant Governor and I don't think we would have done it, but we managed to get Matt and Helvie on a trip to the Soviet Union, they were the District Organizers, they were opposed, they didn't think it was possible to run a candidate in Minnesota.

TO: Matt ran [unclear]

JF: Matt's experience last year going out and meeting with the media, meeting with small town editors and above all with some of the young people we have recruited into the Party and got into the Party. Minnesota TO: So what happened at West High School? in JF: Well what happened is that Matt has now changed his approach and is beginning to feel that it is highly possible. We put out, well I'll show you, I got some more, I got to take it over on the northside tonight, this afternoon... Society TO: [Unclear] Project JF: [Unclear] been watched in the United RadicalismStates in the last few months from the election, campaign of Sidlowski against... TO: Right. HistoryHistorical JF: And it's interesting to noteCentury that in Minnesota we got rid of Brizoni this bastard that was for years was the head of the companyOral union, this is the kind of stuff I take out [unclear]. ST: Great. Yeah, cause Sidlowski really did well on the Range. TO: He did well here in Minneapolis,Minnesota he carried... JF: The Twentiethonly place where he lost out on the Range and then that of course was because it was not properly taken to the membership, was in the local...

TO: Reserve?

JF: ...in Babbitt.

ST: Could you tell a little bit more about Olson? You'd told that one, sort of your opinion of him...

JF: Yeah, my opinion of Floyd Olson changed, the Communist Party forbid it when I proposed that I was going to go over and talk to him on the question of getting him to, they absolutely forbid me to do it, but I didn't depend alone on the Communist Party of course, I had my own executive board of the United Farmers League...

TO: Which wasn't the same, right?

JF: Was not the same, no. The majority at one time of the United Farmers League Board were not communists yet, some of these North Dakota farmers and guys that were losing their farms in Wisconsin and so forth, they hadn't gotten the time to join the Communist Party but they were members of the board of the United Farmers League and I got a meeting and they decided that I should go and we set up a program. First thing on our program was that we call for a moratorium on farm foreclosures and both homes and farms and I went over to see the Governor on the instructions of my board of the United Farmers League. I forgot to go down and clear it with Bill Schneiderman, I just went. Walked into Roger Rutchek's office and told him I wanted to see the Governor, what about, I told him I wanted to discuss with him the question of Governor taking a position on farm foreclosures and mortgage moratorium and told him who I was and that we had recently led through a [unclear] stock of farm foreclosures and I notice that they were hurrying around getting all their good Farmer Laborites to, throwing the guy Minnesotaout at Atwater to head the United Holiday, Farm Holiday Association and the Iowa Farmers Association and Fred Lux of Nebraska... in

TO: Yeah and John Boshtenan[?]... JF: ...God knows who elsewhere and I said I recognized this as a fearSociety of the United Farmers League I said and I don't know what the hell you've got up here soProject far I'm pretty much alone but I'm determined and so it was arranged that I would have a 15 minute appointment with the Governor at 2:15. I went there at 2:15, they ushered meRadicalism in, shook hands with the Governor, said well it's obvious Jim that we're not going to get anywheres here in 15 minutes, it happens that I've got a free night he said at home tonight. He said how would like to come home he said I'll call in a few of my supporters, we'll have a drink and we'll sit thereHistory andHistorical you can stay overnight with me and so forth, now here's the Governor talking to [unclear], but be here at 5 o'clock. So at 5 o'clock I was there and I rode in the Governor'sCentury limousine to his home in north Minneapolis. He wanted to know if there's anything I wanted, I said yes,Oral I'd like to take a bath. That's the first thing I want, but I said it's very difficult, the only baths I get is once in a while the neighbors if I happen to [unclear] go over here to the sauna, otherwise we don't have a bath, or I take a bath in a tub in a little cold room that the wife and I live in you know, so I took a bath. We had lunch. Bob Short's dad was one of the people, he was head of the Fire MinnesotaFighters Association at the time in the Twin Cities, there's several more thatTwentieth I could name, I don't remember, none of the Pillsburys or the Washburns or these people were there. The upshot of all the conversation two hours it was, is that they felt that maybe the Governor should come out but they should go and have regular consultations and talks, by that I presume they meant the First National Bank and the Pillsburys and the Washburns and so forth. So after everybody had left the Governor said to me, he said well Jim what do you think of, think of it. Well I said coming from a bunch of liberals I said that's about as far as I expected it would get, the run-around. We went over to his bookcase and pulled out a book, Lenin on the Trade Unions, you'll find it in the three volumes of Lenin. He said here you little commie son of a bitch I want you to read this out loud to me.

TO: Was he mad? JF: Huh?

TO: Was he mad?

JF: Well that's what he always called me was a little commie son of a bitch, you know, he hated Schneiderman guts, he hated the Carson Brothers guts but him and I got along fine. This is the truth. We didn't do it openly, if ever I wanted to see the Governor I went to his home clandestinely or met him someplace else. Had to be done that way, you know, when the Governor was dying he called me, had his secretary call me and say he wanted to see me, he wanted to know what he could do at the last Farmer Labor convention if he was able to stand on his feet. Said [unclear] would help [unclear] and I told him for Christ's sake, Governor, talk against red-baiting, this goddamn red-baiting...

TO: Which he did. JF: If you ever have read his last speech... Minnesota ST: Yeah, he did, he was real heavy on that. in

JF: If you have ever read his last speech then you will know that that is what the Governor spoke on, on the danger of red-baiting and of course everyone of these son of a bitches took it up in just the opposite terms and red-baited to hilt including Hubert Humphrey.Society TO: Oh yeah. Project Radicalism ST: Yes, especially Hubert Humphrey. JF: Well my Party, I could go on, I could goHistory on and tell you all about it and some of the reasons I broke when they refused to let me make a fight on theHistorical question of race with Cargill, when they insisted that I should exposeCentury Humphrey, not expose Humphrey as an opportunist, as a money-grubbing son of a bitch, outOral for all he could get at the expense of the workers. ST: Why did they not want him exposed at the time?

JF: Because they thought he might be useful to them, he was talking, making great big [unclear] speeches particularly on the raceMinnesota question... Twentieth TO: Right, right.

JF: Whether it ever meant anything or not, I've never yet been able to figure out his double talk on some of this stuff.

TO: Were you against the merger of the Democrats and the Farmer Labor Party?

JF: Was I against the merger? Of course I was against the merger, it killed the Farmer Labor Party as such.

TO: You were out of the Party by then [unclear]. JF: Yeah, well I belonged to the Democratic Farmer Labor Party, I got a paid up card in it, not I that value it very highly but it does give me a sense of possession like I told you, I hung the signs on my tree and I called these guys, I write them nice letters, and I tell them what I'm doing, you want your sign on a tree with Earl...with Sevola and Hall and Stiner[?]? Fine we'll leave them there, if you don't come and take them down. You know what happened, I can show you the letter, I got a nice letter from Fraser, he knows he's been getting support from my family for years. [tape clicks] ...invited to the inaugural.

ST: Oh great.

TO: They didn't [unclear] me any [unclear]. Here's an answer to the letter I wrote to Fraser telling them that I was putting up and why I couldn't support Carter and Mondale and... Come on out of my chair, sit over there, honey. I couldn't support him, and I didn't support him.

ST: All right, that's great. Oh one, I... Minnesota JF: Woodrow, Woodrow made three trips to the house before he come home and he had talked with Sam Sivonich and Stokowski, they had agreed, said do youin want your signs down? Hell, no, you know what [unclear] parting words was when he left out of the house, he said honestly he said Jim I don't know how the hell an honest working man can support the son of a bitch myself. He's talking of Carter. Society TO: Yeah, yeah. Project JF: I wrote to Mondale already two years agoRadicalism begging him to fight for the presidential nomination, I got a nice letter back from him, I wrote to Fritz and I told him I said Fritz I want a copy of S-1, he sent it to me, he said I hope to hell you can use it and I think S-1's good, but I think they're going to try to initiate other crap. HistoryHistorical TO: Sure they will, they'veCentury got to. Oral ST: When Olson handed you that book on the trade union thing what was...

JF: I was [unclear] in that book on the trade unions was just that it is stupid to think that you're going to have social revolution unlessMinnesota you have the workers organized, the bulk of the proletariat, of the workers, people that work for a living, organized in unions that are in support of the revolution.Twentieth And he said Jesus Christ you haven't even got the steel workers organized, you haven't got the automobile workers organized, you haven't got shit organized outside of a few AF of L fakers that I have to deal with. He says and here you are and your piddling farmers talking to me about social revolution, he says you get those guys organized and then come back and talk to me about social revolution. This is the way he talked, and of course we had [unclear], and I could give you another classic example. When we stopped the farm sale it was clearly illegal. They went out on to the farm in the dead of the night, they knew they couldn't hold a farm foreclosure sale in this old couple at Purham on the farm, they went out in the dead of the night, took all the machinery and the cattle, loaded them into trucks, took them into the town, put them in the livery barn with a big high fence around it and then announced that instead of the sale being at the farm, it's going to be held at the livery barn on such and such a day and that Sherriff Hankus is going to [unclear] the sale. So Hankus comes there with eight or nine armed deputy sheriffs and they didn't know who the hell this [unclear]. I had eight or nine hundred farmers there, they wouldn't let me in the gate, I never did get in the gate until after the ruckus was over and Jettenberg didn't get in the gate ‘til after the ruckus was over. What am I bid for this cow, somebody said $5 for an old broken down cow and he just went right up over that [unclear] board fence and the women outside the fence, they wouldn't allow any women in the yard, got a hold of him, they just tore the clothes off the poor old son of a bitch, he's running down the street in his shoes you know, screaming it's bloody murder. That ended the sale. The sheriff didn't dare start to shoot.

TO: What town was this, where was this near?

JF: In Purham, Minnesota.

ST: What year was that? JF: 1935, so in the same, this was in the spring, that same winter beforeMinnesota in the height of the winter they had tried to foreclose on Neil Beaner down by Deer Crick on a bitterly cold day, it must have been 15-20 below and everybody that showed up crowded into inthe barn, into the houses, what buildings there was you know, miserably cold. The sheriff showed up, took one look around, said guess there wasn't going to be any sale, and that was the end of that, those banks [unclear] you know. Parker Brothers then called me up, they didn't call me themselves, they had the county attorney of Wadena County who was a good friend of my father's, JimSociety will you please come down and see me, didn't say what it was about or anything else.Project This is a week after the Beaner and he said that the Parker Brothers are willing he said to go to $2000. Now $2000 to a guy that for Christ sakes is living on oatmeal and bread, didn'tRadicalism know where his next postage stamp, they offered me $2000 in cold cash if I would let the Beaner sale go through. And I politely told him he ought to be ashamed of himself and I [unclear] you ought to know me better than that and I walked out of his office. He's the guy who wanted to send meHistory to highHistorical school and college [unclear]. But the County Attorney for years of Wadena County and he was not a bad guy in a lot of ways in the old you know Century the [unclear] and so forth, he wantedOral to make me one of them in other words. TO: Right.

JF: It just never appealed to me. So I never thought nothing about it, went back out on the highway to do just exactly how I'd come Minnesotadown to Wadena in the first place, hitchhike back to [unclear], I was just Twentiethoutside of the town of Wadena and there's a farm over in the brush maybe four hundred feet there with a little wind grove around it and so forth and I'm standing there and I seen this black car coming down the street, and roads you know and got my thumb out and the next thing I see sticking out of the window of the car, it looked like a stick, right away I realized what the hell it was, it's a gun barrel you know. Well I just flopped down in the ditch and it was coming, bang, bang it was a double barreled shotgun, the son of a bitch tried to shoot me but because I'd dropped so fast he missed me and they're going down the road and I just run like a son of a bitch for this farmyard over there as fast as I could and I asked this farmer's out there fixing his Model A tinkering with it, said did you hear those two gunshots, yes, I said I'm Jim Flower, said the Parker Brothers, the son of a bitch, just tried to kill me. How do you know it was the Parker Brothers, well it was either them or their agents, I said you heard the shots didn't you, I said I want to get into town, can you drive me into town, he says I guess so. I don't [unclear], he says I want to leave you off a block from the bank, I don't want no part in this, I said they own my mortgage too, so I said well that's fine, just so I get into town quick, I don't want to be stuck out here on the road. So I walked right into the bank all alone and I said I wanted to see so and so [unclear]. Well he's not here right now. I said where's his brother, his brother come out, well I said you tell your goddamn brother better luck next time. What do you mean, I said don't give me that shit, I just come to Mark's office and I turned down $2,000, so you decided to kill me, I said I'm going to take and make a dirty stinking leaflet out of it and it's going to be published all over I said I don't care whether you try to sue me for slander or anything else, I got nothing. I said it's the truth, I said if there's going to be any more of this crap I want to know about it cause I said from now on I don't go alone, I'm going to go armed, I'm going to tell the people and then we're going to go armed, it's going to be the end, I'll get the Burnhams, I'll get other people I said who understand what the hell it's all about and we're going to have deer rifles and shotguns too, let it be a lesson to you, it's not going to be one sided anymore and of course that ended that shit. So then what happened in Purham, after the sale was all over, neither Jettenberg nor I were allowed inside the enclosure til after the sale had been stopped. I got up on the wagon aftewards and I congratulated the farmers for a job well done. It was only mass action on the part of the farmers Minnesotathat was going to save their machinery and their ways and means of making a livelihood, Jettenbergin said the same thing. Four days later we were both arrested for inciting to riot, that was the first charge. Now the riot had all taken place before we spoke, everything had taken place before. The only thing that had been done that the United Farmers League had issued their same little leaflet that we issued all over, such and such is trying to take so and so's farm on such and such a date, we're Societyall to attend and it had a picture of a farmer with a pitchfork in his hand. Project ST: All right. Radicalism JF: That's all. The guy that used to print them for me was a Republican, a staunch Republican, [unclear] his name was Marion Isherwood andHistory he's dead now and he was the editor of the Sebeka Review, you are the only guys that I have told to thisHistorical day that Marion Isherwood issued them, I can tell it now. Century Oral ST: I imagine he, at that time, he wanted to hide that...

JF: He was scared to death, when I went to him, asked him the first time if he would put out some leaflets [unclear] he wanted no part of me, I told him well I said if old R C Arnold I said and if Doughty in the poolhall and someMinnesota of these people I said, the Modern Woodsman of America used to take andTwentieth carry a monthly meeting notice in the for which they paid in the semi-weekly[?] review, R. C. Arnold was the head of it. I said if R.C. Arnold takes his ad out of the paper I said if the co-op takes its ad out of the paper...

END TAPE TWO, SIDE ONE

TAPE TWO, SIDE TWO

JF: [Unclear] but he [unclear], that's how [unclear]. Believe me I used to get a lot of questions, if you ever read the The Red Network by Elizabeth [unclear]

ST: Yeah, I've gone through that. Are you in there? JF: I guess that I was named one of the most dangerous radicals in the United States or something, I don't know, I was just starting out as a radical in those days.

ST: When did you actually join the Communist Party?

JF: I joined the Communist Party in 1932 after an unemployed demonstration in Minneapolis, we had a meeting and I had been elected the secretary of the Minneapolis Unemployed Council, we had decided to hold a demonstration at Bridge Square, that was the square where the old public bathroom used to sit and where the insurance companies took over downtown, there used to be a square there.

ST: Near the Gateway?

JF: The Gateway, yeah. And we had a Farmer Labor mayor named William A. Anderson was mayor, we didn't anticipate any real trouble, didn't expect we were going to have that big a demonstration but the [unclear], we elected a committee, what I didn'tMinnesota know was that on this committee of three was myself, was a big Polish guy who wasn't a member at that time of the Communist Party and then there was Norman Burnick was a memberin of the Communist Party and chairman of the Unemployed Councils. So we went over to see the mayor, the mayor said there was going to be no unemployed demonstrations on Bridge Square, you might as well forget about it and rent a hall. I told him we didn't have any money to rent halls and that our little hall down on 3rd Avenue, it wasn't big enough, it was overflowing every meeting weSociety had, every afternoon and the reason it was overflowing cause somehow or other weProject managed to go out and scrounge up enough so that all the single men who couldn't possibly get relief tickets or anything else were getting a bowl of soup a day at least survive,Radicalism said something that you haven't helped to do anything about to the mayor, got real snotty with him. Burnick is trying to pull me back. The next thing he said there was, the police were starting to be there and I said well then the unemployed will be there, cause I said you have now made it a freeHistory speechHistorical fight. Our right to speak for unemployment insurance against your right to try to stop us with the police. I said and I think our right to speak for unemployment insurance comesCentury first, we're going to be there. Burnich is trying to pull me back and then he reads me the riot act all theOral way over, big Polock is siding with me and so we've got to put it to a vote, the membership of the Unemployed Council and the membership of the Unemployed Council voted 98 to 2 or some goddamn thing to go hold the demonstration and I can remember yet how you know naive and stupid I was cause I didn't want to see any man who was down there [unclear], anybody that didn't bringMinnesota their banners down there on two [unclear] were nuts. And that's when BurnickTwentieth jumped up and said I was either a provocateur, a stool pigeon or a damn fool, he didn't know which. [Unclear] see but that's the way I felt, goddamn were free white Americans or black Americans [unclear] we had the right to fight for our rights, that's the way I felt and I don't care who knows it and that's the way I feel today, you have the right to fight for your rights and your rights does not include that you are, should be evaded (invaded?), after I assured the two guys from the Army Intelligence when they come here to question me about Dr. Evans, they showed me the letter from Blanche McIntosh and Edith Olson, I assured them that he never was a communist, they thanked me and they left, but then they must have thought that oh here's a guy that's willing to cooperate with the FBI and with the other stool pigeon forces because in less than two weeks here comes two guys at the door, we're from the FBI Mr. Flower, we'd like to talk to you. I said come on in, what do you want to talk to me about. Did you know so and so, I said none of your goddamn business, well he said you must have known him, you recruited him into the Communist Party, I said that's a goddamn lie as far as I know, I don't even remember the guy, of course that was another goddamn lie because I distinctly remembered that I did, but I'm not telling them that. So then they start naming [unclear] guy and then they break it down to a different level, he said did you know Norman Burnick so I said yeah, sure I knew Norman Burnick, did you know so and so, yeah I knew him he was the district organizer for the Communist Party when I joined, were you a member of the district committee of the Communist Party. I said of course I was a member of the district committee of the Communist Party, I bragged about it for years, I quit the Communist Party, I haven't been a member of the Communist Party since 1940. Well he said you still spoke the Communist line in 1941 he said at the International Falls convention of the AF of L, you did a hell of a job of it, I said thank you. I said do you think it was wrong for me to stand up there and call for all out aid to the Soviet Union, do you think it was wrong for me to say that it wouldn't be six months before the United States would be thanking God for the Red Army and praying that they could hold, are you trying to infer that that was something wrong about that statement. I said I think I've talked to you two son of a bitches long enough, there's the public sidewalk and that's my door, get your ass on it, I don't want to talk to you anymore. So they left. Three days later here I am, I'm putting a lintel in the door, had to re-hang the door, got the hammerMinnesota in my hand, my wife is standing there, there's two elderly ladies setting on the bench. The first thingin I did when I came here in 1940, I made a bench for people to sit on to wait for the streetcars and so forth. And these two elderly ladies [unclear] here come these two guys in on the sidewalk, are you James Flower, I said yes I am. We're from the FBI, I said so what. You recruited so and so, John Johnson of Menahga, Minnesota in the Communist Party in such and such a date, and John Johnson was not a citizen of the United States and blah blah blah. I said you're a goddamn liar, I said furthermoreSociety I said I told two of your stool pigeon son of a bitches that I didn’t want them in myProject house, I said I'm now telling you, you're on my property, there is the public sidewalk,Radicalism get your ass on it and I'm waving that hammer, I'm mad, and the madder, more I thought about it, the madder I got, they stood on the sidewalk out there and they screamed we're going to subpoena you, we're going to subpoena you, I said subpoena my ass who gives a goddamn. That was fine, thisHistory is one o'clock in the afternoon. I'm due to go to work at three. At one thirty the telephone rings, this is theHistorical cab inspector, I'm speaking for the chief of police, get your ass down here,Century you don't go to work tonight. So down to the courthouse I go you know, as fast as I can get on the streetcarOral and go down to the courthouse I go down there and I walk in and here's these two guys from the FBI, the cab inspector, what's his name out from Central Avenue [unclear] those days, a real prick, and the chief, a couple three more including Nelson of the Red Squad whose son my daughter later married and they start in on me, either I cooperate or I'm not going to have a job. FirstMinnesota question they ask me is did you know, I said yeah sure I told them I knew him,Twentieth you know. The Twin City, the district secretary of the Communist Party, sure I knew him. Where is he now, how the hell do I know, I haven't been a member of the Communist Party since 1940, this is 1952. Who was Viola Flower, that was my first wife, where is she now? I said I haven't the faintest idea, of course I knew where she was, she was in [unclear] and we'd been divorced for years. Where is so and so, I said listen you're asking me to become a stool pigeon, I want to ask the chief one question, and one question only, am I under arrest. Oh no, no, well then I said all of you can go plain plum to hell. Well just a minute, and I'm headed for the door. You got to cooperate, I said I don't have to cooperate with anything that makes me a stool pigeon, I am not a stool pigeon, I never have been a stool pigeon, I want no part of being a stool pigeon and the sooner that that type of un-American activities ceases the better off our country will be, it is un-American and I said furthermore I think it is unconstitutional that I should be harassed in this way, that you are threatening me about a lousy job, but they're not satisfied with that, took me three years, finally his son told me they couldn't wait, the very next day they're over to Jack Daily telling him that he's got to fire me, that I'm a dangerous man.

TO: Good old Jack Daily.

JF: Jack Daily looks up my record and he says right here it says former member of the Communist Party, is he a member of the Communist Party now? He said no but he refuses to cooperate. What do you mean cooperate, he won't name names. Jack said more power to him.

TO: Really? That's the first nice thing I've heard about Jack.

JF: You know why [unclear] Jack knows this, they had a guy one time out to the airport, come out with some old lady in a wheelchair, so instead of putting her in the limousine and taking her downtown for a dollar and a half, he told them can't handle her, put her in a taxicab, you know, won't handle people in wheelchairs, which of course was contrary to all rules and regulations, I know who the guy was, I thought it was a horrible horseshit way to Minnesotado business for Yellow Cab but I didn't want to argue, Jack Daily knew that I knew who the guy was, so the next day he calls me up and was it so and so, I said Jack I wouldn't tell you if I knew, youin should know that by now, he said yeah you son of a bitch, he says I guess I ought to know that by now, get the hell out of here. That's the way we talked, they could say what they want about old Jack Daily, him and I had many terrific arguments, I fought for the best possible conditions that I thought we could get for the workers, I fought like a devil against part-time employees, cause this is one of theSociety things that has happened in America, they don't put people to work [unclear] they putProject you on part -time work... TO: That's right, they can avoid unions and...Radicalism

JF: The unions, they avoid all those benefits and so forth, where the Yellow Cab Company used to have 400 some names on their Master SeniorityHistory List,Historical when I joined it in 1948, today they had maybe 152 at the most. Many of them were inside help, the dispatchers and so forth, guys that worked around the garage. Century Many times they don't have enough permanent employees to put the limousines on the street, they have Oralto take part time help to put the limousines on the street, and...

TO: When did you quit driving? JF: I quit driving two years ago.Minnesota TO: Oh,Twentieth just two years.

JF: I decided I'd had enough of it, I couldn't go to driving part-time [unclear]. When Jack and I shook hands and left, well he says you got to collect that $60 a month now you fought so damn hard for, I said yes Jack and I hope to hell I live to be 112 [unclear], he laughed and I laughed. I seen him on the street not long ago, he pulled up alongside of me down on 2nd Avenue, driving down 2nd Avenue, oh Flower's [unclear] said I'm fine Jack I been thinking about coming over, yeah do that come on out and see me sometime, you know he said I'm not very active anymore, I let the kid run the company he said. Yeah, I said I know you do Jack and I'm afraid it's going to hell faster than when you ran it. He laughed and I laughed. But the cab drivers didn't, just look at the picture there for instance, the lousy miserable wages and I worked there for years, the building trades for instance, 2/3 of the members were unemployed, they called themselves plumbers, when you go down to the union hall for Christ sakes half of them were contracting and scabbing and I know a union carpenter including my own son, the minute they get laid off a job you know for instance and paid a union wage and the first thing they do is run around and find somebody's goddamn garage to build for half price. Some friend of theirs or someplace, has no more concept of unionism, than, to sticking together than, this I say of my own sons, I don't have to go beyond that, I have two sons that work for the telephone company. Do you think that Donald is very damn radical? That he's going to support his old man or the word might get out. Mike did it deliberately though hoping that maybe we could make an issue of it, when I ran for Lieutenant Governor, he gave me a check for $100 made out to the Hall [unclear] Committee, signed Michael Flower hoping that somebody at the telephone company or somebody would make a goddamn issue of it and we'd have something that could be done. They never did, just to show you how much they think of Mike, he's a good worker, they got real problems up on the Iron Range with frost and expansion and all this crap and underground cable. They transfer Mike up there, pay his room and board in the Holiday Inn in Virginia you know for three solid months. They buy his house up on Knox Avenue North, got a for sale sign out now, they furnished the moving equipment, moved allMinnesota his stuff up there, pay him $4,000 more for the house on Knox Avenue than he paid for it,in so he could turn around and he pays $4,000 down on a house in Eveleth, and they pay him all this time, [unclear] he's down here loading his machinery, going to school, or what the hell he's getting paid all that time and of course you and I pay for that in our telephone bill. And this goes on and on in many ways. Somebody asked me, somebody asked me what I thought of Medicare, why I says I think that it's a disgrace the way our Medicare and our stuff operates in this country, when you go down toSociety Medicare to the Social Security Office, and they say oh Medicare pays up to 80%Project of, 80% of nothing, you see what Medicare pays 80% of and what the doctor'sRadicalism charge are two complete different things. Doctor makes a little hole in here and pushes the gut back you know for the hernia, I'm in the hospital two whole days and the hospital bill is $600, I pay 104 of it and Medicare pays the rest of it, I can't understand it, to be honest [unclear] what didHistory they give me in that hospital that could possibly be worth $500, $104 was more than it was worth. Historical Century ST: Welfare for medicine in hospitals.Oral JF: The doctor charged, the doctor charged $340 for 45 minutes worth of patching up that hernia. Medicare was willing to pay 230, 80% of $235, the anesthesia was $80, Medicare was willing 80% of $35. Minnesota ST: Oh soTwentieth they have the set rate, if the other people are above it it's tough.

JF: Yeah. Now why in the hell isn't it possible if we're honest that government sets a price that the medical profession can charge and can obtain for operation unless things are done to me. And then again why don't they take it out of the hands of this private corporation out here on Penn Avenue South with all this rigmarole and the letters, why don't the Social Security people or just somebody else just handle it. I'll show you a letter I got yesterday, just to show you how medicine operates, why I...I read Karl Marx, I didn't even have money enough to buy a Marxist pamphlet, when I first started, I bought State and Revolution or a friend gave it to me. This is my son Douglas.

TO: Hi, Doug. DF: Hello.

JF: He works for the Post Office and gets home late nights. And then he goes out with his girlfriend ‘til all hours of the morning. Anyway I'm not going to make the social revolution, guys like you are going to have to make it, there ain't no other way.

ST: Well I think we can use some of your inspiration.

JF: Goddamn, the goddamn big corporations and monopolies, they don't give a shit today, you can't tell me that the price of sugar overnight jumped to the price it did without control from that, you can't tell me that the price of gas and oil today isn't being controlled and is being set by them to make multi-millions of profits for themselves again. This is how they operate and they will continue to operate that until the people take over and get sick and tired of it and run in the interests of the people instead of in the interests of private property, yeah. END INTERVIEW Minnesota in

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