Johnson, Magnus

JOHNSON, MAGNUS

JOHNSON, MAGNUS September 19, 1871—September 13, 1936

Agrarian reformer and U.S. senator, was born near Karlstad, Varmland, Sweden, the son of Johannes Janson and Elizabeth (Pierson) Janson. After the death of his father, a prosperous farmer and ship captain, the sixteen-year-old boy was apprenticed to a glass-blower. When his mother died, he emi- grated at the age of twenty to Wisconsin, where he worked as a lumberjack. In 1894 he moved to Minnesota and took up farming. On September 14, 1895, he married Matilda Boreen, who died shortly afterward. Magnus Johnson became a naturalized citi- zen in 1899, and he expressed great pride in the fact that his second wife, Harriet Dormán, whom he married February 7, 1900, was of American Revolutionary stock. They had six children: Lilian, Victor E., Agnes, Frances A., Magnus, and Florence. Johnson arrived in the United States at a time of widespread agrarian protest against the grow- ing power of banks, railroads, and other corporate interests. In one-crop areas the price manipulations of the commodities merchants—a combination of JOHNSON, MAGNUS processors, warehouse owners, and speculators— were the chief targets of the farmers’ wrath, and the usual counterattack, a cooperative market- ing arrangement, found especial favor among Scandinavian-Americans. While continuing as an active farmer Johnson also undertook a long career in the cooperative movement. From 1911 to 1914 he was president of the Minnesota Union of the American Society of Equity, which organized spring wheat farmers, and from 1911 to 1926 he served as vice president of the Equity Cooperative Exchange. This organization of farmers in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana, was both a grain and livestock marketing company and the first cooperative to function successfully in a terminal market—that of Minneapolis. The expansion from economic organization to radical political action that had occurred in the South and the southern Plains states during the populist era came to the upper Mississippi valley in the progres- sive period. In 1915 the Farmers Nonpartisan League MAGNUS JOHNSON was founded in North Dakota to work for state own- ership of terminal elevators, flour mills, stockyards, when it was absorbed by the Farmers’ Union. cold storage houses, and packing plants; state inspec- Johnson continued full-time farming near tion of the grading and dockage of grain; exemption Kimball, Minnesota, and when the Depression of the of farm improvements from taxation; state hail insur- 1930s revived Farmer Labor strength, resulting in the ance; and nonprofit rural credit banks. election of Floyd Olson as governor, he hoped to be The Nonpartisan League spread rapidly to named as state commissioner of agriculture. Olson neighboring states, including Minnesota, where rejected him in favor of a candidate less identified it became known as the Farmer Labor party, and with politics; but in 1932 he returned to public life where for several years “Magnavox” Johnson, with on being elected to Congress, where he consistently his strong Swedish accent and his foghorn voice, supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New which he attributed to years of glassblowing, had Deal measures. Because of redistricting in 1934, he been advocating similar measures and building was obliged to run against a popular Republican, up a reputation as an authentic voice of the dirt Representative Harold Knutson, and he was defeated. farmers. Johnson's program, however, tended to In the mid-1930s Johnson became an outspoken emphasize local rather than state control of pub- member of the Farmer Labor faction that feared lic utilities, police, and liquor traffic. He favored that the party's dominant position was turning the woman suffrage; the initiative, referendum, and organization into a typical political machine. By recall; low taxes on productive industries; and 1935 it became clear that Governor Olson planned high taxes on income derived from the exploita- to run for the Senate in 1936 and that banking tion of natural resources. Johnson was elected as commissioner Elmer Benson, whom Olson had a Farmer Labor candidate to the Minnesota House just appointed to a Senate vacancy, had thereby of Representatives for the 1915 and 1917 legisla- gained the inside track as Olson's successor. tures and served as state senator in the 1919 and Johnson regarded Benson as a front for spoils- 1921 sessions. men, and he was infuriated by Olson's attempt to In 1922 Magnus Johnson ran a strong but losing name his own successor. Even though the party race for governor, but in 1923 he won, against both leaders had indicated their belief that the he was Republican and Democratic opposition, the special too old to run for governor, Johnson entered his election for the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the name as a candidate with a statement to the press: death of Knute Nelson. He then decided to run for “The rank and file of the Farmer Labor Party will the regular six-year term in 1924, a year in which brook no dictatorship in the control of its policies progressive hopes were running high; but although whether from inside or without the party.” But then he ran well ahead of presidential candidate Robert he discredited himself with the rank and file by M. La Follette, he lost narrowly to the Republican participating in a protest meeting against Benson's Thomas Schall. In 1926 he lost another gubernato- candidacy organized by Arthur Townley, founder rial campaign, and in the same year he gave up of the Nonpartisan League, who had acquired an his position with the Equity Cooperative Exchange unsavory reputation.

495 JOHNSON, TOM LOFTIN

The bad luck that had dogged Johnson's politi- cal career became even worse in his last try for office. An automobile accident followed by pneu- monia forced him to spend five weeks in the hos- pital at the beginning of the campaign, and six weeks before the election he died at his home in Litchfield, Minnesota. Biographical sources include W. W. Folwell, A History of Minnesota, vol. 3 (1926); G. Mayer, The Political Career of Floyd B. Olson (1951); and The Dictionary of American Biography (1958). L. F. F.

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