Floyd B. Olson
Longshoreman
Wobbly
Farmer-Labor Party Governor of the State of Minnesota
January 6, 1931 – August 22, 1936
"Now I am frank to say that I am not a liberal. I enjoy working on a common basis with liberals for their platforms, but I am not a liberal. I am what I want to be - I am a radical. I am a radical in the sense that I want a definite change in the system. I am not satisfied with tinkering, I am not satisfied with patching, I am not satisfied with hanging a laurel wreath upon burglars and thieves and pirates and calling them code authorities or something else. I am not satisfied with that."
Floyd Bjørnstjerne Olson
(November 13, 1891 – August 22, 1936)
"We declare that capitalism has failed and that immediate steps must be taken by the people to abolish capitalism in a peaceful and lawful manner, and that a new, sane, and just society must be established, a system in which all the natural resources, machinery of production, transportation, and communications shall be owned by the government and operated democratically for the benefit of all the people, and not for the benefit of the few."
In his second campaign for Governor of Minnesota, Floyd B. Olson won in a four way race with 59% of the vote, taking 82 of the state's 87 counties. Before, his political career was tragically cut short by stomach cancer at the age of 44, Olson managed to institute a progressive income tax, a social security program for the elderly, guaranteed equal pay for women, a minimum wage law, unemployment insurance, conservation programs, and a guaranteed right to collective bargaining. He accomplished all of this with a conservative Republican majority in the Minnesota state legislature. According to his wikipedia entry Olson wanted to legislate state ownership of Minnesota's electric utilities, iron mines, oil fields, grain elevators, and meat packing plants.
Thanks to Thomas Gerald O'Connell for posting his PhD. thesis, Spartacus Educational, and wikipedia.
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