With roots in the Populist Movement of the 1890s and midwestern progressivism in the early 1900s, the Farmer-Labor Party formed as a third-party alternative in American electoral politics. The Farmer-Labor Party and its predecessor, the Non-Partisan League (NPL), grew out of farmer discontent over deteriorating conditions in agriculture in the early 20th century. Increased agricultural production in the 1910s had resulted not in a better standard of living for farmers, but in overproduction and a sharp drop in farmers income. Falling into debt, many farmers were forced into tenancy, or they left agriculture altogether.
In 1915, wheat farmers in North Dakota formed the NPL on a platform of state-run enterprises. Independent politics spread throughout the West after the NPL had successes in the 1916 elections. In Minnesota, farmer-laborites established the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party after they failed at the nonpartisan strategy in the Republican primary of 1918.
When employers went on the offensive after World War I to establish the open shop (see open shop movement) in many mass production industries, trade unions shifted their efforts to political action. With participation from the NPL, the Socialist Party, local farmer and labor parties, and labor unions set up the Conference for Progressive Political Action (CPPA) in 1922. Independent CPPA candidates were quite successful in the 1922 elections. Twelve out of 16 CPPA gubernatorial candidates won. The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party took control of the state legislature and won half Minnesota’s seats in Congress. Farmer-Labor candidates were elected to one Senate seat in 1922 and won the other Senate seat in 1923.
In 1924, the CPPA ran and independent ticket in the national elections, with Wisconsin Progressive Robert La Follette and Montana Democrat Burton K. Wheeler as presidential and vice presidential candidates. The La
Follette ticket did surprisingly well in the 1924 elections, winning nearly 17 percent of the popular vote. La Follette won in Wisconsin and came in second in nine western states. Along with Wisconsin, the states of California and Minnesota had significant industrial populations.
Although the Farmer-Labor Party had many state-level successes, the third-party movement ultimately failed at the national level. Immediately after its formidable challenge to the national two-party system in 1924, the third-party movement collapsed. The obstacles to waging a national effort proved to be insurmountable. The major labor leaders ultimately maintained their ties to the Democratic and Republican Parties. Meanwhile, the farmer-labor coalition suffered from persistent internal divisions that undermined its successes. In addition, its supporters faced other setbacks: the decline of organized labor on the national level as well as an increasingly conservative political climate in the 1920s. Only in Minnesota did the farmer-labor efforts remain strong through the 1930s.
Since the Populist era, American radicals had attempted to forge farmer-labor unity, seeing both groups as producers exploited by the capitalist system. In the 1924 presidential elections, the loose coalition of farmer-laborites came closer than at any other time in mounting a third-party challenge in the electoral system. However, the Farmer-Labor Party and other progressive movements of the era were unable to translate their state successes into a long-term national alternative to the two-party system.
Further reading: Millard L. Gieske, Minnesota Farmer-Laborism: The Third-Party Alternative (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979); Richard M. Valelly, Radicalism in the States: The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and the American Political Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
—Glen Bessemer
World History
