"He recognized that for unnumbered centuries the human race lived in a world which could not produce enough food and shelter to provide for the human family. It was an age when progress was advanced by individual explorers constantly in search of new lands, new inventions, and new methods for increasing our material resources. It was a period when the common welfare was promoted by individualistic activity. Within Governor Olsons generation all of this untold individual effort produced the machine age and mass production. The human family for the first time in its history lived in a world that could produce more than enough for all. Floyd Olson understood this basic change from an age of scarcity to an age of plenty. He understood that the social usefulness of selfish individualism was ended. He saw that there must be a new spirit of cooperation if this great power of production were to serve the common welfare. Floyd Olson and the movement of which he was the leader alined themselves with this great current of change—a change going on throughout the world. He supplied the function of leadership by giving constructive direction to the force of change in the period in which he lived."
Floyd Bjørnstjerne "Skipper" Olson was an American politician and lawyer who served three-terms as the 22nd governor of Minnesota from January 6, 1931 until his death in office at the age of forty-four on August 22, 1936. A left-wing populist, Olson was a member of the Minnesota Farmer–Labor Party, and the first member of the party to win the office of governor. He was a prominent governor of Minn
"I look back at my three terms as Governor with one great regret. I did not have, on any occasion, a majority of the members of the legislature who agreed with the principles of this movement. To have had that, I say from my very heart—to have had that in any one session—would have been sufficient gratification so that I would have been willing thereafter to retire from public life."
"We are assembled during the most crucial period in the history of our State and of our Nation. An army of unemployed, some 200,000 homeless and wandering boys, thousands of abandoned farms, an ever-increasing number of mortgage foreclosures, and thousands of people in want and poverty are evidences not only of an economic depression but of the failure of government and of our social system to function in the interest of the common happiness of the people."
"He was entering the national political picture for the first time, pleading eloquently for a national Farmer-Labor Party. There were little lines around his eyes that afternoon and he looked older somehow. He spoke effectively in the evening, but without the thunder and lightning that used to bring the most bitten audiences of independent farmers to their feet as a single man. After the meeting a few of us took him to a late show, trying to cheer him up, he looked so tired. At the table there, or dancing, he was conspicuous. People didnt know who he was but they sensed that he was "somebody." For even then with fatal sickness creeping over him, he radiated a graceful power, a magnetic fellowship that was irresistible. There were no tables when we came in—but the waiter took a look at Floyd and found one. He looked about him slowly, obviously a stranger here, yet at home. And people who saw him that night must have wished, as we were wishing, that they could see him again soon. Unlike us, though, they could not have been aware that this was but a breath-taking before an important engagement, a rest after a very minor skirmish, another pause before a battle in which he was bound to play a leading, if not decisive, role. And today that battle is nearer than before. The forces are gathering, now deflected by the false prophets, now rallied, now re-assembling where the rank and file sense the worthiness of the issue and a glorious outcome; still unprepared, now confident, now hesitating, ready. But Floyd Olson is dead."
"The freedom of speech and the press should remain inviolate and any law which constitutes an entering wedge into that inviolability is unsafe."
"If I were asked to name the greatest tragedy that has followed in the wake of the depression, I would say that it has been the destructive effect upon the morale of our youth. If I were asked to name the chief victim of the present heartless order I would not hesitate to say "youth."
"In memoriam, 1891-1936, Floyd Bjornstjerne Olson, twenty-second governor of the State of Minnesota. Born in near poverty, schooled in adversity, intimate with hunger and want. Out of this crucible came pioneer leadership with purposeful direction and the indomitable courage to seek new frontiers of economic security for the underprivileged. To that which he wrought an enduring memorial is builded in the hearts of his people."