It is the Republicans who have given us government that has been both corrupt and extravagant; aided the tax dodger and transferred his load to the t… - Floyd B. Olson

The Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota maintains that the present economic order is in need of very serious alterations—that to continue it as it now is constituted is criminal folly and stupidity. We charge that it fails utterly to meet the needs of our people; that the massive load of misery and suffering which we witness all about us is due to its inherent defects. Just why people are so reluctant to make changes in government—changes for the betterment—is somewhat puzzling. Certainly we cannot hope to solve our problems by continuing the very methods responsible for creating them. In almost every other field, we are prepared to take advantage of new ideas, of new improvements. In government, however, we become confused and frightened in the presence of suggested changes. Perhaps the reason for this can be found in the fact that almost from infancy we are taught, by the rankest kind of sophistry, that it is un-American to make changes in government. We are taught that persons who suggest changes are radicals, and that a radical is an arch enemy of society, a wild destructionist, a bomb thrower, an assaulter of women. The result has been a perversion of the public mind to an where the people fear their very birth-right,—independence of action—and self-determination. We believe in something that has not been tried as yet. We believe in restoring prosperity by restoring the purchasing power of the man at the bottom. Unless labor can receive wage to buy the farmers produce, the farmer can never be prosperous. Unless the farmer has cash to buy the goods that the laborer manufactures, the city worker can never be prosperous.

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.

I cite you the fact that this movement sponsored and brought about the passage of the first compulsory old-age pension law; that this movement has always stood upon the principle of taxation based upon ability to pay. I cite you the fact that despite years of struggle in this State to bring about the passage of an income-tax law—it was not until the Farmer-Labor movement gained control of the executive branch of the government and the Farmer-Labor movement enlisted the aid of popular opinion and public sentiment—not until then, despite all those years of struggle—was there an income-tax law in the State of Minnesota.