O. A. Tveitmoe: Labor Leader

Abstract

by LLOYD HUSTVEDT i O. A. Tveitmoe: Labor Leader The on future April 16, looked 1894, grim as he for stood Olaf Anders in the courtroom T veitmoe on April 16, 1894, as he stood in the courtroom in Red Wing, Minnesota, and heard the district judge, W. C. Williston, sentence him to eighteen months of hard labor at the Stillwater State Prison. He appeared alone and no one spoke on his. behalf. He was twentyeight years old, intelligent, idealistic, married and the father of two children. He was six feet tall, had sandy hair and slate blue eyes, and despite his powerful-looking frame he weighed only one hundred fifty-five pounds.1 Born in Valdres, Norway, December 7, 1865, Tveitmoe came in 1882 to the Holden community in Goodhue county, Minnesota, where he worked as a farmhand .2 Because he had received some secondary education in Vestre Slidre, Valdres, he was placed in the second year of a three-year preparatory program when he entered St. Olaf s School (later St. Olaf College ) in the fall of 1886. Following the classical line of study he did fairly well, with average scores of 92 and 89 respectively for his two years of academy work. He attended only thirty weeks of a thirty-six-week term as a college freshman, which perhaps explains why his 3 Lloyd Hustvedt average dropped to 77. This concluded Tveitmoe's formal education.3 Tveitmoe may have helped to found the Manitou Messenger, the St. Olaf College student newspaper, in 1887. In all events he functioned as its first business manager and later became exchange editor, which involved selecting excerpts from many sources. He revealed a wide range of reading. Only one article in the Messenger, Den norské bonde (The Norwegian Farmer) is known to have been written by Tveitmoe. For an academy student it is ably written, in Norwegian, with a certain poetic flair. Assisted by hindsight, one can see that his main points have importance: The Norwegian rural folk owed their cultural progress, first, to their adoption of Christianity; second, to their sustained struggle for independence; and third, to their gradual acceptance of enlightenment. Much, however, remained to be accomplished in the last-mentioned category .4 After leaving St. Olaf s School in the spring of 1889, Tveitmoe married Ingeborg 0degaard, who had also emigrated from Valdres in 1882. A son, the first of six children, was born on May 25, 1891.5 Life remained unsettled. He continued doing farm work, taught in a Norwegian religion school, and served a brief stint as postmaster at Sogn, a small country store in Warsaw township, Goodhue county. More important, he turned his energies to the Farmers' Alliance movement, and for the better part of a year served as county lecturer for that cause. Late in September, 1892, he bought from Peter M. Ringdal, a Populist political aspirant, a share in the Tribune, a Farmers' Alliance newspaper in Crookston, Minnesota.6 Tveitmoe had little or no money, but Ringdal agreed to accept notes if backed by collateral. Either as total or partial payment, Tveitmoe gave Ringdal a promissory note for $200, dated October 1, 1892, due 4 O. A. TVEITMOE one year later, at eight percent interest. The note was countersigned by K. K. Hougo, a Leon township farmer of moderate means and an acquaintance if not a friend of Tveitmoe. Tveitmoe became editor and secretary of the Tribune Publishing Company, a position for which he was hardly ready. His English was crude, his tone harsh and caustic, and his language perhaps even libelous when he went after those he felt had betrayed the party. Then without explanation Tveitmoe's name was removed from the Tribune's masthead for January 31, 1893. After a few months, he began to work for Normanden , a Norwegian newspaper in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Later the Tribune went over to new owners with promises of better management and a more moderate tone. Then something unexpected happened. A few months after Ringdal received Tveitmoe's note, he sold it at a discount to the Citizens State Bank in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, the very bank where K. K. Hougo did his banking...