In the election of 1890 a serious break occurred in the Republican Party in Minnesota and in the Dakotas. There was a general impression in the rural districts of Minnesota that the Republican candidate for governor, William R. Merriam, a wealthy banker of St. Paul, was renominated for his second term by a political ring composed of lumber-kings, wheat dealers, and millers who combined to cheat and rob the farmer. Accordingly the Farmers’ Alliance nominated a third ticket headed by S. M. Owen, the editor of an agricultural paper in Minneapolis, who polled a vote of 58,513, and reduced Merriam’s vote of 1888 by about 46,000.[401] Merriam was re-elected by a plurality of less than 2,500, tho he had had more than 24,000 two years before.
A careful examination of the votes for 1888 and 1890 in such strong Scandinavian counties as Otter Tail, Douglas, Chisago, Freeborn, Polk, and Norman leaves no doubt that the Swedes and Norwegians in very large numbers either voted for Owen, or refused to vote for Merriam.[402] In some cases the Republican vote fell off one-half and even two-thirds, and third-party Alliance candidates for the legislature were elected. A prominent Norwegian writer estimated that “25,000 Norwegian-born farmers turned their backs upon Mr. Merriam and voted for Mr. Owen for governor,” disregarding the injunction of the Scandinavian Republican press to “stick to the grand old party, for the grand old party is particularly favorable to the Scandinavians, and the best political party in America.”[403]
At the next state election in the presidential year, 1892, a Norwegian ran for governor on the Republican ticket, and a large part of the Scandinavian deserters wheeled into line and voted the Republican ticket. With a total vote only 15,000 greater than in 1890, the vote for the Republican candidate for governor increased in round number 20,000, for the Democratic candidate, 9,000, and for the Prohibition candidate, 4,000, while the vote of the Alliance or People’s party fell off 20,000.[404]
Conditions in North Dakota and South Dakota were even more favorable to the new party than in Minnesota.
Estimates based on a study of statistics and newspapers have been confirmed by prominent officials of those States, one of whom declares that “in some localities quite a per-cent has joined the Populist party; but it is very rare indeed to find a Scandinavian Democrat.”[405] Another believes that a considerable portion of the Scandinavians voted the Populist ticket in 1892 and in 1894, but that they were normally believers in the protective principle and therefore naturally affiliated with the Republican party.[406] A German lawyer of Valley City, North Dakota, a Democrat, practically agreed with the Norwegian city attorney of Devil’s Lake in the same State, the one saying that a large part of the Norse voters were Populists, the other declaring that the Populist party was largely composed of Scandinavians.[407] All agreed that these voters later tended to return to their former Republican alliance. It may be doubted, however, whether the hold of the protection idea is one of the primary reasons for Scandinavian Republicanism. At any rate the vote of the Hon. Knute Nelson for the Mills Bill for tariff revision in 1888—one of six Republican votes for the measure—did not make him politically persona non grata or a suspicious character among his Norwegian or Swedish brethren.
Another index of the shifting of political sentiment among the Norse voters is found in the changes in the party affiliations of Scandinavian newspapers, tho the varying importance of these journals imposes special caution in interpreting these figures. It would be obviously unfair to offset the staunch and well-supported Republicanism of the ably-edited and widely-circulated Skandinaven of Chicago with the less stable Normannen of Stoughton, Wisconsin, which had not one-third the circulation nor one-tenth of the influence of the metropolitan journal.[408] The “mugwump spirit” of the press is well illustrated by the case of Norden, a Norwegian weekly of Chicago, Republican up to 1884, when it took an independent attitude. In 1888 it became avowedly Democratic and supported Grover Cleveland for the presidency. This move was made only after the proprietor and editor assured themselves that the patrons of the paper would sustain them in the proposed change.[409]
Of the secular political Scandinavian papers published in Minnesota in 1889 nine were Republican—five Norwegian or Norwegian-Danish, four Swedish; three were Democratic,—all Norwegian; two were Prohibitionist,—one Norwegian and one Swedish; and one was Labor,—Norwegian.[410] In the next five years, the independent press in Minnesota and other states increased in numbers at least, and included such influential journals as Amerika and Folkebladet. George Taylor Rygh, professor of Scandinavian languages in the University of North Dakota, estimated in 1893 that “until a few years ago over four-fifths of the [Scandinavian] secular press were strictly Republican in politics. One after another has ceased to defend the Republican party, and today not more than one-third of the whole number are strictly Republican.”[411] While this personal opinion or impression is probably exaggerated, it may represent approximately the temporary state of that year if proper emphasis be laid on the word “strictly.” Since there appears to be no evidence that these papers, with two or three exceptions, were subsidized to induce their change of political creed, it is reasonable to conclude that they had behind them a solidified constituency, for they were run neither for personal amusement, pure philanthropy, nor mere partisan propaganda.
The third defection occurred in Wisconsin alone, and took its rise in a purely local question. Its interest lies in the peculiar and remarkable temporary alliance to which it led. The Wisconsin Legislature passed an act, approved April 18, 1889, “concerning the education and employment of children.”[412] To the ordinary provisions for coercing parents and children, so that all children between the ages of seven and fourteen years should attend at least twelve weeks in some public or private school in the city or town or district in which they lived, nobody objected. But the fifth section of the act, which was known as the Bennett Law, was in certain church circles, like a dash of vitriol in the face:
“No school shall be regarded as a school under this act unless there shall be taught therein as a part of the elementary education of the children, reading, writing, arithmetic, and United States history, in the English language.”