Whipped up by the local press, vigilantes shoot into striking farmers picketing outside of Canby, Minnesota killing 26-year-old Nordahl Pederson.

‘Farm Picket Murdered on Minnesota Highway’ from Producers News. Vol. 15 No. 29. October 14, 1932.

Nordahl Pederson, 26 Year Old Picket Shot to Death

12 SHOTS FIRED

Anti-Picketing Campaign of Local Businessmen is Cause of Murder

Nordahl Pederson, 26-year-old farmer, picketing the Gary road west of Canby, Minnesota, was instantly killed Tuesday night, October 4, in a brutal attack on the picket camp. The killing was done by Ole Anderson, a farmer, who was driven by his son Leonard.

According to the local Canby News-Press, five men were stationed at the picket tent on the Gary road: Iver Forland, Herbert Ferguson, Carl Fallstone, Elmer Rogne and Nordahl Pederson. Floyd Jones was at his home nearby. Four of the men were playing cards in the tent when a car drove by, and sone one fired three shots from a shotgun, presumably in the air.

CIRCLE THE CAMP

Floyd and Nordahl followed the car in Pederson’s coupe, around the section, taking note of the numbers. They then returned to camp, and shortly afterwards heard a shot to the north, where someone had shot into the campfire, kicking up dust and ashes. The Ole Anderson car circled around, came past the Gary camp again and fired another volley of three shots. The car then went on towards Canby, turned around and returned. The men in the meantime had assembled outside.

On the third return of the car three more shots were fired. One sprayed the side of the tent, leaving plain holes. Another must have struck the clubs held by pickets over their heads, as both Ferguson and Forland said they felt the force of the shot.

KILLED INSTANTLY

A third shot struck Pederson full in the chest, killing him instantly, and he fell outside the tent in the shallow ditch. Nordahl Pederson, who was farming with his parents would have been 27 years old Oct. 23. The coroners jury returned a verdict of guilty on a charge of “unjustifiable homicide” against Ole Anderson and his son, for the murder of Pederson.

The murder of Pederson is the direct result of the anti-picketing campaign which has been carried out by the business men of Canby and other towns. Picketing was continued after the businessmen of Canby had refused to support the strike movement, by the state and county leaders. Some sections of the county report nearly a hundred per cent enrollment for the movement.

No action, however, was taken by the officials to carry the picketing decision of the meeting into effect.

Sixty farmers joined the Valley County, Montana Farmers Holiday Association at the meeting held in Glasgow on Tuesday, Oct. 4. It was decided to wait on the question of picketing until orders had been received from National headquarters.

BUSINESSMEN FIGHT PICKETING

Picketing of Watford City, North Dakota elevators stopped last week after the subject had been debated at a mass meeting on October 1. The attack on the picketing came from the ranks of the business men, who said that they were in sympathy with the Holiday movement but said that Watford City should not be picketed as long as other cities were not picketed in the county. This excuse has been used by business men all thru the northwest to stop picketing. They “would be for picketing if it were general,” but this is their way of strike-breaking.

At a meeting of the Farmers Holiday group in Dale township, in Burke county, N.D., on Monday evening, Oct. 3, every farmer present declared himself ready to go out and picket the roads if necessary, to prevent produce banned by the strike order from going to market.

Twenty-six townships in Bottineau county, North Dakota, have been organized in the Holiday Movement.

FHA LEADER FOR OLSON

A Douglas county, Minn., unit of the Farmers Holiday Association was organized at a meeting in Alexandria, on Saturday, Oct. 1. According to the state Holiday Association this is the 73d county in Minnesota to be organized. The main speaker at the meeting was Hemming S. Nelson, former representative in the legislature from Kandiyohi county, and vice president of the state Holiday Association. Nelson used the opportunity to put across a speech for Governor Olson, Farmer-Labor faker. Nelson praised Olson for the fake stand he took at the Sioux City governors’ conference where absolutely nothing for the farmers was accomplished.

Five hundred farmers met in Michigan, North Dakota on Oct. 4, to set up a Nelson County organization of the Farmers Holiday Association. John Simpson, president of the National Farmers Union, spoke at the meeting, talking as usual against ‘violence.’ At Pekin, N.D., on the same day 500 farmers and business men met at a meeting where Del Willis got a “dollar wheat” organization formed.

Producer’s News was a radical rural voice that became a Communist publication in the late 1920s. First published in Plentywood, Montana in Sheridan County, one of the few places to elect Communists in the 1920s. as the organ of the Montana Non-Partisan League beginning in 1918, took a left turn and passed into the hands of Communist editor Charley Taylor and then the Montana Farmer-Labor Party in 1924. In the late 1920s the paper became the voice of the United Farmers League before becoming the organ of the Communist-dominated Farm Holiday Association in 1935, ending its nearly twenty year run in 1937.

PDF of original issue: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85053305/1932-10-14/ed-1/seq-1/