Harold Knutson

Harold Knutson

Harold Knutson (born October 20, 1880 in Skien , Norway , †  August 21, 1953 in Wadena , Minnesota ) was an American politician . Between 1917 and 1949 he represented the state of Minnesota in the US House of Representatives .

Career

In 1886, Harold Knutson came to the United States with his parents. The family first settled in Chicago and then moved to a farm in Sherburne County , Minnesota. There he attended public schools. Then he completed an apprenticeship as a printer. In the following years he published daily newspapers in various locations in Minnesota. Politically, Knutson was a member of the Republican Party . In 1902, 1904 and 1910 he was a delegate to their regional party conventions in Minnesota. In 1940 he also attended the Republican National Convention . Knutson served as president of the Northern Minnesota Newspaper Publishers Association for 1910 and 1911.

In the 1916 congressional election, Knutson was elected to the United States House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the sixth constituency of Minnesota , where he succeeded Charles A. Lindbergh on March 4, 1917 . After 15 re-elections, he was able to complete a total of 16 consecutive terms in Congress by January 3, 1949 . During this time both the First and the Second World War fell , as well as the beginning of the Cold War . In addition, four amendments to the constitution were passed during this period .

In Congress Knutson was from 1919 to 1923 Whip the Republican majority faction. From 1921 to 1931 he was chairman of the pension committee. During his tenure in the House of Representatives, he served on the Indian Committee, the Committee on Island Affairs, the Committee on Ways and Means, and the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation . In the summer of 1944, he charged the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt , with forgetting his dog Fala while traveling in the Aleutian Islands and sent a destroyer to collect the dog at the taxpayer's expense. He thus provided the occasion for Roosevelt's "Fala speech" on September 23, 1944, which in turn inspired Richard Nixon to make his "Checkers speech" eight years later.

In 1948 he lost to Fred Marshall in the election . After his time in the House of Representatives, Harold Knutson returned to his journalistic duties. Until his death in 1953 he published the newspaper "Wadena Pioneer Journal".

Web links

• Harold Knutson in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Helena Pycior: The public and private lives of "first dogs" . In: Dorothee Brantz (Ed.): Beastly Natures: Animals, Humans, and the Study of History , University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, VA, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8139-2995-8 , pp. 176–203, here pp. 194–196.