The Minneapolis Teamster Strikes of 1934 still capture the imagination of radicals around the world. The militancy of the strikes and the strategic and tactical brilliance of its leaders — the Dunne brothers, Carl Skoglund, and Farrell Dobbs — have cemented them as models for socialist leadership.
Skoglund, the oldest and most experienced of the trio, stands out in particular. Dubbed “the General” for his strategic acumen, Skoglund mentored many of the people who exercised decisive leadership in the 1934 strikes, as well as the over-the-road organizing campaigns involving hundred of thousands of drivers that followed.
Skoglund wasn’t born a general — he became one by fighting in the socialist movements of two countries: Sweden and the United States. Yet it was his youthful years in Sweden that formatively shaped his lifelong revolutionary politics.
Carl Skoglund was born Karl Andersson in 1884 in the tiny Swedish village of Rönningen near Bengtsfors. Even by the standards of nineteenth-century country life, Rönningen was a primitive and isolated village, bearing a striking resemblance to Grimm’s Fairy Tales. His village, little more than a homestead, lacked newspapers, a railroad station, or even roads — only walking paths cut through the thick forests.
Skoglund changed his name after getting his first job at a saw mill and encountering a grumpy payroll clerk, who declared: “We have too many Anderssons and Johnsons. Pick another name.” He chose Skoglund.
Growing up in Rönningen, Skoglund’s daily life revolved around his immediate family. His father, Johannes Andersson, was a jack of all trades: simultaneously a carpenter, blacksmith, and gun-maker. His mother, Ida Gustafson, spent most of the day cooking over a huge fireplace that also heated the family home. He had four brothers and two sisters.
Amenities were sparse. “We never had any pottery,” Skoglund recalled in an interview in the 1950s. “He [Skoglund’s father] made all of the kitchen utensils out of wood, on an improvised wood lathe that he made himself.” At night the family would gather around the fireplace, where Skoglund’s mother and father would tell stories about the demons that inhabited the forest.
Life, however, was about to change forever. “My generation became the break between the old semi-feudal life and the new industrial life,” Skoglund said.
Industrial moguls like munitions manufacturer Alfred Nobel led the way in reshaping Swedish society. Nobel — the man who invented dynamite and created the peace prize in his name — not only built large munitions factories but operated large sawmills. And lumber companies bought up the forests from large landowners.
At the age of twelve, Skoglund left school and, following in his older brother Richard’s footsteps, found work at a new pulp mill in nearby Skåpafors owned by the Ekman family. Like the Nobels, the Ekmans spearheaded the rise of Swedish industrial capitalism, supplying timber for a paper- and lumber-hungry world. While employed at the pulp mill Skoglund became a socialist and active trade unionist.