Biography
Alfred Hjelm was a Swedish-born homesteader and United Farmers’ League activist in the Westby area on the North Dakota–Montana border. After farmers used a “penny sale” to prevent the foreclosure of Victor Nielsen’s farm, a U.S. marshal arrested Hjelm and five other organizers on January 26, 1935 for conspiracy to defraud the federal government. A federal judge dismissed the defective indictment but kept the defendants under bond pending possible reindictment.
The Daily Worker of February 7, 1935, page 4, in a February 6 Plentywood dispatch, names six defendants arrested by U.S. deputy marshals at Westby following a September 1934 penny sale attended by about six hundred farmers to prevent foreclosure on Victor Nelson's property. It identifies five Westby farmers and Simon Swanson as a Plentywood worker, and announces an appearance before Federal Judge Miller at Minot. The ILD defense sought a united front with the United Farmers' League, Farmers Holiday Association and farmer-labor and unemployed organizations in Divide and Williams counties. The article later says seven defendants despite naming six; no seventh person, new arrest, additional prison admission or actual release is inferred.
Robert F. Hall’s April 9, 1935 New Masses account names this defendant among the six arrested January 26 in the Westby penny-sale prosecution and separately identifies Thorvald Nielsen, arrested earlier and kept five days in Minot, as the seventh defendant. Hall dates the underlying sale September 1933; the February Daily Worker report already retained here says September 1934. This conflict remains explicit, without changing the arrest date. The account says the defective indictment was dismissed about a week before Hall wrote, with all seven held on bond for possible reindictment; this is not proof of final dismissal or an exact physical-release day. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1935/v15n02-apr-09-1935-NM.pdf#page=25.