Biography
Victor Nielsen was a United Farmers’ League activist in the Westby area on the North Dakota–Montana border. Farmers used a penny sale to protect his farm and equipment from foreclosure. A U.S. marshal arrested Nielsen and five other organizers on January 26, 1935, on a charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States. Judge Andrew Miller dismissed the defective indictment but required the defendants to remain under bond pending another grand jury session.
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. This issue spells Nielsen's surname Nelson; the shared farm, co-defendants and prosecution identify the same case, while the spelling difference remains explicit.
Robert F. Hall’s April 9, 1935 New Masses account describes Nielsen marrying in 1930, taking over his elderly parents’ farm and giving them a mortgage on their livestock and machinery. His wife died in summer 1933, leaving a small child. Hall dates the foreclosure penny sale to September 1933, whereas the February 1935 Daily Worker report already retained here says September 1934; this event-year conflict remains explicit. Hall reports that the original 400-dollar loan yielded only 300 dollars because the creditor required a 100-dollar stock purchase, and alleges that an inventory signed in 1932 was converted into a broader mortgage. These financial and fraud claims are attributed to Hall, not independent judicial findings. The six January 26 arrests plus Thorvald’s earlier arrest explain Hall’s seven-defendant count; the dismissed indictment and continuing bond do not prove final exoneration or an exact physical discharge. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1935/v15n02-apr-09-1935-NM.pdf#page=24.
