The Top

(The late Gov. Johnson rose from deepest poverty to highest office in State. News item.)

“There’s room enough on top,” they say,

And it is proven every day.

There’s room enough for you and I

To stand beside the famed and high.

Don’t stop midway the winding stair

And in complaining tones declare

It’s useless, you are going to stop;

Keep on, there’s room enough on top.

‘Tis not at all a new idea,

‘Tis known by all from far and near,

But people in the daily grind,

Sometimes forget that they may find

The goal for which they daily strive

Beside them in the human hive;

Forget in office, store or shop

It’s possible to reach the top.

Look to the top, take heart once more

From Minnesota’s Governor;

What more of proof that man may climb

Is wanted than his rise sublime?

What greater proof that you and I

May stand beside the famed and high?

Take heart, look up, don’t ever stop,

There’s room enough for you on top.

Sept. 21, ‘09

John Albert Johnson (July 28, 1861 – September 21, 1909) was an American politician. He served in the Minnesota State Senate from January 1897 to January 1901. He was the16th Governor of Minnesota from January 4, 1905 until his death on September 21, 1909. He was a Democrat.

He was the first governor born in Minnesota to serve in office. He was only the second non-Republican governor in the previous 50 years and third since statehood. Lieutenant Governor Adolph Olson Eberhart became Governor upon the death of Governor Johnson.

1908 Johnson
For
President Ribbon

Even if he had not been the first governor born in Minnesota, the first to serve a full term in the present state capitol, and the first to die in office, Johnson would still be remembered as one of the state's most courageous and charismatic leaders. He also was the first Minnesota governor to bask, fleetingly, in the national spotlight when he sought the 1908 Democratic presidential nomination but lost to William Jennings Bryan.

The eldest child of an impoverished Swedish family abandoned by an alcoholic father, Johnson left school at 13 to support his mother and siblings. Local Democrats, impressed with the enterprising young store clerk, asked him to join their party and edit the strongly Democratic St. Peter Herald. His journalistic success attracted statewide attention and fostered political aspirations.

He failed in early campaigns for state office from his heavily Republican home county but finally was elected to the state senate in 1898, indicating his growing bipartisan appeal. Elected governor three times—in 1904, 1906, and 1908—Johnson's ability to reason and work with legislators of both parties resulted in such reform legislation as reorganization of the state's insurance department to the benefit of policyholders, reduction of railroad passenger and freight rates, and removal of constitutional restraints on the legislature's power to tax.

Johnson began his third term with reservations. His health was precarious, and he wanted to pursue a promising sideline as a public orator. When he died suddenly following surgery at 48, the state's citizens—whom he had served and charmed—were grief-stricken.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Albert_Johnson