Elmer Lee Andersen (June 17, 1909 – November 15, 2004) was an American businessman, philanthropist, and politician who built a successful business career with the H. B. Fuller Company. Andersen was most notably the 30th governor of Minnesota. A self-described progressive Republican, he was a well-regarded politician who passed many social and environmental regulations during his time as governor.
In one of the closest elections in the history of Minnesota and the United States, Andersen lost the 1962 Minnesota gubernatorial election by 91 votes to Karl Rolvaag.
Andersen was born in Chicago. His mother, Jennie Olivia Johnson (1877–1925), was the daughter of a seaman from Luleå, Sweden, who came to America as a young man and worked in the timber business. Elmer's father, Arne Kjelsberg Andersen (1866–1926), was an immigrant from Solør, Norway, who had settled in Chicago and became a streetcar motorman, operating on the Halsted streetcar line out of the Ashland Avenue car barns. "My earliest memory", Andersen wrote in his memoirs, "is of riding with him on the streetcar and being permitted to clang the bell as we came to street crossings." His parents separated when he was six years old. Andersen never understood why his parents separated and never questioned them. He and his mother and infant sister, Caroline, moved to Muskegon, Michigan. His two older brothers, Arnold and Marvin, arrived in Muskegon later. The Andersens had only sporadic contact with their father after the separation. At age nine, Elmer contracted a mild form of polio but, through exercise, regained his strength.
Andersen's brothers worked for E. H. Sheldon and Company in Muskegon, a manufacturer of specialty school furniture. Too young to work in the factory, Elmer's first job was helping his mother, who took in washing. From there he moved on to selling newspapers, vegetables, specialty products, candy bars and soft drinks. He also carried travelers' bags from the boat docks to the train station. "I love selling", he wrote. "I love the interchange with people. A good salesman gains influence on another person's mind. That makes selling quite a serious undertaking." At age 14, Andersen joined his brothers at Sheldon and Company. He also wrote short essays on birds that were published in the Muskegon Chronicle. "The thrill I had seeing those columns in print was the start of an abiding attraction to the newspaper business."
Andersen's mother was devoted to church work and ensured that her children were raised in the Lutheran church; Andersen was confirmed at Our Savior's Lutheran Church in Muskegon. In 1925, his mother contracted a cold that developed into pneumonia. She died at home on March 3, 1925, with Andersen at her bedside. Within a year, his father also died, of a heart attack.
Andersen graduated from high school in 1926 and became a member of the first class of the newly established Muskegon Junior College. Upon graduating two years later, he received the first diploma awarded by the school. While in college, he held a sales job with J. J. Fagan and Company, a real estate firm, and worked as a stringer for the Muskegon Chronicle, while starting a newspaper for the junior college. Not long after, he and his brothers started a company, Muskegon Realty, which also sold casualty insurance for the Mercury Insurance Company. "I matured fast in those years. I was selling homes and farms. I was selling insurance. I was editing a college newspaper and stringing for a daily newspaper. I was studying and learning about things I had never known existed. It was almost an incredible time."
Andersen graduated from junior college in 1928. For the next year, he worked as a salesman for the Sheldon Company, working out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. "A year in Minneapolis left me convinced that I wanted something more. I wanted to enroll at the University of Minnesota. I usually approach a new venture with specific objectives. In aiming for the University of Minnesota, I had three: I wanted to get a degree for reasons of job protection. I did not want somebody to push ahead of me because he had a degree and I did not. Another object was to meet a woman whom I might marry. I was beginning to long for a home life and a family. I was lonely. I discovered that being a traveling salesman, on the road all the time, was no way to meet the kind of women I wanted to meet. My third objective was to have a good time! I had been a fairly successful salesman and quite frugal with my earnings....So, having fun, finding a girl, getting a degree—those were my objectives. If I was able to learn anything along the way, that would be purely incidental!" Andersen graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1931, with a degree in business administration.
By 1934, Andersen was growing dissatisfied with life as a traveling salesman. He heard through an associate that the H. B. Fuller Company in St. Paul, Minnesota, a manufacturer of school paste, was looking for someone to hire in sales promotion. Andersen discussed the position with the owner and president, Harvey B. Fuller Jr., and joined the company on October 8, 1934. Andersen managed sales for the H.B. Fuller Company over the next seven years until purchasing a controlling interest in the company in 1941 and taking over as president. Under his leadership, the firm became an early model of corporate responsibility, recognized for offering generous benefits to employees, their spouses, and retirees. Andersen's corporate philosophy was built around four priorities in a definite order. The highest priority was service to the customer. "Anything the customer wanted should be seen as an opportunity for us to provide it. Number two was that the company should exist deliberately for the benefit of the people associated in it. I never liked the word employee. It intimated a difference in class within a plant. We always used the word associate. Fuller's third priority was to make money. To survive, you have to make money. To grow, you need money. To conduct research and develop new products, you must have money. The need for money can be desperate at times. But corporations must put the quest for money in its proper place. Our philosophy did not leave out service to the larger community. We put it in fourth place, behind service to customers, our associates, and the bottom line. Community service cannot be paramount to a business, but it ought not to be omitted, as it too often is. Business must concern itself with the larger society—for reasons of self-interest if nothing else."
Under Andersen's guidance, Fuller grew from a small plant to an international Fortune 500 company. Its expansion strategy baffled the competition. Competitors thought the company was struggling to keep all the new plants afloat, but the opposite was true. Other leaders in the adhesives industry operated in New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco. "They had huge plants and big established investments. They could not start a new plant. What would they do with their big old plant? By comparison, we were popping around the country and setting up small plants in lively little markets. We kept our real estate costs down. We did not have large freight charges to pass on to the customer. National Adhesives, the biggest company in the industry, was very focused on making money. They maintained their prices at a high level, even when their share of the market dropped, in order to make more money. That was a blessing for little companies like Fuller."
In 1968, Fuller became a publicly traded company. By 1970, it had become an adhesives industry leader, with 27 plants and offices in the U.S. and ten in foreign countries. The goal Andersen had set decades before of doubling its sales volume every five years was still being met. In 1970, Fuller reached about $48 million in sales. Andersen retired as president and chief executive officer in 1974, at age 65, turning the company over to his eldest son, Tony.
In 1953, 12 years after becoming president of the H. B. Fuller Company, Andersen entered the dairy business, buying a farm held by his wife's family on Deer Lake, near St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. It was the start of 35 years in the dairy business, with about 200 head of cattle. The herd was slowly converted to registered Holsteins. In 1984, Deer Lake Farm received the National Holstein Association's Progressive Breeder Award. Additional land was acquired in the 1950s, and environmental restoration projects were undertaken on the expanded farm. After Andersen moved out of the dairy business in 1988, 80 acres of land surrounding one of the ponds were placed in a land preserve to honor the memories of his wife's parents.