Waldemar Ager

Waldemar Ager (March 23, 1869 – August 1, 1941) was a Norwegian-American newspaperman and author.

Waldemar Theodor Ager was born at Frederikstad, in Østfold, Norway. He grew up nearby in Gressvik, just across the river Glomma. He was the son of Martinius Mathisen Ager (1834–1894) and Marie Fredrikke Mathea Johnsdatter Stillaugsen (1835–1913). Today, the street he lived on in Gressvik is named Waldemar Agers Vei in honor and in memory of Ager. In 1883, Ager's father emigrated to America by himself to start a tailoring shop. In 1885, Waldemar Ager and his family went to join his father in Chicago.

Not long after his arrival in America, Ager and got his start in the newspaper business by becoming involved with Norden, Chicago's largest-circulation Norwegian-language newspaper. He never held any high position at that newspaper, but it got him his start in the business. When Ager first arrived in America, he encountered a vibrant, thriving Norwegian-American community. Use of the Norwegian language was widespread. Hundreds of small-circulation Norwegian-language newspapers and dozens of large circulation Norwegian-language newspapers were in operation from Michigan to the Dakotas and everywhere Norwegian immigrants were living. At the time, the Norwegian-American community was constantly being reinforced by new immigrants from Norway.

Norwegian-American cultural and linguistic retention were at their height from the 1890s-1910s. Over a million Americans spoke Norwegian as their primary language in those three decades. It is estimated that over 3,000 Lutheran churches in the Upper Midwest used Norwegian as their sole language of worship. It is to the retention of this Norwegian-American culture that Waldemar Ager dedicated much of the rest of his life. He also championed many liberal political causes including women's suffrage, various farmer and labor movements, and prohibition.

Prohibition was very popular in the Norwegian-American community and Ager became one of the leaders of the movement. Ager personally helped form hundreds of total abstinence societies and Good Templar lodges across the Upper Midwest. Ager's prohibitionist beliefs and his fledgling newspaper career crossed paths for the first time when he became involved with a Norwegian temperance lodge in Chicago in the late 1880s. The lodge had a small-circulation monthly newspaper, and Ager began writing articles for it. Ager would remain a teetotaler his entire life, before, during, and after the decade-long period of Prohibition in the United States.

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