NORTH DAKOTA DEMANDS REFORMS

...Townley is a young man of imagination and great natural ability...

...If the Nonpartisan league shall avoid these pitfalls, there is good reason to believe that it will go on from strength to strength...

...by the establishment of such public utilities they are opening the way to agricultural prosperity...

...Something more than State-owned grain elevators, it was perceived, was ueeded in order to eliminate the middleman...

...but they have framed their bills with care, scrutinized them closely in committee, and freed them, so far as possible, from obscurities and "jokers...

...Paul, and other cities, mindful of the fees which they collect, could be prevented from sending into North Dakota at harvest time five laborers for every one that is required, less would be heard of the allleged "alliance" between the I. W. W. and the Nonpartisan League...

...the grain elevators were in outside hands, and there was discrimination in railway rates...

...Those who could not pay have had their mortgages foreclosed, and tenant farming has increased...

...So long as the ballot law of the State remains unchanged, the League must continue to lack the legal status of a party, for the reason that the law forbids the printing upon the official ballot of a nonpartisan ticket...

...He said: Kill the six big league bills, and you could stay here sixty days and pass sixty bills a day, and you would be remembered only as the biggest bunch of fools who ever got under one roof in the history of the world...

...The league is an inner circle, a wheel within a wheel, a power behind the throne, ruling—and with an iron hand—through the agency of party organizations for whose political acts, as organizations, in general it disclaims responsibilty and professes entire indifference...

...and the elimination of the middleman, even if that were accomplished, was only one of the steps in the large proces...

...Then the farmers organized...

...Organization of Farmers EVEN more suggestive than the future of the league as a party is the theory of the organization of society for political purposes which the league embodies...

...The fact that the Nonpartisan League has grievances against the Republican and Democratic parties is no sufficient reason for eschewing parties as such...

...What is more, they are also quite aware that the present program of the league is only a begins ning, and that its scope must widen as experience or opportunity points the way...

...The prices of the things which the North Dakota farmer had to sell were determined at Minneapolis or St...

...With no initial capital except his own energy and a borrowed Ford, he started a movement, which, in four years, has built up a fighting organization controlling the political machinery of one state, and reaching out into several others, and the members swear by their leader as if he combined all admirable qualities of Napoleon Bonaparte and Abraham Lincoln...

...Program is Widened MEANWHILE the program of reform had widened...

...They admit that the present Legislature, confronted with the task of breaking much new ground, will very possibly make mistakes which will have to be corrected later...

...The platform on which members of the league were elected last November calls for Stale-owned terminal elevators, flour mills, and cold storage plants, with an industrial commission to supervise their operation...

...A scries of constitutional amendments to enable the State to undertake these various public services was approved by overwhelming popular vote at the last election...

...No one who is not a bona fide farmer can be a regular member of it...

...Each man to his job...

...But if you forget all the other bills and pass those six, this North Dakota legislature will be known for five hundred years as the greatest gathering of men since the Revolutionary War...

...Speculation arbitrarily depressed the prices of the only products which the farmer had to sell, and as arbitrarily raised the prices of everything that he was obliged to buy...

...If the employment agencies in Minneapolis, St...

...That is to say, it is a class organization, and the fact that some eighty-three per cent of the people of North Dakota are farmers does not change its essential class character...

...Half of the Senators, held over, however, and the Senate was able to defeat the plans of the league...

...Town-ley as a leader of farmers, on the ground that he failed in his two wild plunges into farming, seem rather beside the mark...

...In so far as the league stands for state ownership or control of an increasing list of public utilities, it is unquestionably socialistic, but beyond state socialism of that sort its members do not appear to go...

...The casual observer, glancing over the roster of the Senate and House, would very likely be surprised to notice that the name of the league does not appear after any name, but that the members are listed in the customary fashion as Republicans or Democrats...

...Believe me, if y you will do that, I will agree, with the aid of organizers and speakers who will come here and help, to carry that message, in the next six or eight years, to a majority of the people in the United States, and the day will come when this programme will be the programme of the United States...

...and there is little interest in North Dakota in the Socialist party...

...The newspaper attacks on the league, both within and without the state, are violent in the extreme, while the mouthings of what league members aptly call "the kept press" are often so outrageous IT WAS at this psychological moment, after a lot of smouldering discontent, and after the legislators had thrown them down, that A. C. Townley, of Beach, N. D., appeared on the scene...

...The fact that the Soviet idea is here applied to a commonwealth rather than to a municipality does not alter the general nature of the scheme...

...a State building association empowered to erect dwellings for farmers and industrial workers, payment to be made on an amortization plan...

...I want you to come out of yourselves, to remember that to put over this people's industrial programme is the biggest thing you will ever have an opportunity to do...

...WILL the league, for the moment strongly in the ascendent, endure...

...It invites charges of secret influence, improper manipulation, and clique control, and weakens respect for party tenets and obligation...

...the amendments have since been ratified by the Legislature...

...For the I. W. W., too, I was unable to discover either sympathy or regard, notwithstanding the fact that the farmers of North Dakota are mainly dependent for the labor needed to harvest their crops upon the unorganized, migratory workers—the fertile source of supply for the I. W. W.—who regularly move across the prairie states from south to north, and who must be dealt with if the harvest is to be gathered at all...

...and in the fall it elected all but one of the State officers, a large majority of the House, and eighteen out of twenty-five members of the Senate...

...Big Interests In Revolt By WILLIAM MACDONALD (In The Nation) WHATEVER personal aspirations may have entered into its inception or its political development, the Nonpartisan league is distinctly the product of economic grievances...

...There has been no copying of a Russian model, of course, for the league is older than the Russian revolution: what has happened is that the farmers of the state, turned away from parties which did not serve them, have united to further the interests of their class, and, being numerically predominant, the organization controls the State...

...The bitter criticism of Mr...

...Neither Governor Frazier nor the members of the Legislature with whom I talked appeared to be deceived as to the nature of the work they were doing...

...There are men who make things for the pleasure of making them, and men whose pleasure it is to direct the making of things, and both are needed in a complex world...

...I doubt if such a view would be generally regarded., outside of the league itself, as sound...

...a State bank with a capital of $2,000,000, in which all State funds will be deposited, and which, besides doing the usual banking business, will make first-mortgage farm loans at a low rate...

...In the June primary of 1916 the league polled more votes than all the other parties together...

...and the large part of the Legislation called for is already on the statute book...

...The record of threats, intimidation, mob rule, and personal violence toward members of the league in Minnesota, South Dakota, Montana, and other states is painful reading...

...as to suggest a deliberate purpose to falsify and deceive...

...The men who have given their support to it are men who have been face to face with certain hard facts of existence, from whose oppressive grip the prevailing political and economic system appeared to offer no escape...

...The League is exclusively an organization of farmers...

...Instead of state ownership of land the league seeks to increase the number of landholders and to enhance their profits...

...The danger is that the league, prospering under persecution, may harden its heart and narrow its vision, that the revolt against exploitation may degenerate into a revolt against every form of wealth or power except its own, and that pride in its own accomplishment may blind it to the need of the education without which no community may hope to govern itself well...

...As outlined by Governor Frazier, the situation was in substance this: Most of the farms of North Dakota are mortgaged, the amount of such mortgages aggregating more than $27,000,000...

...As soon as the bulk of the farm products had been sold, prices rose, and with them the prices of flour, pork, ham and beef...

...Most of the members of the league with whom I discussed the subject seemed entirely satisfied with this arrangement, and one or two thought it quite ideal...

...They do not in the least anticipate that the establishment of one or two State-owned elevators or a successful flour mill will solve all the agrarian ills of North Dakota, but they do believe that TOWNLEY pleaded one evening with his followers, and begged them not to waste time on foolish little bills...

...but the legislature rejected the proposal...

...By securing the acceptance of its programme by the organized labor forces of the state, it has united in common political action two occupational groups, but without interfering with the party cleavages which existed is each group...

...The present position of the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota, wielding political control and claiming credit for political success without at the same time assuming party responsibility, seems at best only a temporary device, and as a permanent arrangement quite impossible...

...In order to emancipate the farmer and give him control of his own business, it was decided to begin the elimination of the middleman...

...Even if it fails the fault will not be wholly its own, for the blame will have to be shared by the bankers, merchants, travelling salesmen, and editors of the Northwest who, with perverse disregard of truth and common honesty, are doing their best to destroy one of the most hopeful experiments in democratic government which the present generation has seen...

...and the farmer was helpless...

...In the election of 1914, eighty-three per cent of the vote was cast in support of a proposition for the establishment of State-owned terminal elevators...

...A prominent member of the House said frankly that the league was not interested in political parties, that a member might stand one year as a Democrat and the next year a Republican so far as the league was concerned, and the only thing which the league cared for was the success of its principles...

...It seems inevitable that the league, particularly now that it has existence in thirteen states, and seems des-ined to become increasingly a national political force, should abandon its policy of indirection and assume the form as well as the substance of national political power...

...A few days ago a prominent lawyer of Minne-apolis, in an address before the National Conference of State Manufacturers' associations at St...

...It stands ready to cooperate with any other group of workers—bankers, lawyers, teachers, tradesmen—that may choose to organize for political action and that is willing to accept the league's programme...

...They understood perfectly well that they were putting into effect a social revolution, and that it is none the less a revolution because it proceeds by due process of law...

...State hail insurance, a matter of peculiar importance in the prairie States, workmen's compensation, an improved initiative and referendum, and an attack upon speculative landhold-ing through the exemption of improvements from taxation...

...Then our work will be done...

...Instead, the league is a political organization outside of and wholly dissociated from any party or parties, yet at the same time formulating a platform, pledging to its support the candidates of any or every party who are willing to accept it, and supporting those candidates at the polls with such impartiality that the controlling majority which the league now holds in the Senate and House is in each case made up both of Republicans and Democrats...

...Will the League Endure...

...Work Within Old Parties ASTUDY of the Nonpartisan league as it is at present functioning in the one State which it controls suggests, on the other hand, some interesting reflections...

...This explanation, of course, is that the league is not in law a party, and can neither nominate candidates nor take part in elections...

...The next two years were spent in perfecting and extending the organization, with the result that in November, 1918, the league swept the State...

...Louis, launched a violent attack upon the league, the burden of the charge being that the programme of the league is socialistic...

...What North Dakota has, in other words, is the beginning of a Soviet government, in which bona fide representatives of the "toiling masses" unite in the direction of affairs, but without abandoning their party differences...

...Paul, at Duluth or Chicago...

...In order to pay the interest, which usually comes due in the fall, the farmers have been compelled to sell their wheat or live stock in the fall, soon after the harvest, when the prices were the lowest...

...of agrarian emancipation...