The Story Of The Nonpartisan League

"One night in October, 1919, and I think it was the 19th of the month, five farmers dined at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. It was a good enough place, rather noted for moderate prices and a varied menu, which was why the farmers chose it. They ordered, with design, a dinner of staple viands, and, as it came to the table, measured or weighed or closely estimated each dish; so much of bread, so much of potatoes, so much of butter, so much of meat, so much of sugar, and thus to the end.

"With paper and pencil they recorded each amount and, at current prices at the farm, the net sum the producer received for each dish they consumed. When all was done, they called for their bill. It was $11.95, exclusive of gratuities.

"They made a total of all the items they had entered as they went along, showing what the producer had netted from this. It was 84 cents."

That’s how Charles E. Russell begins his book “The Story Of The Nonpartisan League,” published in 1920 when the League was still in control of North Dakota Government. I’m not going to give you a history of the Nonpartisan League here. There are a number of books on the NPL, the most important of which, I think, is Robert Morlan’s Political Prairie Fire, published in 1955, and reissued in 1985 with an excellent introduction by my old friend, the late Larry Remele. Another old friend, Ardell Tharaldson, thinks it should be required reading for graduation from a North Dakota high school. I think he’s right.

But I’m quoting today from Russell’s book because it has just been reprinted, along with a couple others of his, by a company called Nabu Press, and so you can buy it from Amazon for 25 bucks. Or you can buy the original 1920 hardcover on ABE.com for about the same price. I have a good copy of the 1920 first edition and that’s what I’m quoting from.

Russell, incidentally, is a cool guy. He was a socialist, muckraking journalist in the last part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th. He joined the Socialist Party of America in 1908, he was one of 5 co-founders of the NAACP in 1909, he ran unsuccessfully for governor and senator from New York and mayor of New York City, he wrote at various times for daily newspapers in Minneapolis, New York, Chicago and Detroit, and he wrote 15 books, one of which, “The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas” won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1927.

Much maligned by politicians for his style of journalism, he once wrote, in response, “The best way to abolish the muckraker is to abolish the muck.”

But I digress. Russell spent part of a year here, during the heyday of the League, and his book lays out the case of the farmers of North Dakota and what he called the Middle Northwest that led to the formation and success of the League. I want to share two more passages from the book for you, and then recommend you get it and read it. Because it is one of the best things ever written about North Dakota. The first is part of a speech given in 1917 by League President A.C. Townley in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“Let me try to make plainer still to you the reason for the injustice in our industrial life. This war (World War I) will cost America maybe thirty, forty billions of dollars. It is very difficult to raise so many billions of dollars. It entails tremendous sacrifices on us all, a sacrifice that we shall not shirk. Those billions will be spent by this government to win the war for Liberty and Democracy. Part of it will be spent for guns, part for ships, part of it for coal, clothing, shoes, leather. A part of it will be paid to those that are making millions of profit out of the war to-day.

“But a soldier boy cannot carry a gun unless there is bread in his stomach. A soldier boy cannot dig a trench unless he has a strong body made by bread.

“And some of those billions of dollars have to be spent to pay the farmers for the wheat to make the bread. Now we have been calling for government control of prices. And we got them all right. But in our clamor for government control we overlooked the better tool.

“We forgot, or neglected to see, that the representatives of the profiteers were too large a part of our government, and so we got the government control too largely on behalf of the profiteers. They are to-day influencing this government in too large a measure. Else they would not fix a price on coal twice what it was before the war; else they would not be so long reducing the price of bread after they have reduced the price of wheat.”

Townley and other Leaguers were relentless with that message in 1917 and 1918, and in the 1918 election, the League won complete control of North Dakota government, including the newly-created Industrial Commission to oversee the beginning of the about-to-be created state industries (Governor, Attorney General and Commissioner of Agriculture and Labor), and both houses of the North Dakota Legislature. And in the 1919 Legislature, they passed their program into law. And later that year, opponents of the League secured a referendum election, at which seven of the measures passed by that Legislature were put to the test of a popular vote. Here is Russell’s analysis of why the issues to be voted on were being referred.

"1. The Bank of North Dakota threatened the huge profits of money-lenders, in which the entire banking system of the Northwest, including the overshadowing financial institutions of Minneapolis and St. Paul, had shared for a generation. These financial institutions were directly connected with the powerful banks, insurance and trust companies of Wall Street, whose influence on national affairs has been solemnly attested by a committee of Congress.

"2. The railroad rate bill directly menaced the most powerful railroad companies of the United States; companies accustomed for many years to unquestioned political domination in the Northwest, companies also directly linked with the great packing-house combinations, the greatest banks in Chicago and New York, and the Interests that were once called the arbiters of national destiny.

"3. The proposal that the state should own its elevators struck directly at the great and profitable business of handling grain, erected through so many years around the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce. This naturally involved an assault upon the profits and prosperity of the Minneapolis banks, linked as before said to the greatest banks in the country; linked also to the great and not always apparent speculative Interests in the grain business that centered in the Chicago Board of Trade, involved the Armours and other packing Interests, and was linked once more to railroads, banks and insurance companies.

"4. The proposal that the state should build and operate flour mills was an ominous blow at the great flour-milling Interests of Minneapolis, the greatest of their kind, whose mills rolled forth a daily total of eighty thousand barrels of flour, and fed an appreciable part of the world.

"5. The Hail Insurance Act menaced the business and profits of the insurance companies linked with the banks that were linked with the railroads and linked with the controlling groups of Wall Street.

"6. The suggestion that the state might print and furnish its own school text-books was a menace to the business and profits of the school-book trust, linked as the other Interests and in the same way to the controlling groups.

"7. The laws instituting the State Income Tax, State Inheritance Tax, Work-men’s Compensation for Injuries, the strict inspection of mines, although not without precedent, undoubtedly aroused each its own element of opposition that was drawn now to the general assault. For it was felt in all these menaced quarters that if the League’s innovations should be sustained in North Dakota they would be adopted within a short time in other states, and no man might foresee how far the reform might go no what profound changes it might achieve."

Well. A state-owned bank. A state-owned mill and elevator. Worker's compensation. State hail insurance. You think we have big ideas today? We haven’t done anything to match this lineup since the day they were passed in 1919. Suppose they all went away with the demise of the League? Hah! Look around. State hail insurance disappeared in the 1930's when the federal government thought it was such a good idea they created federal hail insurance. You know the rest of the story.

As for Russell’s analysis? Remember, this was written in 1920, and he—and the League—believed these conspiracies and threats were real. And they probably were.

In the special election on June 26, 1919, the League prevailed on all seven measures.

Russell’s book closes with a recount of the great Scandinavian American Bank scandal, which ended in another League victory—this time in court. It was published before Lynn Frazier, William Lemke and John Hagan were re-elected in 1920 as governor, attorney general and commissioner of agriculture and labor, and before they were successfully recalled from office the following year.

There were four books written about the League in 1920, one by Herbert Gaston, who was editor of the League’s newspaper, the Leader; one by Oliver Thomason, about whom I know nothing; and one by William Langer himself. Gaston’s and Langer’s books have also been reprinted in paperback by Nabu Press. I can’t find a copy of Thomason’s anywhere. Ardell Tharaldson is the only person I now who has a Langer original. I haven’t read it. Gaston’s and Russell’s are fun to read because they were written in real time, during the League heyday. Morlan’s is still, however, the definitive history of the League from 1915-1921.

Surely the Nonpartisan League was one of the best ideas ever hatched in North Dakota. Oh, and by the way, someone has started a Facebook page for the League. Imagine that.