underestimated the value of their services. However, it seems that the farmer had failed to analyze the situation correctly and in thus failing he had overlooked the falling productivity of his soil and the increasing cost of production. Being by nature a wheat cropper rather than a farmer, a gambler rather than a producer, he fancied that the value of his crops changed only slightly and therefore any diminution in his returns was due to the greater share appropriated by those who handled his crops. He had failed to see the true cause of his misfortunes and therefore, desiring a tangible object upon which to fasten the blame for his condition, he sought that ancient and most convenient person, the middleman. Then listening to the positive assertions of those eager for power, he was led to attempt to obtain by the power of the State that which was denied him at the market.

This tendency to look to the State for aid, as we have pointed out above, had had a gradual growth and was bound up in the source of the people as well as in the action of former administrations. So great had the faith in the power of the State become and so pressing was the need for relief that the ill-advised and poorly informed farmer gladly welcomed those who professed to be able to use it for his benefit.

That the establishment of a three thousand barrel mill and a terminal elevator of one and one-half million bushels capacity would in any way ameliorate conditions in a State producing over one hundred and fifty million bushels of grain cannot be claimed. The size of the plant precludes such a possibility. Yet the establishment of these institutions and the fighting of the battle for their establishment has aided immeasurably the movement towards better marketing.

During this period of agitation the farmers' elevator movement had gone on apace. The number of farmers' elevator associations had increased from 446 in 1915 to 621 in 1921.39 This meant that practically every farmer in the State was within easy hauling distance of one of these associations. The effect of such conditions upon the country price of grain can only be appreciated when one is cognizant of the early 39 See Appendix VI.

conditions in the State. Now the terminal price was the country price plus freight and a small handling charge. The farmer was getting the full value of his grain, dockage was being paid for and many of the irregularities of the early grain trade had been eliminated. All this had come about because of the intense interest of the farmer in his market and this interest had been aroused by the Non-Partisan League. Thus the movement for better marketing had been furthered both by a desire for economic justice as well as a desire to get even so thoroughly aroused in the minds of the farmers by the Leaders of the Non-Partisan League.

In addition to influencing the rise of a large number of cooperative associations the agitation of the League had even a more far-reaching effect. Through the immense amount of literature it distributed, through its continual presentation of marketing questions for discussion and finally through its attempt to enact a definite program the League, although it disseminated its ideas in a manner repugnant to American standards, brought about a most thorough discussion of existing conditions. It brought home to the producer with far more emphasis than Mr. Loftus had in any way been able to do that the control of the terminals by farmer representatives was the means by which the producer might not only hope to effect economies in distribution but perhaps, in the near future fix the price of his produce. Thus the farmer was finally led to the conclusion that the control of his terminal markets would be a good thing.

This rapid dissemination of the idea of farmer control of terminal markets was taken advantage of by the Equity Cooperative Exchange to change its methods from that of soliciting business from farmers' elevators to the direct representation of cooperative units. The capital stock of the firm was increased to $10,000,000.00 in 1918 and a system of line elevators erected. These line elevators were the property of the exchange but were controlled in local affairs by those farmers in the locality where the elevator was erected and who had subscribed for stock in the system. The plan

was similar to the Canadian system with one difference. Here the farmers bought enough stock to enable the Exchange to build the elevator, while in Canada the cooperative organization through government aid advanced in the form of a loan as much as eighty-five per cent. of the cost of the elevator. Like the Canadian cooperatives great pains were taken to impress the membership that they were subscribing to stock in the entire system and not for a single elevator. This arrangement had the advantage of permitting local affairs to be taken care of by a local board, while terminal affairs could be directed by those well versed in marketing problems.40

This movement for direct representation of the farmer upon the terminal markets has, since the repudiation of the NonPartisan League, grown in popularity to such an extent that the Minnesota electorate has been finally won over to the justice of their demands. The great grain exchanges of that State were opened to cooperative associations through legislative enactment in March 1921, and six months later the National Legislature empowered the Secretary of Agriculture through the enactment of the Grain Futures Act to open the exchanges of the whole nation to cooperative associations."1

We have seen that the Non-Partisan League rose out of the bitterness of a campaign into which the Equity Cooperative Exchange, through the zeal of its patrons, had been unwillingly drawn. We have seen, too, that the League, whose inception was due to a demand for better marketing conditions, turned to the organized forces of Socialism in the State, and by means of these forces played upon the ignorance of the farmer concerning actual conditions and the value of the service of his marketing system, and thus led him to believe that a system of state ownership of marketing facilities would result in the eradication of his grievances.

The League, however, upon securing the endorsement of

40 Theo. D. Hammett, Cooperation in Marketing Kansas Wheat, p. 32 ff.; L. D. H. Weld, Cooperative Marketing of Grain in Western Canada, in University of Minnesota Bulletin, p. 104 ff.

41 Minnesota Session Laws, 1921, Chap. xcix, Sec. 2; 67th Cong., 1st Sess., Stat. L., Chap. viii, Sec. 5e.

its program by a large majority, failed in the attempt to establish the promised system, first and primarily because the movement was political and was therefore forced to draw its appointees from that number who possessed influence rather than ability. In the second place, the League was forced to appeal to class prejudices in order to keep up interest in its proposals. This had the effect of not only making the movement a class movement but aroused those forces of terror so fatal in the predominance of a single class. Finally the League failed, because it sought to make of a state government, whose correct functioning depends entirely upon the existence of at least two sometimes diametrically opposed parties, a business machine whose success depends upon the unanimous confidence of its company in the ability of the directing officers.

In its failure however, the League seems to have accomplished its end. It has proven without a doubt that state ownership, because of the great temptations it affords to favor political factions, could not exist when it must compete with privately owned and efficiently conducted organizations. This fact and the fact that the farmer had been led out of his narrow local surroundings and taught to look beyond his small sphere of activity to his terminal market for the solution of some of those problems, the solution of which he was led to believe would better his condition, are the great contributions of the Non-Partisan League to the Agrarian Movement. If these facts have been well learned, and it seems that they have, the cooperative movement can go on its way no longer hampered by the socialistic idea that in state ownership lies the solution of the marketing problem.42

48

A peculiar result of the failure of this movement has been the espousal of the cooperative plan by the Socialists as a means by which state Socialism can at this time be forwarded most advantageously.

9

CHAPTER V

GENERAL TENDENCIES

It must be acknowledged before attempting to express any judgment respecting the trend of the Agrarian Movement that it is not at all certain that 'North Dakota will in the future derive the great bulk of her income from the sale of a single product. Yet even though she should it is not even certain that that product will be wheat. With the increasing capitalization of the land the farmers of this State, like their predecessors to the east, have turned their attention to other items which in the early days were disregarded either because of the lack of a market, poor transportation facilities or the natural tendency of the farmer neither to change his ways nor to saddle himself with greater burdens for a small increase in returns.

In fact changes are already taking place. The increasing capitalization of the land does not seem to be due alone to the reluctance of the early settlers to part with that for which they have undergone innumerable hardships, but it seems to be due to the slow but steady infiltration of those who see or think they see in the North Dakota plains a chance to make greater gains by the application of more intensified farming, of farming as they knew it in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa and southern Minnesota. This change is marked by the steady northward movement of the corn belt, the great increase in the number of live stock and the consequent shrinkage of the percentage of cultivated land sown to wheat.1

One must not draw the conclusion that the farmers from the East and South found it easy to introduce other crops, notably corn. These men knew what profits were to be made from such cultivation, and therefore persevering in their

1 See Plate IV and Appendices II and III. For the northward movement of the corn belt, see Alfred Atkinson and M. L. Wilson, "Corn in Montana," Montana Agricultural College Experiment Station Bulletin No. 107.