traders in wheat were the recipients of great amounts of unearned profits led the farmers to organize in the summer of 1891 a wheat forwarding agency patterned after the North Dakota Millers Association. This organization was called the Farmers' Protective Association and maintained an agent at Duluth to take care of the grain of its members.

The Association was moderately successful the first year and, having had its membership greatly increased the following year because of the unfavorable reports concerning the grain trade, it decided to sell stock for the purpose of raising funds to erect a terminal elevator at West Superior. Suspecting, however, that the sympathies of their Duluth agent were with the grain dealers, the Association made the mistake of removing him and selecting a more radical and less cautious representative for the following year who unfortunately led the organization to bankruptcy during the financial crisis of 1893.26

The farmers looked upon the failure of the Protective Association as a warning to keep out of a business they did not understand. For years afterwards, there was not the slightest inclination to go into the terminal elevator business. Even when the West Superior grain dealers were permitted by the Wisconsin Legislature in 1895 to organize a board of trade and weigh and inspect grain and had arranged in 1896 with the North Dakota Board of Railroad Commissioners to conform with North Dakota standards, the interest of the North Dakota farmer was so slight and his shipments so small that the West Superior grain dealers were forced, in a very short time, to reinstate Minnesota inspection so as to obtain even that amount of grain that normally came to them.

The following quotation from a letter of J. J. Atkinson, Secretary of the Superior Board of Trade, in replying to an inquiry of the North Dakota Railroad Commissioners, explains the failure of the Superior enterprise:

The strongest feature in influencing our people to discontinue the

26 See The Northwestern Miller, July 28, 1893, vol. xxxvi, p. 141; The Cooperative Manager and Farmer, May 1913, p. 40.

inspection was our inability to secure sufficient wheat to keep our mills in operation. We had expected to be able to do so without any trouble but were sadly disappointed as the average receipts were less than half the amount required for that purpose, and this in face of the fact that our daily sales averaged over half a cent per bushel higher than could be obtained in Duluth for the same wheat.

There were several opposing elements to contend against, the principle ones being the Great Northern Railroad and the elevator interests who combined with the Duluth Board of Trade to defeat us, but notwithstanding all this we would have won had the shippers given us the support and patronage we were entitled to receive and expected.27

In reviewing the history of this period one is impressed, first, with the apparently absolute control of the upper house of the legislature by the corporations; second, with the efforts of the producers to establish competitive local terminal markets by means of legislative enactment or producers' associations. The purpose of the first is obvious but the motives leading up to the demand for a competitive local market are less evident.

Of recent years, the agrarian producer has been looked upon as a radical, often as a radical of the most rabid sort. Since the days of the Grange any change in conditions sought by farmers has been fought most bitterly and even ruthlessly. The farmer has been accused of all the "isms" existing and conjurable. The peculiar feature of the whole movement is that a great number of them actually believed that they were radicals, that they were advocating something new and therefore, possibly, something that ought to be resisted. They expected resistance and if that resistance had not put in its appearance one can be reasonably certain that the farmer would have looked upon his new acquisitions as something untrustworthy.

Whether or not the farmer has been advocating something new may perhaps depend upon the point of view, but it is certain that in combatting combinations and trusts he has not been striving for a better means of maintaining the competitive system but has been demanding and working for the return of the "good old days" when competition brought

27 Report of the Railroad Commissioners, 1896, p. 101 ff.

cheap goods, goods that were sold at a loss to maintain a business that soon went down in the wreckage.28

It is reasonably certain that the farmer did not understand the situation. Power as applied to transportation had broadened the field not only for the producer of raw materials but also for industry in general. In demanding the return of a purely competitive market the agrarian interests were asking for far more than they really understood their request contained. They would bring about competition not in one locality, but a competition of localities, a competition that would bring back the cut-throat days before consolidation. The theory was that this was a desirable condition but actually it seems to have more swiftly brought about the ultimate consolidation of similar interests.

Why, then, it might be asked, did the farmer desire the return of conditions it would be impossible to maintain? Aside from the possibility of more favorable prices the motive seems to lie in the nature of the farmer himself. As we have previously mentioned, the farmer who desires a change in the methods of marketing has been called a progressive and even a radical of every type and description, but if there is any shade of difference between the reactionary and conservative we are inclined to class him among the reactionaries. Since the very nature of his occupation and the fact that he

" An interesting quotation from the Weekly Northwestern Miller seems to describe fully the trend of thought both among the manufacturers and the general public. "One can hardly pick up a paper

that does not contain some reference to a millers' combine to force up the price of flour. Heaven knows the miller has no desire for a trust, yet he wants to save himself from destruction, and if he can only do so by combining with his competitor to limit his production, he certainly has this inalienable right. . . We have grown weary of trying to explain the flour situation to those who care only to hear one side of the question, and have but arrived at the conclusion that it is all a waste of time. Wheat is wheat and flour is flour and millers have got to look after their own interests for the dear public will most certainly not do it for them. Therefore, mere gossip and idle hue and cry should have no influence on the trade whatever. Millers should go ahead and tend to their own business. Such words as trust, combine, and monopoly are better than failure, ruin and bankruptcy anyhow" (The Weekly Northwestern Miller, Jan. 11, 1889, vol. xxvii, No. 2).

is entirely dependent upon it for a living and the few luxuries he may be able to obtain make him such. He knows only of the methods of agriculture practiced by his predecessors. Since he has learned by example he is loath to attempt methods that have come to his notice through books or travelling theorizers.29 His living depends upon his process of tilling the soil, he feels that he hazards too much to attempt something new. The risk of the weather is great enough. Therefore, the farmer has not only to be persuaded that a new process is good, he must be shown.80

His disinclination to change seems to be transmitted from his work to his business transactions. Here his reactionary tendencies seem to make themselves more evident. He knows only a single method. His few transactions and their immense importance in his life seem to force him to look with suspicion on all things with which he is not entirely familiar.31

29 See F. P. Stockbridge, "The North Dakota Man Crop," in The World's Work, vol. xxv, p. 88, Nov., 1912; The World's Work, p. 600. 30 This has been made amply evident in connection with the bollweevil campaigns in the South. See O. M. Kile, The Farm Bureau Movement.

31 This fact in itself accounts for the demand in 1890 that only terminal markets be permitted to buy grain according to grade. The farmer did not understand the process of ascertaining grades and therefore mistrusted it, though the mechanical process was far more accurate than the guesswork of a greedy buyer. See The North Dakota House Journal, 1891, p. 177. The following letter is typical of the ideas of the time.

"Dear Sir: I gave Senator Engle the form of a bill for the purpose of righting a grievous wrong imposed upon the farmers. That is this elevator monopoly establishing grades for buying wheat at stations throughout the State. That is the main point to be broken up. For these reasons so long as they are allowed to buy by grades so long will it be a monopoly. . . . Now then in the first place we want a law for the railroad that they will lease to any party suitable grounds on their side-tracks at a nominal rental (it was the usual custom to charge a dollar a year per elevator site), for the purpose of erecting a warehouse or elevator or in lieu thereof shall build a side-track to buildings built for that purpose on land adjoining their right of way, if such is passed they will lease their ground. "Then it shall be unlawful for any persons, firms or corporations to establish grades for the buying of wheat or other grains at any grain buying stations in this State. The part compelling railroads to lease grounds will bring the elevators to their milk, but we want both; and the result will be that they will have to send men to buy grain that are judges of what they buy, they can't buy by machin

A further element contributary to the reactionary tendency of the North Dakota farmers was the fact that a great majority of them were foreigners, who because of numerous unprofitable experiences or limited funds were led to distrust anything they did not fully understand. Of the 182,719 people residing in the State in 1890, 45.5 per cent. were foreign born and 79.1 per cent. were foreign born or of foreign extraction. This percentage decreased slightly in 1900, due to immigration from the eastern States, but even then in a population of 319,146, 35.3 per cent. were foreign born and 77.2 per cent. were either foreign born or born of foreign born parents. When it is understood that 92 per cent. of the total population of the State get their living directly from the farm, and the rest depend upon some business that is directly connected with it, it is not surprising that the proposed remedial legislation was so popular, nor is it strange that the legislation demanded should endeavor to restore previous conditions.

The farmer did not understand the intricate marketing system that had been built up to forward his produce to the consumer. Neither did the papers and literature he read explain the system to him. Those he met in the course of his few trips to town, to church, or to school, knew nothing of this system. Should he have endeavored to study the phenomena his meagre education was a heavy handicap. Therefore, because the marketing system was strange it was something to be feared, something to be controlled most rigorously if not done away with entirely.

Further, the farmer did not realize that competition was only one phase in the development of an industry, that its law was the survival of the fittest and that the policy of the survivors was to be the exploitation of a monopoly. He was

ery.... It is necessary that there be grades at terminal points, as Duluth and Minneapolis, but no points inland. . . . I have bought wheat for twenty years and know about all the crooks and turns in it.

Very truly yours,