for while in 1890 the acreage sown to wheat was 89.3 per cent. of all small grains sown, in 1900 it had decreased to 75.2 per cent. and in 1910 to 71.7 per cent., and we find, on the other hand, that the acreage sown to oats, barley, corn and rye, which are used primarily to clean the soil, had increased materially.

Bearing in mind then: first, that the State of North Dakota was developed subsequent to the location of the industry for which she produced a great part of the raw materials, and that those industries together with the market which they created lie outside the jurisdiction of her govern ment; second, that the farmer was the recipient of diminishing profits due to the added expense of conditioning his land, the diminishing acre yield of his wheat crop and the increasing capitalization of his land; and finally, that the farmer had increased both the amount of his land and the number of his horses, and that these additions seemed to fail to realize for him an increase in his net profits, we will pass to the consderation of those political factors which we have mentioned above.

We have previously divided the period which we are considering into two parts, the first of which we pleased to call a period of quiet or dormancy as compared with the second which we termed a period of agitation. We have also endeavored to show that the economic forces which were acting to bring about a period of discontent had their origin in the previous period and only gradually made themselves felt. It is therefore natural that the political factors influencing the agrarian movement should come in that period in which a prevailing feeling of discontent could be taken advantage of in order to convince the producers that there was a situation to be remedied.

Even previous to the first period and also during it there were signs of unrest. As early as the fall of 1891 we have noticed that the Board of Railroad Commissioners had investigated the grain trade and had suggested certain remedies, the most conspicuous of which had been that the farmers cooper

ate to market their own products and also that the Federal Government take over the grading and inspection of grain. These proposals came during the early agrarian agitation and, because interest at that time centered in local country marketing, seem to have been lost sight of a few years later, although the legislature endorsed the idea in 1893 and even went so far as to vote money for a state-owned terminal elevator."

We saw also that the Superior Board of Trade had endeavored to make use of the natural differences and suspicions between the farmer and the middleman in order to bring the grain trade to West Superior but had failed because of the lack of interest shown by the North Dakota shippers. From that time (1896) to 1899 we find the shippers and buyers of grain at West Superior actively engaged in the undermining of the confidence of the wheat growers in the Duluth Board of Trade.10 To such an extent had rumors of huge discrepancies at Duluth, both in weights and grades, gained credence that in 1899 the legislatures both of Minnesota and North Dakota decided to investigate the grain business. The Minnesota resolution carrying the appointment of the investigating committee and embodying all the grievances, both real and imaginary, known to the grain trade was, in substance as follows:

Whereas it has been freely charged that the department of grain inspection has become corrupt; that the inspection has been in the

Minnesota also enacted such a law and actually set about building a terminal elevator at Duluth, but construction was stopped by an injunction, and although the district court of Ramsey County held the law constitutional the State Supreme Court reversed the decision on the ground that the State had the right to regulate the grain trade but could not go into the business (Rippe vs. Becker, 56 Minn. 100).

10 The 21st Annual Report of the Minnesota Chief Inspector of Grain, Aug. 31, 1906. Although this report was written chiefly for the purpose of "whitewashing "the Minnesota inspection system, it

contains valuable information of the activities at the head of the lakes at this time. Read in connection with the speech of G. B. Hudnall, delivered before the North Dakota Bankers' Association, it throws considerable light on the motives of the West Superior grain dealers (North Dakota Bankers' Association Convention Notes, 1906).