Forks Herald; Mr. J. D. Bacon, of Grand Forks; the Honorable Elmer E. Adams, of Fergus Falls, Minnesota; Mr. H. G. Teigen, Secretary of the National Non-Partisan League; Mr John G. McHugh, Secretary of the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce; Col. C. A. Lounsberry, founder of the Bismarck Tribune, North Dakota's first newspaper; and many others who have contributed valuable material and suggestions. P. R. F. UNIV. OF THE AGRARIAN MOVEMENT IN NORTH DAKOTA CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: A PRELIMINARY SURVEY The present agrarian unrest is not the result of one or two simple causes, nor can the agrarian situation be changed for the better by the application of a few simple remedies now and then proposed by well meaning but poorly informed politicians. The agrarian unrest is due to economic causes which had their origin, we might say, at the time the industrial revolution changed the manner of production of the manufactured article and brought about the gradual concentration of huge numbers of people in small areas. This concentration of the population, for the purpose of manufacturing, was counterbalanced by the expansion of the area cultivated by the producer of raw materials. The putting to the plow of the virgin lands of the Mississippi Valley, which began in the latter half of the eighteenth century and continued with increasing rapidity to its completion in the first decade of the twentieth, has been the great task accomplished by the producer of raw material in the United States. The immense amount of territory, the large holdings of each individual, the polyglot character of the population and the natural and financial difficulties to be overcome, made the problem of organization of both of markets and governments difficult. Nevertheless the task has been taken up in true American fashion, and using the means and machinery at hand, we find the immigrant and the Ameri 1 The last remunerative free agricultural land was that in northwestern North Dakota and Northeastern Montana and was taken up by homesteaders during the period 1906-1912. By remunerative free agricultural land we mean land that needs no other improvement than tilling to bring forth a crop. Lands that need irrigation would therefore not fall under this head. can-born working out, each to the best of his ability, that part of the task which he has assigned himself. In the development of this territory, stretching north from the Gulf of Mexico to the forty-ninth parallel and from the Atlantic coast to the Rocky Mountains, conditions, as far as the producer of raw materials was concerned, everywhere served to lead to the same results. It has seemed to matter little whether the farmer produced cotton, fruit, grain or cattle; he apparently was confronted with a single problem, that of marketing, which he has at one time or another attempted to solve. This problem has come to him from the early days, passed on from one generation to the next, and we can also say from one administration to another, to the present day. It is a problem, to the solution of which the greatest importance has always been and is now attached; for at times it has seemed as though the fate of an industry depended upon its happy outcome. Our task will be to follow the attempts to solve this problem among the wheat growers of the northwestern section of this territory, and in particular the attempts made by the farmers of North Dakota. Since wheat had been at one time or another raised successfully, and with profit, in all the northern sections of the United States, we find that by the time the frontiers had reached Iowa and southern Minnesota there had grown up in the central markets of the country special markets for that product. In fact, in 1859, when Minnesota became a State, Chicago had maintained the boast for over a decade that she was the largest primary wheat market in the world." 3 It has been a peculiar coincidence that agriculture throughout the entire United States has been forced to face and to solve the same problems of marketing. It is still more surprising that we find on examination of the attempts at solution, that everywhere practically the same difficulties have had to be overcome. See 0. M. Kile; The Farm Bureau Movement, p. 118; Address of Mr. J. R. Howard before the Chicago Convention, November 12, 1919. U. S. Trade Commission, Report on the Grain Trade, vol. ii, pp. 59-60; O. N. Refsell, The Farmers' Elevator Movement, pp. 872895, 969-992; Journal of Political Economy, vol. xxii, Nov.-Dec. 1914. Taylor, History of the Board of Trade, Chicago, vol. i. pp. 114, 115; American Elevator and Grain Trade, vol. xxxvi, p. 707; First |