Equity Convention were told, it is said, to "go home and slop the hogs."

On reviewing the history of this event the conduct of Mr. Loftus seems, at first, to be inexplicable. Why, it might be asked, did he not show an interest in the investigation of the board of control? Why did he allow Mr. Greeley to discourage state-owned elevators when he might have been able from the first to secure a favorable report? The flimsy excuse that was afterwards put forward, that Mr. Loftus did not know what Mr. Greeley was saying, it seems, is untenable. If Mr. Loftus was so desirous of securing a state-owned terminal elevator for St. Paul which the Equity Cooperative Exchange could use, why did he crystallize sentiment against the project by calling the roll and assuring for himself in advance, an unfavorable vote? He certainly was enough of a student of human nature to know the effects of such a course. Again, why did he himself not go to Bismarck to lobby for the bill instead of sending Mr. Greeley who had at first committed himself against it?

These questions, it seems, can only be answered in one way and that is, Mr. Loftus did not want a state-owned terminal elevator anywhere. He was a member of the American Society of Equity which taught that cooperation, to be successful, must stay out of politics and that politicians cannot run any enterprise, to say nothing of a cooperative enterprise, successfully. Why, then, it might be asked, did he stump the State for something he did not want? If we study the activities of Mr. Loftus we see that at no time previous to the general election of 1914 did he or any of those papers favoring his cause support either the terminal elevator amendment or seek to pledge any candidate for the legislature to support a terminal elevator bill. However, when the elections were over and those interests opposing terminal elevators had concentrated upon opposition to this bill, he appeared, and goading the legislature to fight, posed, as was his custom, before the people of the State, as a martyr to their cause and the cause of better terminal facilities with this object in view, it seems, that when the farmers saw their legislators acting, as they

thought, at the command of the grain trust and the chamber of commerce they would determine that they would fight the grain interests in their own element by subscribing for stock in the Equity Cooperative Terminal Elevator, to which the business men of St. Paul had subscribed $30,000.00 and for which an elevator site had been donated on the river front. We must agree that Mr. Loftus knew the farmer better than the farmer knew himself, and therefore, playing upon his fighting disposition, turned it to his own uses. It is needless to add that the stock subscription campaign was successful, and that from that time forward it was the North Dakota farmer who financed the Equity Cooperative Exchange.

In this brief summary of the history of this period we have noted separately the activities of the different forces acting within the State. We have seen that the great agitation which culminated in the defeat of the terminal elevator bill in the 1915 session of the North Dakota Legislature was founded upon two factors, first, what has been previously pointed out, the ignorance of the farmer concerning the function of the marketing machinery which had grown up with the increased specialization in the production of farm products, and his resulting distrust of those functionaries; second, the ambition of certain cities to succeed to the control of the grain trade.

The latter, then, playing upon the former, which had been multiplied many times both by the action of the law of diminishing returns to wheat farming and the capitalization of the land, due both to its increasing scarcity and the demand for larger farms, had led first to the successful application of the cooperative idea to local country marketing and then to the demand for state-owned terminal elevators, and when this did not materialize, to the financing, and later the construction, of a true cooperative terminal elevator at St. Paul.

These were the net results of the period. Mountains of rancour and ill-feeling had been raised and as yet only a small and extremely delicate cooperative terminal organization had appeared. However, in sowing the wind to secure subscriptions for his terminal elevator Mr. Loftus had left it to North

Dakota to reap the whirlwind of a far more dangerous movement than even the boards of trade and the grain trade in general had ever conceived the Equity Cooperative Exchange to have been. We refer to the Non-Partisan League and its brood of state-owned and politician-controlled marketing agencies.

We cannot close, however, without pointing to the fact that from the early days of the grain trade until the close of this period this periodic agitation had changed the farmers' methods of marketing grain from one of individual and blind barter at local country points to association marketing on the terminal through commission men, the beginning of association marketing on the terminal by salaried officials of an association of farmers called the Equity Cooperative Exchange. We can agree with the Cooperative Farmer and Manager when it said:

The old saying that there is good in everything is proving true in this case. The evolution which has taken place within the last few years in the marketing of grain, the transition from the old methods of handling it by the line-house companies to the plan of marketing it direct by farmer grain dealers themselves through their own local companies has caused a demand for knowledge on the part of the farmer grain dealers. Formerly it did not make much difference what they were told, thought or believed because they did not come into contact with active business in the marketing of their grain. Now, however, it is different. They have taken, in a large measure, active interest in the marketing of their grain and necessarily demand full knowledge.54

This interest in the marketing of their products was a direct result of the period of agitation which had changed North Dakota from a State having practically no cooperative elevators to one containing the largest number of such elevators of any State in the country.55

54 The Cooperative Manager and Farmer, Sept. 1914, p. 33. 55 Appendix VI.

CHAPTER IV

THE NON-PARTISAN LEAGUE

By far the most spectacular, and to the chronicler of current history the most important, event in the checkered history of the commonwealth of North Dakota has been the sudden rise of the Non-Partisan League. Its almost unheralded appearance, its definite program and its positive assertion of the value of its remedies caused no little confusion among those forces against which it was directed and on the other hand no little rejoicing on the part of the producer. To the farmer the remedies the League proposed were infallible. In them he seemed to have discovered the elixir for agrarian discontent, and not being able to enjoy his discovery alone he must, like the Republicans of France, proclaim his formula to all similarly afflicted producers.

This formula, which the farmers of North Dakota accepted with such enthusiasm, was not new. Neither were the means by which the formula was to be applied in any way novel. The formula was the doctrine of state ownership, and the means by which its proponents hoped to be given the power to apply it was the control of the balance of power in the dominant political party.

Loftus, to whom all credit is due for the preparing of the State for this next step of the agrarian classes, as we have noted, had opposed the movement for state ownership of terminal elevators. But he had hoped that from the destruction of that movement might be born a greater and more speedy movement towards the consolidation of the local cooperative associations into a genuine farmers' marketing agency which would make use of the Equity Cooperative Exchange. In this hope he was to be disappointed, even though he had used the agitation in 1915 to sell sufficient stock for a small terminal in St. Paul. Other men more crafty, though possibly not as far-sighted as he, took advantage of the agitation he

had begun and adopting his tactics, and appropriating his grievances, went out to lead the farmers in an organized crusade against special privilege as embodied not only in the chamber of commerce but in all those industries popularly known as trusts and termed "Big Biz" by the leaders of this movement.

Mr. Loftus, in his campaigns both for business and a terminal elevator, had often spoken of a non-partisan political party which ought to be formed by the farmers for the purpose of enabling them to hold the balance of power not only in the legislature but in the electorate as well. For three years, however, this idea seems to have been put forward only as a threat, and as such was probably used during the Equity convention at Bismarck in February 1915. However, the activities of Loftus and his farmer delegates were being closely watched by a few of those unfortunates, who because of their failure to convince, were now merely lookers-on at the activities of the legislature in which they had at one time hoped to participate.

Among this class was one A. C. Townley, a plunger in fax and a bankrupt farmer, who had for some time made his living by soliciting membership fees for the Socialist party. Townley, who became the leader of this movement, at heart was a salesman. He grasped at once the connection between Socialism and this plan of the state ownership of terminal elevator facilities. He was naturally aware of the fact that for some years past there had been constant agitation to induce the State to enter other fields of private business such as rural credit and hail insurance. Combining at once his ability as a salesman and his knowledge of the trend of opinion among the farmers he was able to persuade a large part of the Socialist organization in the State to aid him in the realization of his plans. He did this by advancing a program that would at once satisfy them in their demands for a state monopoly of the dominant industries and also appeal to the farmers to get even with that band of para