Political Prairie Fire: The Nonpartisan League, 1915-1922 pdf download

This is the first detailed, unbiased history of the Nonpartisan League. Thoroughly documented for the specialist, it is nevertheless equally interesting for the general reader. Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.

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Institutional Login. LOG IN. In this Book. Additional Information. Table of Contents. Cover Download Save contents. Preface pp. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Once elected in the primaries and placed as the Republican candidate on the state ballots in the fall, the candidates were virtually assured of victory in the November elections as there was no competition from the numerically inferior Democratic Party in the state while the incumbents had been removed from the ballot.

After all it was those entrenched incumbent politicians who in the past had consistently thwarted the efforts of farmers to obtain beneficial legislation from them. Paul and Duluth—the very people the NPL stood against. During that brief seven-year period the NPL seized the reins of government in North Dakota by electing NPL sponsored candidates to every major position in the state government. As a historian, the story of the NPL is exciting as a rare example of representative grass- roots government in action.

Radical was never in the vocabulary of a member of the NPL in describing themselves or their political program for reform in North Dakota. So where did that adjective come from?

It came from its enemies. One of the hallmarks of the struggle of the NPL to gain acceptance by the farmers was fulfilling its promise to face down the foes that they had identified as being the source of their troubles.

Locally, in the larger cities such as Fargo, Grand Forks, Minot, and Bismarck, as well as the hundreds of small farming towns and villages spread all across the state, those foes had been long accustomed to being the social and financial leaders and rulers within their respective communities or spheres of influence.

Governor, Attorney General and every other office that was up for election that year. Other states in the area took notice of the Non Partisan League. Townley taking advantage of ND Farmers circa Flush from its successes in the North Dakota elections, the NPL was not content to attack just the financial practices of its local antagonists, but using the power of its wildly successful newspaper was soon disseminating news stories attacking the methods and greed of the larger financial entities such as Chicago and Minneapolis grain market brokers, shippers, and banking houses.

The Minnesota companies such as Pillsbury, and Washburn Mills commonly operated smaller collusive satellite operations all over the Dakotas both North and South while the banking houses provided money to small North Dakota banks at six to eight percent interest while turning around and lending it to financially distressed farmers at twelve percent and higher.

The NPL lost the contest to seize the new moral high-ground of the war time patriotism. American banking houses such as J. Morgan, and Kuehn and Loeb had lent vast sums of money to the French and British while American munitions makers and manufactures alike had extended billions of dollars of credit to them.

To the farmers struggling to make a living on the northern plains of the United States, the war in Europe was a conflict that America should avoid being involved in at all costs. North Dakota in particular had developed a real disdain for the war that was raging in Europe, so much so that Governor Louis B.

Gronna, and Porter J. McCumber had consistently voted against any measure which widened US involvement in the war. Saskatchewan League leaders also made promises to the farmer, but as a political operation in an inimical context it could not deliver. In the first half of the twentieth century, the northern plains of North America was characterized by geographic integrity, a wheat monoculture economy, and similar settlement patterns and demographics.

This provided the transnational setting for the free flow of agrarian ideas and organizations. Social scientists have in the past few decades offered an effective methodological approach to examine and explain these aspects of organization and the ways in which social and political movements interacted with challengers over time.

This framework enumerates causal mechanisms that enable baselines for transnational comparisons and allow for explanations of differing outcomes. Over time the social movement organizes a sustained challenge to existing economic, social, and political authorities. First, actors must identify changing external opportunities, constraints, or threats. From this recognition, the movement can engage in contentious politics.

The movement actors recognize, understand, and agree to the forms of collective action—some based on historical experience, others recently learned or improvised—and, at a strategic moment or in response to a particular threat or opportunity, know how to utilize them.

These are repertoires of collective action, the catalog of available means. These networks provide a recruitment pool and offer an interlocking grid of groups and social conglomerations. Conversely, when identical movements fail to take advantage of existing social networks, the level of success is usually much lower.

Innovation occurs in forms of contention, and frames are created and altered. In Western Canada, by , organized farmers had created powerful and financially successful grain marketing and elevator cooperatives. The Saskatchewan Liberals also subsidized a cooperative elevator company which by owned elevators, including terminals. The federal government too was active on behalf of the wheat farmers: the government owned and operated a terminal elevator, and passed legislation regulating the grain trade.

Leaders of the GGGC traveled to North Dakota to assist Equity in its publicity and legal battles with the Chamber, and to provide guidance and support in the development of wheat cooperatives. In January , however, the legislature in North Dakota rejected the state terminal elevator. Thus an unresponsive political environment in North Dakota convinced the organized farmers that marketing co-ops would not suffice to address their problems.

They turned to a political solution. A natural leader and charismatic socialist, Arthur Townley, is most responsible for merging the Equity cooperative movement with an increasingly popular socialist program. These measures neutralized, NPL organizers argued, the combinations and monopolization of the grain trade. But afterwards, the League was able to shape grievances into a coherent platform that resonated strongly with farmers.

He pioneered the practice of accepting post-dated checks, most of which came due in October, after harvest. The money also went to the purchase of Ford automobiles for canvassing purposes, which Townley had used to great effect while working for the Socialist Party.

Townley also utilized another effective organizational technique, applied psychology, or, high-pressure salesmanship. Townley recognized that the direct primary offered the NPL an opportunity to influence the existing party structure.