AMERICAN SOCIETY OF EQUITY I4 1 



the rapid growth of the Montana Equity from a membership of 200 in 

 1914 to 6,000 in 1916. By 1917 the Montana Equity News claimed 12,000 

 subscribers, 60,000 readers, and an Equity membership of about i5,ooo. G9 



The complaints of the Montana farmers were similar to those of their 

 neighbors in Canada, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. They had also watched 

 with interest the campaigns of the Canadian growers and those of the 

 Equity Cooperative Exchange. Many of the newly arrived settlers had 

 belonged to the Equity Society in the older states to the east or to the co- 

 operative organizations in Canada to the north. Oddly enough, the Mon- 

 tanans seemed to display a greater interest in the Canadian movement 

 than they did in the exchange. 70 



Besides protesting against the unfavorable wheat market, Montana 

 farmers also registered complaints against the high cost of farm supplies 

 and consumer goods and the dominating influence of the mining corpora- 

 tions in the state government. To fight against these conditions Equity 

 promoted the establishment of cooperative marketing and purchasing as- 

 sociations, consumer stores, and cooperative credit and insurance com- 

 panies; it agitated for lower railroad rates and a reformed tax system, 

 and finally it undertook a persistent courtship of organized labor. But 

 most of this activity was in vain. Successive crop failures, factionalism, de- 

 clining wheat prices, and the postwar reaction eventually placed the Mon- 

 tana Equity in its grave. By 1918 it had yielded its leadership as a farm 

 order to the Nonpartisan League. 71 



During and immediately following World War I, the activities of the 

 Wisconsin Society of Equity and the Equity Cooperative Exchange were 

 apparently headed for newer and loftier heights, but this appearance was 



69. Montana Equity News, February 23, March 22, July 19, 1917; Great Falls 

 Tribune, June 15, 1917. 



70. Patton, Grain Growers' Cooperation in Western Canada, pp. 114-17; Montana 

 Equity News, February 22, November 15, 1917; April 25, 1918; J. M. Mehl, Co- 

 operative Grain Marketing, U. S. Dept. Agri., Bulletin 937 (Washington, 1921), 

 pp. 1-5. 



71. Montana Equity News, August 24, 1916; January 4, n, March i, 1917; Non- 

 partisan Leader (Fargo, N. Dak.), January 28, 1916, p. 4; Great Falls Tribune, 

 January 10, February 18, May 16, 1917; Louis Levine, The Taxation of Mines in 

 Montana (New York, 1919), pp. 10-14; The Nation, CVII (November 2, 1918), 

 pp. 507-8; Montana Equity News, May 24, August 16, 1917; May 2, 1918; August 

 10, 1919. 



