NONP ARTISAN LEAGUE! BEGINNINGS I5 1 



tion adjourned, some of the Equity leaders decided to remain in Bismarck 

 until the elevator issue had been decided. 



Among the speakers at an Equity rally held the night before the elevator 

 issue came to a final vote was George S. Loftus, the pugnacious sales 

 manager of the Equity Cooperative Exchange and a seasoned campaigner 

 against the organized grain trade. Whether Loftus labored under the pains 

 of an illness that shortly proved fatal or whether he had become unduly 

 embittered because of the unfavorable report of the board of control is un- 

 known, but the effects of his talk were generally conceded to be detri- 

 mental to the Equity cause. 8 Like Senator La Follette, whom he admired, 

 Loftus called the roll of the legislature and in vicious and abusive language 

 denounced those who he suspected would vote against the measure. A 

 number of legislators were in the audience, and his acts unquestionably 

 compelled some wavering members to vote against the measure. 9 It was 

 killed in the lower house by a vote of 64 to 40 on the grounds that the 

 state was not in a financial position to support the project. 10 Some Equity 

 followers predicted that they would return two years hence, but the exec- 

 utive committee of the Equity Cooperative Exchange, meeting in Fargo 

 shortly thereafter, voted to proceed with plans to finance an elevator to 

 be owned by Equity farmers, relying on the city of St. Paul for the dona- 

 tion of a site. 11 



Other farm leaders, however, did not acquiesce in the decision of the 

 legislature. The report was that the resentment of the farmers had been 

 growing, stimulated by such accounts as the one shortly circulated to the 

 effect that in the course of the debate over the elevator bill, Treadwell 

 Twitchell, a leading opponent of the measure, had angrily told the farm- 

 ers to "Go home and slop the hogs!" 12 Twitchell and his associates de- 



8. James E. Boyle, "The Agrarian Movement in the Northwest," American 

 Economic Review, VIII (September, 1918), p. 513. 



9. William Langer, The Nonpartisan League (Mandan, N. Dak., 1920), pp. 13-14. 

 See Eismarc\ Tribune, February 14, 1915, for excerpts from North Dakota news- 

 papers denouncing the activities of Loftus prior to the vote on the elevator bill. 

 See also the Co-operative Manager and Farmer (Minneapolis), IV (March, 1915), 

 pp. 29-33, f r hostile accounts of Equity activities. 



10. Pioneer Press, February 21, 1915. 

 n. Ibid., February 22, 1915. 



12. Gaston, The Nonpartisan League, p. 43; Bruce, N on-Partisan League, p. 59; 

 Charles Edward Russell, The Story of the Nonpartisan League (New York, 1920), 



