AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



tion's industries. It is the quintessence of jackassable stupidity to ignore 

 any of the intermediate stages in the development of the social prog- 

 ress." " 4 Experience soon pointed out that the Socialist program was more 

 popular than the party itself, and quite appropriately so; the Farmers' Al- 

 liance had agitated for some of the same measures a couple of decades 

 earlier. 



In time the Socialists provided for an organization department within 

 their party which made it possible for non-Socialists to join without hav- 

 ing to sign "the red card of terrible reputation." The establishment of 

 the department proved that the party itself did not appeal to the farmer 

 but that its platform did. Socialist propaganda emphasized, among other 

 things, that the farmer as an individual had certain duties to perform 

 if he was to better himself; he had to learn to manage efficiently, to work 

 diligently, to initiate state-owned mills and elevators, to launch coopera- 

 tive associations, to practice diversified farming, and to use every other 

 available opportunity to free himself from the "dominant" economic forces 

 that ruled him. 25 The Socialist argument, in other words, placed some of 

 the responsibility for the plight of the farmer on the farmer himself. This 

 argument did not augur well for the welfare of the party. The farmer 

 who attended a Socialist meeting and then went home to his tumble- 

 down house, his uneducated children, his ragged, overworked wife, his 

 weedy fields, and his rusty and outmoded machinery and then applied 

 the doctrines he had heard would not have a comfortable feeling, for he 

 could not escape from some measure of responsibility for his condition. 26 



24. Iconoclast, June 25, 1915. 



25. Henry P. Richardson, "Scientific Organizing and the Farmer," International 

 Socialist Review, XV (March, 1915), pp. 554-58, discusses Socialist organization 

 problems among North Dakota farmers. The North Dakota Socialists used auto- 

 mobiles to contact farmers before the Nonpartisan League was organized. 



26. In 1912 the Socialist party received 7.9 per cent of the state's total vote. It was 

 surpassed by Oklahoma, Nevada, Montana, Washington, California, Idaho, Oregon, 

 Florida, Arizona, Ohio, Wisconsin, Texas, Minnesota, and Utah in the order listed. 

 The total Socialist vote in 1912 was 897,011, which was 5.9 per cent of the total 

 national vote. In the presidential election of 1916, North Dakota was surpassed in 

 Socialist strength by Oklahoma, Nevada, Florida, Wisconsin, Idaho, Washington, 

 Arizona, Montana, and Texas. The American Labor Yearboo^, 1917-18 (New 

 York, 1918), pp. 336-37. In 1914 the membership of the Socialist party in Montana 

 was 1,589; in North Dakota, 1,644; an d in Minnesota, 4,965. In 1915 it was, re- 

 spectively, 1,057 an d I > IO 7 an d 3>54 2 - Ibid., 1916, pp. 95-96. One source says: "Ameri- 



