NONPARTISAN LEAGUE: BEGINNINGS 169 



League leaders had hopes of encouraging a migration of farmers to 

 North Dakota, largely because of the legislative program that they ex- 

 pected to place in operation, but the opposition, which was regaining its 

 balance, was doing everything to prevent the realization of such expecta- 

 tions. 09 Arguments used both in defending and in attacking the League 

 were immersed in personal animus, lost tempers, and heated words. The 

 cry of socialism was, by far, the most popular charge against the organiza- 

 tion, the attack being led by Jerry Bacon, an implacable foe of the League, 

 and his Grand Forfc Herald. 70 Local bankers in all probability were 

 encouraged by the large financial institutions upon which they were 

 dependent to resist the League. Opposition leaders feared that the success 

 of the League program would jeopardize property values and the credit 

 structure of the state. They claimed that North Dakota mortgages and 

 other securities that previously had been easy to sell would become a drug 

 on the market. 71 The Minneapolis Journal asserted: "Capital won't in- 

 vest," "men with money are afraid," "confidence is shaken. . . ," 72 There 

 was no question that past profits and privileges were imperiled. Local 

 merchants, largely through the pressure of wholesalers, jobbers, and 

 manufacturers and a personal fear for their business future, also attacked 

 the League violently. Business interests in general saw in the League 

 program the possible creation of machinery for the manufacturing of 

 state-owned products in state-owned mills, packing houses, and factories 

 and the eventual establishment of state-owned stores that threatened their 

 very existence. 73 



Besides lining up the business interests of North Dakota against the 

 League, the opposition assailed the political and economic theories of the 

 movement. At times it claimed that it was not opposed to the League 



69. Non-partisan Leader, November 23, 1916, p. 16; November 30, 1916, p. 16. 



70. Ibid., February 22, 1917, p. 4. 



71. Bacon, A Warning to the Farmers, p. 7. 



72. Quoted in Non-partisan Leader, July 27, 1916, p. n. 



73. Teigen, The Nonpartisan League, pp. 44-45. The Non-partisan Leader, Febru- 

 ary 24, 1916, p. 6, said that the farmers and businessmen had many things in com- 

 mon and that their interests were identical. "But many business men have got them- 

 selves in bad with the farmer because in matters political, in matters relative to high 

 interest rates, railroad robbery and grain gambling, they have been only half- 

 heartedly with the farmer, if with him at all. Indeed, many of them align themselves 

 with the political tricksters, and the schemers who prey upon the farmer." 



