NONP ARTISAN LEAGUE: BEGINNINGS 179 



vote of agriculture and labor was more evenly distributed, the situation 

 was more typical of that of other states. Cooperation between agriculture 

 and labor at the ballot box was essential if the League was to grow 

 nationally. 



The proposed alignment of agriculture and labor threw a scare into the 

 camps of the Republican and Democratic parties, but the entrance of the 

 United States into the war and the radical doctrines propagated by the 

 League leaders gave the opposition its much-desired opportunity. League 

 theories made it almost impossible for the League to avoid criticizing 

 certain aspects of the policies of the federal government. Its leaders, for 

 example, had objected to the manner in which the nation was organizing 

 for war. 



It was natural that an emergency structure should build, not around the isolated 

 farmer, but around the industrial captain whose leadership is almost the only 

 sort that exists locally, around the grain-buyer, the banker, the miller in whom 

 the farmer saw his economic and political opponents, more to be feared than any 

 distant autocracy. A grain-buyer, suspected of using a short scale, declares that 

 this is a war for universal participation in the world's good things. . . . Liberty 

 bonds have not the best chance of being taken quickly when their salesman is 

 a local banker suspected of having done his best to block the enactment of a 

 state rural credits law. 101 



The charges of Townley typified the attitude of the League toward the 

 war; he described it as a rich man's war, and informed those who were 

 sending their boys across the water that they "must pay the steel trust 

 added, ever-increasing millions of profit to keep your boy from being 

 destroyed after he gets over there." 1 



Added reason for attacking the League was supplied by the conference 

 of producers and consumers held in St. Paul in September, 1917. The 

 League called this conference primarily to enlist the support of labor. 

 Among the speakers was Senator Robert M. La Follette, whose subject, 

 "The People's Fight," was intended as an appeal for reduced living costs. 

 He had promised not to say anything disloyal, but after his speech got 

 under way he became bolder and bolder, and among other things lamented 



101. "The Farmer and the War," New Republic, XIII (November 3, 1917), 

 pp. 8-9. 



102. Franklin F. Holbrook and Livia Appel, Minnesota in the War with Germany 

 (2 vols., St. Paul, 1928-32), II, 45. 



