l82 



AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



and numerous other struggles of English-speaking peoples who had 

 revolted against the domination of government by commerce and industry. 

 League leaders pointed out that they were not trying to exclude others 

 from the government but merely attempting to persuade the farmers to 

 pool their votes and use them "to elect representatives who would carry 

 out their political and industrial programme." Everything the League 

 had attempted was "peculiarly and distinctly American"; the farmers 

 had obtained control of the Republican party in North Dakota by legal 

 means, and they had nominated and elected officers who legislated in 

 accordance with the wishes of the majority of the citizens of the state. 

 If organizing a state bank was un-American, so were the acts of Alexander 

 Hamilton, who drew up plans for the first Bank of the United States, 

 and those of George Washington, who supported it. Furthermore, there 

 were numerous cases of states and municipalities being engaged in 

 business activities similar to those proposed by the League. The State of 

 Louisiana owned and operated the Port of New Orleans, including cotton 

 warehouses and a grain elevator; King County, Washington, owned and 

 operated the Port of Seattle, which, besides having storage and elevator 

 facilities, provided for packing fish, baling hay, and processing foodstuffs. 

 It was neither political nor industrial autocracy, neither communism nor 

 socialism, but democracy that was "in the saddle" in North Dakota. 101 



The League attributed the disloyalty charges hurled against it largely 

 to misquoting of its speakers by newspapers and to other similar abuses 

 which in effect amounted to a denial of constitutional rights. The League 

 cited a series of patriotic acts as refutation of the charge of disloyalty . n( 

 Before the opening of the third Liberty Loan drive, the League had wired 

 the Secretary of the Treasury, William G. McAdoo, offering the services 

 of its organization to the national cause, to which offer McAdoo had re- 

 plied: "I welcome the assistance of the farmers of the great Northwest 

 in this patriotic service to the country." North Dakota, a state fully con- 

 trolled by the League, was the first to oversubscribe its quota by 100 per 

 cent, despite the drought of 1917. It had also oversubscribed the first and 



109. W. G. Roylance, "Americanism in North Dakota," The Nation, CIX (July 

 12, 1919), pp- 38-39. North Dakota furnished 18,595 men to ^ armed forces, or 

 2.12 per cent above the national average. State of North Dakota Legislative Manual, 

 1919, p. 441. 



no. Nonpartisan League Methods and Principles, pp. 48-50. 



