Chapter VII 



THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE 

 EXPANSION AND DECLINE 1 



THE SUCCESSES of the League in North Dakota called striking attention 

 throughout the nation to the program of state socialism for which 

 it stood and aroused the fears of conservatives everywhere. When it be- 

 came clear, during the year 1917, that League leaders were intent on a 

 program of expansion, and that they meant also to win the full coopera- 

 tion of organized labor, the opposition drew tightly together and fought 

 back earnestly, although, as indicated in the last chapter, not always 

 fairly. But the determination of League leaders to carry their program 

 forward was undimmed, even by the irrelevant and generally untrue 

 charges of pro-Germanism which they so often had to face. They found 

 farmers in all the Middle West who were receptive to their arguments. 

 Some of them had in turn supported the Grange, the Alliance, the Popu- 

 lists, and the Equity; for all such the appearance of the League had the 

 effect of reviving old political principles and giving to them a new sig- 

 nificance. Expansion into Minnesota was facilitated by the close ties be- 

 tween the farmers in the western part of the state and those in eastern 

 North Dakota. A combination of political, economic, racial, and psy- 



i. This chapter follows in the main an article by Theodore Saloutos, "The Expan- 

 sion and Decline of the Nonpartisan League in the Western Middle West, 1917- 

 1921," Agricultural History, XX (October, 1946), pp. 235-52. Reprinted by per- 



mission. 



