EXPANSION AND DECLINE I9 



ticket." The League charged the council with "insisting that no new 

 political parties shall be organized, but that the members of the League 

 shall vote for either one or the other candidates of the two principal 

 parties. . . ." The case was finally compromised; the council promised 

 to cease its opposition if the League withdrew its paid organizers from 

 the state, secured a new manager, and ceased circulating copies of Wood- 

 row Wilson's The New Freedom 



In Kansas, the League did not consider entering the state elections 

 until 1920, but it did indicate its preference for Governor Arthur Capper 

 for the United States Senate. Capper had shown his sympathies for the 

 League when the federal Department of Justice asked him to investigate 

 charges of disloyalty within the organization by reporting that "the 

 League was comporting itself in accordance to law and the war needs 

 of the nation." This probably was partly responsible for Capper's carrying 

 all the 105 counties in the primary election. Again, when the League was 

 required to present written references from two well-known residents 

 in order to rent offices in Topeka, Governor Capper and Tom McNeal, 

 editor of Capper 's Farmer, came to its assistance. 



South Dakota appeared to be more friendly to the League, but the vote 

 received in the primaries by Mark P. Bates, a farmer, as its candidate for 

 governor on an independent ticket was not very encouraging. The antago- 

 nism present in the other middle western states apparently did not exist 

 there, and League meetings prohibited in Minnesota were frequently 

 held across the state line in South Dakota. 13 Early in 1918, the League 

 made known the fact that it was not prepared to enter the Wisconsin cam- 

 paign until the elections of 1920 and left the field open to the independent 

 farmer ticket led by the president of the Wisconsin Society of Equity. 14 

 In Iowa, the League claimed a membership of 15,000 in the fall of 1918 



12. Ibid., pp. 364-65; Elmo Bryant Phillips, "The Non-Partisan League in 

 Nebraska" (unpublished master's thesis, University of Nebraska, 1931). See also 

 the Non-partisan Leader, February 25, 1918, p. 12. 



13. Moorhead, in The Nation, CVII (October 5, 1918), p. 365; Non-partisan 

 Leader, August 19, 1918, pp. 3, 14; Wisconsin Leader (Madison), January 15, 1921; 

 "Townley in Kansas," Literary Digest, LXVIII (March 12, 1921), pp. 17-18; Minne- 

 sota Leader (Olivia), March 26, April 9, 1921. 



14. National Equity News (Madison, Wis.), April 25, 1918, p. n; Non-partisan 

 Leader, May 20, 1918, p. 16. 



