2l8 AGRICULTURAL DISCONTENT 



thority, "some of the leaders sold out. Republican and Democratic candi- 

 dates stole the League's thunder by promising or half -promising the same 

 thing the League endorsed candidates pledged, and they were running 

 on the same ticket. Nonpartisan methods were obviously a failure, and the 

 remaining members of the League decided to try something else." The 

 visible machinery of the League, in large measure, had melted away, but 

 League sentiment persisted in the minds of hundreds of thousands of 

 farmers in North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, 

 and other states in the Northwest and Far West. As long as the price of 

 wheat remained low, this viewpoint was likely to be a factor of political 

 significance. 88 



86. "Minnesota, the Nonpartisan League, and the Future," The Nation, CXVII 

 (August i, 1923), p. 102. A former editor of the Non-partisan Leader, Charles 

 Edward Russell, gave his explanation of the League's decline in his book, Bare 

 Hands and Stone Walls (New York, 1933), pp. 343-44. 



