THIRD-PARTY IDEOLOGIES 345 



By all odds this was not a third but a "fifth" or "sixth" party, as its 

 critics said. 6 



Similar farmer-labor sentiment had been developing in the states. Early 

 in 1920 the Wisconsin Federation of Labor invited the Equity, the Com- 

 mittee of Forty-Eight, the Nonpartisan League, and the Socialist party to 

 discuss the prospects of uniting the liberal forces for a common program 

 of political action. Later the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and 

 the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen were also invited. But little was 

 accomplished in the way of a fusion. The liberal votes were captured by 

 the League candidates who really were nothing more than La Follette 

 Progressives in new guise. 7 



Equally unsuccessful, but more encouraging, were the efforts of Farmer- 

 Laborites in several states of the western Middle West. In Minnesota the 

 Farmer-Laborites had pinned their hopes on Henrik Shipstead, a second- 

 generation Norwegian born in the United States. His father had left 

 Norway too early to join the radical movement there, but came to the 

 United States in time to join the Farmers' Alliance. Henrik, the son, 

 studied dentistry and practiced for some years in western Minnesota before 

 settling in Minneapolis. As one observer wrote, young Shipstead "practised 

 dentistry by day and read books at night on economics, sociology, and 

 history." He ran for the state legislature in 1916 and in 1918 was defeated 

 for Congress by Andrew Volstead, but two years later he came within 

 7,000 votes of capturing the Republican nomination from }. A. O. Preus. 

 Upon his defeat in the primaries, he decided to run as an independent in 

 the finals and polled some 281,000 votes against 416,000 for Preus. 8 



In Iowa Farmer-Laborites were building their hopes around Smith W. 

 Brookhart. Brookhart had been a member of the progressive movement 

 that Senator Albert B. Cummins led in the state, but he broke with Cum- 

 mins over the railroad question and sought to unseat his former boss in 

 1920 when he ran for re-election. Rumor had it that Brookhart had been 



6. Ibid.; Fred E. Haynes, Social Politics in the United States (Boston, 1924), p. 

 108. 



7. Report of the Twenty-Eighth Annual Convention of the Wisconsin Federa- 

 tion of Labor, p. 116. 



8. Chester H. Rowell, "La Follette, Shipstead, and the Embattled Farmers; What's 

 Happening in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and Why," World's Wor\, XL VI (August, 

 1923), p. 415. 



