EPILOGUE 547 



North Dakota was the League program put into operation, and there it 

 met with varying degrees of success. Stalwart Republicans denounced it 

 when out of power, but once they had been elected to office and were in a 

 position to abolish the program, they did nothing of the sort because of 

 the patronage opportunities that it provided them. 



An evaluation of the League contributions is difficult. It stressed the 

 role that the government could play in aiding the farmers, but at the 

 same time it proved the futility of a single state's acting alone. We also 

 know that for better or for worse, it brought into prominence political 

 figures such as William Langer, William "Liberty Bill" Lemke (Father 

 Coughlin's candidate for the Presidency in 1936), Lynn Frazier, and 

 Henrik Shipstead. It also paved the way for the Minnesota Farmer-Labor 

 party and the emergence of Floyd B. Olson and Elmer Benson. Worth 

 investigating, yet hard to prove, is the claim that the League program 

 helped to keep down the evils of land speculation and tenancy because 

 of the extremist nature of its demands. 



Another sign of the importance of the western Middle West in provid- 

 ing farm leadership for the nation was seen in the rise to power of the 

 American Farm Bureau Federation, certainly one of the most powerful, 

 if not absolutely the most powerful, farm groups in American history. 

 Even though it planted itself firmly in other parts of the country, espe- 

 cially in the South, after the coming of the New Deal, the Farm Bureau 

 perhaps reflected the legislative and economic demands of the western 

 Middle West much more than it did those of any other part of the coun- 

 try. The fact that it championed cooperative marketing, in the face of 

 strong sectional opposition, at the time that the national organization was 

 founded, the election of an lowan as the first national president, and the 

 militant campaign that it waged, first in behalf of the McNary-Haugen 

 plan and then for parity, are ample proof that it was concerned with 

 western middle western interests. It is no secret that the Bureau, by 

 endorsing the cooperative movement during its early years and giving 

 to it the vigorous support that it did, alienated the support of many of 

 its early patrons who preferred that it pursue an educational program 

 dedicated to bigger and better production. 



By 1920 some very obvious groupings were in evidence. The American 

 Farm Bureau Federation, with the Iowa and Illinois bodies wielding 



