AGRARIAN PARTIES AND THEIR POLICIES 189 



influence in destroying the confidence in the League 

 program. There were a number of bank failures 

 throughout the state. The packing house of the 

 Society of Equity, located at Fargo, was compelled 

 to suspend operations. The Bank of North Dakota 

 experienced serious financial embarrassment. It be- 

 came necessary to discontinue the construction of 

 the grain elevator and flour mill at Grand Forks, and 

 the operations of the home building and rural credit 

 board were discontinued. The sudden decrease in 

 the price of wheat and other farm products in the 

 fall of 1920 had much to do with these financial 

 reverses. The opponents of the League program 

 made much of the financial distress of the state- 

 owned agencies, which had the effect of destroying 

 confidence in these enterprises. This result was in- 

 evitable. 



The failure of the agrarian program in North 

 Dakota is explained in the monthly letter of the 

 National City Bank of New York, edition of April, 

 1921, as follows: 



"The plan of making the State of North Dakota 

 a self-contained unit financially was fundamentally 

 erroneous. The State is mainly devoted to one in- 

 dustry, agriculture, and largely to one crop. Money 

 is easy or tight in all localities at one and the same 

 time. For this reason the State does not make a 

 well-balanced economic or financial unit in itself. 

 Moreover, North Dakota is a comparatively new 

 State; it has always used outside capital to its ad- 



