AGRARIAN PARTIES AND THEIR POLICIES 191 



the agrarian protest in North Dakota and other 

 western states, upon which the Nonpartisan League 

 based its program of radical action. 



The Farm Labor Party 



The Farm Labor Party of 1924 was the immediate 

 progeny of the Nonpartisan League. It is true that 

 the League had its inception in the agrarian protest 

 alone. But, as Herbert E. Gaston says, "Townley 

 and his associates deliberately gave the movement 

 of agrarian protest and revolt its bias of concilia- 

 tion toward, and invitation to alliance with, organ- 

 ized labor." 6 The officials of industrial labor have 

 followed, until recent times, a very different course 

 from that of the Farm Labor organization. The 

 efforts to unite the interests of the farmers with 

 those of industrial labor present an interesting 

 phenomenon in social organization. 



The Third Party movement, known as the Farm 

 Labor Federation, was the result of a series of con- 

 ferences and conventions held in Minnesota in 

 March, 1924. The call of the first conference in 

 St. Paul was for the purpose of bringing the officials 

 of the principal Third Party group together to con- 

 sider a program. The Farm Labor Party officials 

 in Minnesota were assigned the leadership in 

 calling a convention of progressive farming and 

 labor elements for the purpose of considering a 



See page 10, The New Republic, Vol. 40, No. 509 (September 

 3, 1924). 



