THE STORY OF THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE 



talk was heard that they ought to unite for 

 their own welfare and protection, it was not 

 long before a brand-new structure bearing 

 the conspicuous legend, ''Farmers' Elevator 

 of LmntHoo," would arise in that place. Or 

 a ''line" elevator would be sold and the 

 painters' handiwork would transform it in an 

 hour into an enterprise apparently enlisted 

 under the co-operative banner. The real 

 owners were sometimes a Chamber of Com- 

 merce firm and sometimes a local company 

 that the local banker had obediently fathered; 

 but in either case it had nothing to do with 

 co-operation, and the only sense in which it 

 could be said to be a "farmers' elevator" 

 was that it existed to outwit them. 



The natural surmise would be that this de- 

 vice was too far-fetched to be common. On 

 the contrary, it was the commonest of all the 

 means whereby the Chamber of Commerce 

 firms fought the co-operative wave, and so 

 r lately as January, 1916, there were in North 

 Dakota 350 elevators that pretended to be 

 co-operative and were not so to 50 that were 

 genuine. So far had the business of estab- 

 lishing and maintaining this disguise gone 

 that there was published a periodical that, 

 bearing a co-operative name and ostensibly 

 devoted to the co-operative interest, was in 

 reality printed only to prevent co-operation 

 by discouraging it. 



128 



