THE STORY OF THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE 



would rope him more securely. It was a con- 

 dition not at all peculiar to North Dakota; 

 it existed and exists all about the country. 

 But the Northwestern farmer certainly had 

 instances of it that seemed to him of a raw 

 significance, and it is time we related some 

 of these. 



By 1913 the farmers of Minnesota had 

 become weary of a system by which they 

 raised wheat for the exclusive profit of other 

 men, and they made a determined attack 

 upon the legislature that they had helped to 

 elect. They remembered, they said, the many 

 kind words that had been poured into the 

 porches of their ears by various candidates 

 while the electoral campaign was on, and they 

 thought the time was ripe to turn some of 

 these golden phrases into the merchantable 

 form of achievement. If the farmer was 

 really such a fine fellow and so important to 

 the world, there would be no objection to 

 passing a few simple and equitable laws to 

 protect him. So the Minnesota farmers de- 

 termined to secure from the legislature the 

 following reforms: 



A law to abolish the weighing frauds in the grain 

 trade and compel the use of honest scales and honest 

 weighing methods. 



A law to put a stop to trading in. grain futures in the 

 state and thereby do away with the system by which 

 the price of grain at the country elevator in Minnesota 



172 



