THE STORY OF THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE 



often used in the Northwest was apt enough, 

 after all; he was like a man roped and thrown 

 while a procession of armed men picked his 

 pockets and took his watch. 



These oppressions contradicted all the tra- 

 ditions and impulses of the race. In spite of 

 occasional symptoms to the contrary, Ameri- 

 cans are, of all peoples on earth, the most 

 jealous of their liberties. You cannot have 

 generation after generation imbibing in child- 

 hood the stories of the American Revolution 

 and revering above all others the men that 

 rose against the suggestion of tyranny with- 

 out having in the end a people that wUl look 

 upon all kinds of tyranny with the same hos- 

 tility. I have heard speaker after speaker in 

 farmers' meetings in the Northwest liken their 

 cause to that of the American Revolutionists 

 and make out a reasonable case for the argu- 

 ment; and I have observed that nothing else 

 they said aroused so much enthusiasm. Show- 

 ings of the losses in dollars and cents that the 

 farmers suffered because of the existing sys- 

 tems seemed, by comparison, to mean little, 

 and it was safest of all to predict a revolt in 

 the light of that singular fact. Something 

 more was stirred in men than the property 

 sense; they had gathered a fixed idea that the 

 forces controlling their affairs were funda- 

 mentally unrighteous and un-American, and 

 when that point has been reached anywhere 



186 



