THE STORY OF THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE 



to the doors of the rest of the country. Rail- 

 roads reached it and threaded it up and down. 



Observe, therefore, that it produced, with 

 unequaled liberality, wheat, this indispensable 

 necessity of mankind, and had ample facili- 

 ties to get this staple to the busy hives where 

 men demanded and consumed it. And yet 

 was not this a good business, but a distinctly 

 bad, so that thousands of farmers well versed 

 in their trade failed in the Dakotas and thou- 

 sands of others were clinging to their acres, 

 fighting with the desperate resolution of men 

 in a doubtful battle, undergoing drudging 

 toil and racking anxieties that they might win 

 no more than a bare existence. 



I cite the facts as I found them and knew 

 them and as the somber records reveal them. 

 Dakota means in the Indian language some- 

 thing bright and attractive. In the bitter 

 dramas that were being enacted in a thousand 

 homes there, it came to mean the land of 

 heartbreaking disappointment. City popu- 

 lations knew nothing of this and persisted 

 in a totally different idea of the farming busi- 

 ness. We in the cities, paying month upon 

 month increasing prices for flour, or noting 

 in the newspapers something about the soar- 

 ing prices of wheat, surely believed that the 

 farmer must be prospering and all was well. 

 But while we paid for flour and bread the 

 prices that made us gasp or groan, foreclosure 



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