IN THE LAST TRENCH 



severity and disasters. The political machin- 

 ists took advantage of this opportunity to 

 call a special session of the legislature, osten- 

 sibly to pass measures of relief for the farmers 

 in the drought-stricken area. When the legis- 

 lature assembled it seemed utterly to forget 

 the poor drought sufferers, for it passed not 

 a measure for them nor about them, but only 

 enacted another law knocking out the primary. 

 And this law, under a peculiar feature of the 

 Montana system, was rendered immune against 

 the referendum by declaring in the last para- 

 graph that it was an emergency measure, 

 being needed at once for the security and 

 welfare of the state. 



As the case stood, the League was defeated, 

 and the primary for the time being abolished. 

 But the League proceeded to attack with 

 referendum petitions the act of the special 

 session that declared the primary repeal an 

 "emergency" measure. The petitions were 

 filed. Meantime the supreme court declared 

 the "emergency" clause invalid, and the re- 

 sult was that the referendum on the repeal of 

 the law must be held in November, 1920, and 

 until then the repeal was inoperative. 



In Idaho, where the League had been mak- 

 ing great inroads, the reactionaries succeeded 

 in abolishing the primary. 



In Nebraska the plan seems to have been 

 to wreck the primary without abolishing it, 



805 



