CHAPTER XVHI 



THE FAMOUS BANK CASE AT FARGO 



THE great difficulty about telling such a 

 story is that the mere marshaling of the 

 incidents as they happened is in itself enough 

 to create the impression that the narrator is 

 an advocate and not a historian. This is not 

 my fault; it is a result of the adroit nature 

 and tireless persistence of the attacks on the 

 League, which must always be told as they 

 happened; and the next in this series came 

 (through an authority far beyond me) to be 

 denounced with more bitterness than any 

 other tactics thus far brought to bear on the 

 League organization. 



The new peril developed without warning 

 in September, 1919, and for sufficient reasons 

 gave the League leaders great concern. As 

 the story is peculiar and rather complicated, 

 I had better tell it from the beginning. 



As I explained in a former chapter, the 

 practice of the League from the first day had 

 been to accept in payment of dues what are 

 called postdated checks. That is to say, a 



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