Nonpartisan League


The Nonpartisan League was a political organization founded in 1915 in the United States by Arthur C. Townley, former organizer for the Socialist Party of America. On behalf of small farmers and merchants, the Nonpartisan League advocated state control of mills, grain elevators, banks and other farm-related industries in order to reduce the power of corporate political interests from Minneapolis, Minnesota and Chicago, Illinois.
The NPL goat served as the US League's mascot. It was known as "The Goat that Can't be Got."

History

The League developed beginning in 1915, a time when small farmers in North Dakota felt exploited by out-of-state companies. One author later described the wheat-growing state as "really a tributary province of Minneapolis-St. Paul". Minnesota banks made its loans, Minnesota millers handled its grain, and Alexander McKenzie, North Dakota's political boss, lived in St. Paul. Rumors spread at an American Society of Equity meeting in Bismarck that a state legislator named Treadwell Twichell had told a group of farmers to "go home and slop the hogs." Twichell later said that his statement was misinterpreted. He had been instrumental in previous legislative reforms to rescue the state from boss rule by MacKenzie and the Northern Pacific Railroad around the start of the 20th century.
Arthur C. Townley, a former flax farmer from Beach, North Dakota, and former organizer for the Socialist Party of America, had attended the Society of Equity meeting. Afterward Townley and a friend, Frank B. Wood, drew up a radical political platform at Wood's kitchen table that addressed many of the farmers' concerns. Soon, Townley was traveling the state in a borrowed Model T Ford signing up NPL members for a payment of $6 in dues. Farmers were receptive to Townley's ideas and joined in droves.
Proposing that the state of North Dakota create its own bank, warehouses, and factories, the League, supported by a populist groundswell, ran its slate as Republican candidates in the 1916 elections. It won control of the state legislature and elected a farmer, Lynn Frazier, as governor with 79% of the vote. It also elected John Miller Baer to the United States House of Representatives. After the 1918 elections, in which the NPL won control of both houses of the legislature, the League enacted a significant portion of its platform. It established state-run agricultural enterprises such as the North Dakota Mill and Elevator, the Bank of North Dakota, and a state-owned railroad. The legislature passed a graduated state income tax, distinguishing between earned and unearned income; authorized a state hail insurance fund, and established a workmen's compensation fund that assessed employers. The NPL also set up a Home Building Association, to aid people in financing and building houses.
During World War I, Townley demanded the "conscription of wealth", blaming "big-bellied, red-necked plutocrats" for the war. He and fellow leader William Lemke received support for the League from isolationist German Americans. The NPL's initial success was short-lived. A drop in commodity prices at the close of the war, together with a drought, caused an agricultural depression.
As a result, the new state-owned industries ran into financial trouble, and the private banking industry, smarting from the loss of its influence in Bismarck, rebuffed the NPL when it tried to raise money through state-issued bonds. The industry said that the state bank and elevator were "theoretical experiments" that might easily fail. Moreover, the NPL's lack of governing experience led to perceived infighting and corruption. Newspapers and business groups portrayed the NPL as inept and disastrous for the state's future.
In 1918, opponents of the NPL formed the Independent Voters Association. In 1921, the IVA was able to organize a special election to recall Frazier. Due to an ongoing agricultural depression and infighting within the NPL, Frazier was removed from office. He lost the recall election by a margin of 1.8% of the vote. He was the first U.S. state governor to be recalled. However, a year later he was elected to the United States Senate for North Dakota and served until 1940.
The decade of the 1920s was economically difficult for farmers, and the NPL's popularity receded. But the populist undercurrent that fueled its meteoric growth revived with the coming of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl conditions of the 1930s. The NPL's William "Wild Bill" Langer was elected to the governorship in 1932 and 1936. After serving as governor, Langer was elected to the U.S. Senate, serving from 1940 until his death in 1959.
North Dakota Mill and Elevator and the Bank of North Dakota continue to operate today. The legislature in 1932 prohibited corporate farming and corporate ownership of farmland.

Canada

In the 1916-1919, a different Non-Partisan League operated in Alberta, Canada. Among its candidates was former governor of Kansas John W. Leedy, who had moved to Canada and became a citizen. He ran as a candidate for the Alberta NPL in the 1917 Alberta provincial and federal elections, but was not elected.
In the Saskatchewan general election of 1917, there were seven candidates who stood for election as Non-Partisan League candidates. They garnered 4,440 votes, but did not elect a candidate.

Japan

In 1926, organized Nohmin-Jichikai with, and in Tokyo. This Association aimed to launch Japanese NPL. But there is no connection between NPL in US and Japan, and Nohmin-Jichikai failed to spread the movement in Japan and ended in 1928.

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