Published: 2015-07-12
Total Pages: 98
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Excerpt from The North Dakota Industrial Program: A Report on the Organization and Progress of the North Dakota State Industries, and the Administration of Related Laws, Protecting and Promoting Agriculture and Other Industries in the State, Enacted and Established by the Sixteenth Session of the North D The North Dakota system of state industries was created by the Sixteenth Session of the State Legislature in response to a demand on the part of the people that had been growing in insistence for more than ten years. The pioneers of North Dakota had been exploited by land speculators, transportation monopolists, loan sharks and elevator and milling combines practically since the earliest settlement of the State. Partial victories against railway monopolies had been secured, in common with other states, nearly twenty years earlier, resulting in the passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust law, which was followed by other acts of Congress aiming to prevent railway discrimination and to curtail extortionate transportation charges. In North Dakota, as elsewhere throughout the great grain growing states, oppressive monopoly centered in the ownership of the elevators through which their grain had to pass and of the big mills in which it was manufactured and distributed to the trade. The rural credit service had always been inadequate and interest rates oppressive. An unjust system of taxation weighed heavily upon agriculture, as upon other industry, letting the privileges of the great corporations off practically scot-free. Farmers attempted to free themselves from these several forms of exploitation by organizing for co-operative action. The Farmers' Equity in North Dakota had a rapid growth during a number of years, for a while giving promise that it might prove the means of freeing agriculture from monopolistic control and establishing it on a sound and durable basis. But no sooner did it appear that the Equity organization was likely to be successful than it became the target for the combined attacks of the transportation, the marketing and the money monopolies. Again and again the Equity farmers demanded state legislation checking this exploitation, and repeatedly their efforts were thwarted by politicians in the employ of these interests. Finally, the farmers became convinced that they would get no relief until they made themselves the political masters of the State. As they constituted more than eighty per cent of the population it was apparent that this presented no great difficulty, provided, that they could organize their forces and contsol their votes. A plan was devised and first tried out in 1916, which later met with a success that startled the entire nation. The farmers organized themselves in to the Nonpartisan League. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
