The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, March 8, 1917, Page 4

o — . remember. I3 ghows that the enemies of the farmers want to change the plan of orpanization of the League and want new officers for it Else why did £&qy spring this fake story? Why de they want a new plan of organizatian? It ought to be plain to everybedy. The enemy, not the farmers, wants a change, because the present plan of organiza- tion is too efficient and works too well for the farmers. It carried a primary and an e}setion in North Dakota against an opposition such as no other people’s organization ever faced and stood up under. It brought home the bacon. The enemy wants a loose, flabby organiza- tion that can not get results. Why does the enemy hate the present cfficers, leaders and advisors of the League and want them deposed? That is simple, too. 'I'he present officers are too capable, have done too much good work, have been too efficient in meeting and defeating the opposition and keeping the farmers together to suit the enemy. £ = R . WHAT THE ENEMY WANTS ITE ENEMY wants a plan of organization that is not efficient and that it can get control of;; it wants officers for the League whom it ean use and handle. It realizes it has failed to hreak up the solidarity of the League so far. It hopes it can accomplish its purpose with new officers and a new plan of organization. But this is the farmers’ League. It belongs to the farmers, and they, not the enemies of the farniers and their cause, will decide on the kind of organization and the officers for it. The enemy can organize if it likes, but it will fail in its efforts to get the farmers to organize on a plan and with officers approved by Big Business, the Special Interests and the Gang Politicians. LTS A s League senators and representatives which nailed the lie about an effort on their part for new officers of the League and a new plan ol ; organization. These resolutions bear reading several times and mueh study. This is not the officers of the League speaking, or leaders or advisors of the League. It is the League rank and file in North Dakota speaking. It is the men whom their neighbors chose to carry, the standard of the farmers’ cause to Bismarck and to make laws for the farmers. It is the members of the League, who hold no office in the League but who know the League’s workings and its officers from top to bottom. And they say that the present plan of organization is proper and efficient—that it gets results, and that every member of the League should have confidence in it. They say that the officers of the League have been loyal to the farmers and the cause, have done superhuman work and have won against opposition and corrupt in- fluences that weaker men would have succumbed to. Are these reso- lutions of the members of the League in the legislature sufficient answer to the Special Interests and the Gang? The Leader thinks they are. The effort of the enemy to change the form of organizatiop and get new officers for the League is the greatest argument yet produced to prove the farmers have been right in choosing the plan of organiza- tion they have chosen, and electing the leaders they have elected. If England could choose Germany’s generals and organize’ Germany’s armies, how long do you think it would be before England would have a complete victory? If the Big Interests and the Politieians can choose the farmers’ generals and organize the farmers’ armies, how long do you think it will be before the Big Interests and the Politicians win The Leader last week printed the unanimous resolutions of the A Farmer and His New Land Title Law the war? Think it over. Senator McCarten of North Dakota, a “Nonpartisan,” and How He Fought for and Got the Torrens Act Passed By Ralph Harmon T LAST North ‘'Dakota has entered the roll of states that are standing for simplified “land titles, and which have passed in some form what is known as the Torrens land title law. This state is thus brought up to date with the Fiji Islands, which have had this law for many years. But the Fiji Islanders did not have to run the gauntlet of a twentieth century real estate lobby, as did the North Da- kota farmers who got by with this project in the present legislature after more than 20 years of effort. It has heen 20 years since the first “yisionary” who proposed that North Dakota should profit by the experience of New Zealand and Australia startea his fight in the North Dakota senate —20 years of incubation of a good many ideas that finally hatched out into a Nonpartisan ILeague and a militant farmer population. But during that time some other states got the lead of North Dakota, for there are 15 American sovereign states that now have a similar law, and nearly half the civilized world is living on real estate that can be transferred under this system. Virginia beat North Da- kota under the wire by only one legis- lative session, and among the others are Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, Colorado, Michigan, California and Illinois. A bill for a similar law is up for consideration in South Dakota and Montana. Senator McCarten of Sargent county, farmer, Nonpartisan League legislator, is author of the bill that passed the North Dakota senate in the sixth week of the session, and passed the house in the last week. And yet this was Senate Bill No. 1. FIRST GOT IDEA FROM A NEIGHBOR Senator McCarten had been cultivat- ing this bill for 20 years. It was he who worked for the first measure of this kind in the North Dakota legisla- ture. He says he was a ‘‘green” sena- tor then, a teacher just from the coun- try school, and his first knowledge of the Torrens land title registration sys- tem came from a Scotchman who was a, neighbor and who said he wished a Torrens title bill could be put on the North Dakota statute books. They talked it over, and .the young school teacher senator started his 20-year ef- fort to write that law. They got no- where. The next session he tried again and had the satisfaction of learning that his activities were attracting the efforts of the real estate lobby to de- feat the measure. They began to think of McCarten as the champion of title reform, and he soon found he had a man-size job on his hands. Two of his recighbors from Richland county, en- terprising ycung men who had recently established themselves as abstractors, came and urged that he refrain because it would destroy their business. Senator McCarten answered that Senator Richard McCarten. 1899 was the time to put the Torrens system into practice, for then there were only two abstractors’ offices west or the Missouri river, and half the land Lad not passed to its first title, while all the state was new and the titles were simple. But thie arguments of the alistractors won, and Senator McCearten left the senate his work not completed, for an absence of 18 years, to return aganin in 1917 when Nonpartisans for- got all party lines and Republicans voted to put this “has been” Democrat back on the job again. Nevertheless the Torrens act was a continual ghost at the capitol, and stalked through nearly every legislative session, while MecCarten outside the legislature was still busy with the thought that North Dakota property owners ought to have a more rational method of recording and transferring their titles, AS COUNTY AUDITOR HE LLEARNED TITLES Why not establish the title in some- one, gnd let that person transfer it without selling to the buyer all the an- cient history connected with that partictlar piece of land, he asked. Peopl: want to buy land, not records. They want soil, not paper. Why not wipe the slate clean, and let everyone know “where he is at” all the time, by doing away with the dead titles that have keen merged in succeeding titles, and cazn never again_be revised? He read evirything he could get on that subject, and thought about it and talk- ed abaizt it. Besides reading in books, he read the same story of cumbersome, useless yecording in his daily experience. As FOUR auditor of Sargent county he saw many land titles pass over the desk for rec- ord, and to every one was attached a list of all the owners and their con- nection with that land. One example that came before him most frequently was the transfer of town lots in Cogs- well. Mr. McCarten homesteaded on a quarter section next to the village of Cogswell in the sod-shanty days, and Ellen McNeely homesteaded on what afterward became the townsite. He knew the land before she bad it, and he got acquainted with each separate parcel again every time a resident of Cogswell bought or sold a lot. He got so he knew those abstracts by heart, and when he saw the magic figures that designated the city plat of Cogs- well, he could start at the top and go right dawn to the bottom through the plat to the land contracts under which it was sold for townsite, through the final proof, lis pendens, and finally the preemption in 1882. This got monotonous, and McCarten became desperate. Something must be done to stop this shameful waste of paper, ink, time, and brains. It gave him strength to preach title reform, and also the best kind of ammunition. Today there are now many farmers and business men in the Northwest who are longing for just such a law as Senator McCarten has written and the legis= lature has enacted. When the commit- tee was studying the measure letters poured in from all over the state. Peo- ple who have much land selling or buying to do, realize the need for re- lief more than those who buy a home and live there ever afterward without transferring title. DID NOT "‘ADOPT THE COMPULSORY PLAN Some wrote urging that the law be made compulsory, but this Senator Mc- Carten was afraid would be so drastic the senate” would not pass it. It is compulsory in some countries, but not in the United States and since it had taken North Dakota 20 years to be- come educated up to the point of desir- ing it, he thought the education ought not to be forced too fast. Sqme urged that the law be made compulsory at least in regard to land upon which mortgages have been foreclosed. When the mortgage is foreclosed the slate is wiped clean, and the title is fixed in the person who acquires the land. They argued that would be a good time to begin with the Torrens system. Others wanted it made compulsory in regard to probate matters, so that the new titles would be based upon the Torrens system of registration from the time the probate court finished with the case. The senator would have liked to see it made applicable to all land, but Minnesota, the nearest state that has it, has only a velun- tary system, and that applies only to counties of 70,000 population or over, so that he thought it best to inaugurate the system mildly and let it be amend- ed afterward. “That law will remain upon the statute books as long as statutes are written; it is a big reform, one that can not he undone, any more than electric lights can be abolished or stage coach days be restored,” was the com= ment he made upon the law when it was at last enacted. Senator McCarten has not disting= uished himself by the number of bills he bas introduced. But he was dis- tinguished himself by the broad thought he has put upon a few. There are two other laws which are the prod- uct of his thought and study, and one of them is of far more than statewide significance. This one is the first “Y” bill ever passed in.North Dakota, com- pelling competing roads that cross each other’s right of way to make connec- tions for the transfer of freight. This, too, is certain to remain a permanent monument to his earlier senatorial career, for it affects the welfare of pecple both east and west, north and south of North Dakota who travel or buy freight that travels through this state. It links up all the railway lines into a unified system that means serv- ice. Senator McCarten is also author of the statute that compels the teach- ing of civics or civil government in the public schools and compels all pub=- lic school teachers to pass examinae tion in this subject. ABSTRACTS NO LONGER NEEDED IN TRANSFERS But to return to his land title hill. Boiling down the 45 pages into a few sentences, this bill provides that titles to land may be cleared by legal pro- ceedings (and that is the only way they could be cleared even if the Tor- rens act were not a law) and when so declared the owner may register with the county recorder of deeds his land thus established as his own. There- after when the owner transfers land. it is only necessary to secure a title cer- tificate showing his ownership, and every purchaser is relieved of the ex- pense and delay of abstracts. There is a small fee charged for these certificates, and this fee goes partly into a fund to guarantee titles in case of error in the first instance. Minnesota has this provision, but dur- ing the 11 years since that law was in effect this fund has never been drawn upon. When all land shall have been thus registered, real estate titles will be cleared everywhere, and it will be no more complicated a matter to sell a farm or buy a lot than to sell a horse. A provision of the Nebraska Tor- rens law was put into the North Da- kota law so that the act can become operative in any county upon the peti- tion of 10 per cent of the people in that county. When this petition is filed the county commissioners must buy the books and prepare to issue the title certificates. It is believed that some counties will immediately take steps to put the system into effect,