The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, September 22, 1919, Page 4

The Leader—Four Years Ago and Now Farmers’ Paper, Which Recorded Victories of Organized Producers, Celebrates Fourth Birthday—Now Has Million Readers -] EPTEMBER 23, 1915—just four years ago—is a notable date in the history of at least one man in the United States because on this date he got the surprise of his.life. He was an employe of the Fargo (N. D.) postoffice. ‘A wagon drove up filled with sacks of mail. “What'’s this?” he asked. “A new paper. . They call it the Nonpartisan Leader,” was the answer he got. “You can’t mail ’em out,” said the government official. “Rule of the postofi‘ice department forblds s0 many sample copies.’ “But listen,” said the man in charge of the pa- pers, “there isn’t a sample copy in the outfit. Every one of them goes to a bona fide, paid-in-advance subscriber on-a North Dakota farm. They’re all members of the Nonpartisan league.” ¢ The postoffice man was justified in being sur- prised. No paper in North Dakota had ever come to the postoffice with 18,000 copies at one time, to say nothing of a paper that no one had ever heard of, starting with that circulation. But think of how much more surprised that postoffice man would have been if someone had told him that within four years that paper would be mailing more than 250,- 000 copies and thus, figuring three additional members to each subscriber’s family, would have a total of a million readers! There were -a good many people in North Dakota, out- side of the Fargo postoffice, who were surprised four years ago when the first copies of the Leader appeared. There had been a few rumors that some kind of a new farmers’ organization was being form- ed, “something like the Equity, only different,” but these stories lacked confirmation and were not generally credited. They sounded too wild to be believed, because they went on to say that this new organiza- tion proposed to go into poli- tics, and some of the farmers boasted that they would con- trol the state government of North Dakota right off the bat. That, of course, couldn’t happen. So the stories about the new organization were generally disbelieved. What had happened was that a farmer named A. C. Townley had first suggested a plan to the farmers at Bis- - marck, at the legislative ses- sion of 1915, when the ter- minal elevator bill was turned down, and the farmers were told to “go home and slop the hogs.” He proposed that an organization be formed by the farmers, financed with their own money, to select their own men for candidates, pay their expenses and elect ‘them to state office to do what the farmers wanted done. But the “leading farmers” who had gone to Bismarck doubted if this could be done. 'GOT FIRST MEMBERS IN BORROWED AUTO “The farmers won’t pay money to finance a political or- ganization of their own when they can belong to the Repub- lican or Democratic parties free of charge and have Wall street put up the campaign funds,” was the consensus of their opinion. But this man Townley was undiscouraged. “I'm going to see whether they will or not,” he said. He went to the home of F. B. Wood and Howard this issue. Wood, near Deering, and finally talked the Woods into his plan. He also talked them into lending him their little Ford automobile -to go around and see some of their neighbors. And they were con- vinced, too; convinced enough to pay membership fees in an organization that had no existence ex- cept in their brains and Townley’s. Soon there was enough money to make first payment on two or three -automobiles. Other men were brought ih as organizers. They went out, too, and raised more money and more Fords were bought on the partial payment plan. Soon the organization num- bered thousands. But Townley and the other organizers did not circulate much in the towns and cities. They were building up an organization of farmers. They knew that the newspapers of North Dakota, largely controlled by the politicians of the old guard, would kill the League before it got started if they had a chance. Townley and the farmers generally did not propose that the enemies of the League should hear about it until the League had a paper that would tell the facts and keep the infant organi- zation from being lied out of existence. So the first official announcement of the organization of the League was made in the first number of the Nonpartisan Leader, dated September 23, 1915. And this brings us to the rest of the conversa- tion between the postoffice employe and the man- ager of the Leader, when he appeared at the post- l TURNING PAGE 4 | | 'mm f/l ihll —Drawn expressly for the Leader by B. O. Foss. Old Father Time has turned another page in the history of the Nonpartisan Leader with The Leader completes its fourth year this week. In the last year the Leader printed some of its greatest “stories.” It told of the League vnctory at the North Dakota election last fall, the victory at the referendum election, of the opening of the state bank, the purchase of the state flour mill, and of other accomplishments of the organized farmers. PAGE FOUR //\\ office with his 18,000 copies. The manager of the Leader had just told the postoffice man about the League starting off with 18,000 members. “Why, how does it happen I never heard about this?” asked the puzzled postman. (It was a question that a lot of North Dakota politicians asked themselves, too.) “You never heard about it,” said the Leader man, “because we’ve been busy organizing farm- ers, not postmasters.” FIRST CARTOON DRAWN FOR LEADER BY BAER The first issue of the Leader had on its first page a cartoon drawn by a man named John M. Baer. This man Baer had been a farmer in Golden Valley county, N. D., and postmaster at Beach, but quit this to take up cartooning for the farmers. His first cartoon was a dandy. It showed “Big Biz” in his workshop, turning out “legislators,” “gov- ernors,” “judges,” etc., and the North Dakota farmer stepping up to him, tapping him on the shoulder and saying: “You're fired.. I'll do this job myself.” : The first year of the Leader, from Septem- ber, 1915, to September, 1916, tells the story of a quick, winning fight. The first issue con- tained a signed editorial written by Charles Edward Russell, the noted journalist, warning the farmers that the power of the press would be used against them, and that every move they made would be lied about. This editorial warned the farmers to believe nothing except what they saw in their own papers. ' The warning was justified. Among the first lies about the League was that it was a partnership and that every farmer who joined it would be personally liable for any debts that might be contracted: The Leader went after this lie hard and the opposition dropped it. There were plenty of others that followed, but each was met and disproved in turn. In Catholic communities the op- position said that the League was against the Catholics; in Protestant communities the opposition -said the League was lined up with the Catholic church. Leaguers were - also accused of being Socialists, atheists, free lovers, etc., etc. Along in the summer of 1916 the North Dakota pri- maries were held. The League " ticket, headed by Lynn J. Fra- zier, now governor, was nomi- nated with a big majority. In the early fall of 1916 the harvesting of a shriveled wheat crop was started in North Dakota. The Minneapo- lis Chamber of Commerce, going outside the Minnesota grain-grading law, established “feed grades” so arranged that North Dakota wheat graded as “Feed D” and brought 80 cents a bushel low- er than No. 1 northern. The Leader printed findings by Doctor E. F. Ladd of the North Dakota Agricultural college, showing that the “Feed D” wheat was practically as val- uable for milling purposes as No. 1 northern. The opposi- tion laughed at-the Leaguers for having any such silly no- tions. Doctor John H. Worst, president of the North Dakota Agricultural college, told the grain growers that they were being robbed of $55,000,000 a year by the way grain grad- ing and marketing was being (Continued on page 14) il