New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1919-04-06
Concerning the Nonpartisan League
A Bourgeois Revolt
By Kenneth Mcgowan

labor If these things had touched the
American farmer they would have touched
him only as an employer of "hired men"
and harvest hands. America in general
has shown little liking for the elaborate
Teutonic philosophy of Continental social
ism. Here the depressed" have seen OPP
preston in just quarter-monopoly
They have urged government action, both
regulative and competitive, to break mo-
nopolies created by trust agreements, and
government ownership of all natural or
necessary monopolies.
Practically all the laws enacted by the
Nonpartisan Leagues legislature in North
Dakota have been for these purposes
Practically all to be found in more or
less their Dakota form in the legislation
of states and nations which have been
touched by this same "bourgeois'-in the
opinion of party Socalists-reform move
ment
Thus the elevator bill follows upon the
public operation of elevators by the State
of Louisiana, the port of Seattle and the
Canadian government. The bank bill follows
the lines of 25O-year-old Swedish in
stitution. Home building by the state
q.
The tax regulations are compounded from
single tax experiments in British Column
bia, and various measures of other Amer
lean states. Canada, Wisconsin and Colo
RADIO furnished models for labor laws, the
mining code, and the insurance measures.
Even the educational consolidation bill has
a parallel in Kansas.
4 "Uilifdridn Philosophy
But if the laws passed are not the prod
uct of thoroughgoing socialist thought or
oppressive industrial conditions, they do
not lack consstent-even a rather elab
crate social philosophy. 1t has no name.
Anti monopoly" comes nearest, perhaps;
public ownership of public utilities" is
bit narrow. The word "utilitarian"
might fit, if it didn't fit something else
too we'll already.
Walter Thomas Mills, Socialist of the par
lor or American type, as contrasted with the
political and revolutionary, and long stu
dent of Australian reform, is always ready
TO relate the legislation of the Nonpartisan
League to this body of progressive radical
farmer thought Mills divides the field
of economic action into five parts, in each
of which the league believes that monopoly
exists and must be fought. They are:
l. Land and natural resources.
, Transportation and communication.
g. Large manufacture.
A. Distributive agencies.
5, Finance.
Monopoly, the league believes, exists in
ali these fields 1t is more or less complete
always powerful enough to control prices of
goods and to take a larger profit than its
contribution justites. In every case, Mills
asserts, a community of interest among the
factors in the field has produced the practi-
cal result of monopoly preying on the pro-
Queer and consumer
The laws favored and enacted by the
league which affect land and natural re-
sources are the tax measure, putting the
corrective of the single tax into somewhat
incomplete force on farm land, and the bill
authorizing state action in the Ignite fields.
In transportation and communication
railroads, telegraphs and teiephoncs-thc
league has taken steps to regulate rates,