The New State · Part III · II · Chapter 33 (2/2)

We have an interesting instance in the United States of political organization on occupational lines from which we may learn much⁠—I refer to the Nonpartisan league of North Dakota composed of farmers which, inaugurated in 1915, in 1916⁠–⁠7 carried the state elections of North Dakota, electing a farmer-governor, and putting their candidates in three of the supreme court judgeships, and gaining 105 out of the 138 seats in the state legislature. The first object of the league was the redress of economic injustice suffered by the farmer. They saw that this must be done through concerted control of the political machinery. Of the legislation they wished, they secured: (1) a new office of State Inspector of Grains, Weights and Measures, (2) partial exemption of farm improvements from taxation, (3) a new cooperative corporation law, and (4) a law to prevent railroads from discriminating, in supplying freight-cars, against elevators owned by farmers’ cooperative societies.

In 1917 a Farmers’ Nonpartisan League of the state of New York was organized. In September, 1917, the North Dakota League became the “National Nonpartisan League,” the organization spreading to several of the neighboring states: Minnesota, South Dakota, Idaho, Montana, etc. At the North Dakota state primaries held in the summer of 1918, nearly all the League’s candidates were nominated, thus insuring the continuance of its control of the state government.

In Denmark we are told the battle rages between the agrarian party and the labor party. More and more the struggle in Parliamentary countries is becoming a struggle between interests rather than between parties based on abstract principles. This must be fully taken into account in the new state.

The hoped-for relation of industry to the state might be summed up thus: we want a state which shall include industry without on the one hand abdicating to industry, or on the other controlling industry bureaucratically. The present plans for guild socialism or syndicate control, while they point to a possible future development, and while they may be a step on the way, as a scheme of political organization have many weak points. Such experiments as the Industrial Councils of England are interesting, but until further technique is worked out we shall find that individual selfishness merely gives way to group selfishness. From such experiments we shall learn much, but the new ship of state cannot ride on such turbulent waters.

The part labor will take in the new state depends now largely upon labor itself. Labor must see that it cannot reiterate its old cries, that it need no longer demand “rights.” It is a question of a new conception of the state and labor seeing its place within it. For a new state is coming⁠—we cannot be blind to the signs on every side, we cannot be deaf to the voices within. Labor needs leaders today who are alive not to the needs of labor, but to the needs of the whole state: then it will be seen as a corollary how labor fits in, what the state needs from labor, what labor needs from the state, what part labor is to have in the state.