Insurgent Democracy: The Nonpartisan League in North American Politics by Michael J. Lansing (review)

Michael Lansing’s Insurgent Democracy is the story of the Nonpartisan League (npl), a continental agrarian organization that, in the US, achieved a measure of national and especially regional prominence during and right after World War I, but fizzled out and collapsed in the 1920s. At its peak, it counted almost a quarter of a million members in thirteen American states, controlled the North Dakota state government, and had spread into two Canadian provinces where it ran candidates for the provincial and federal houses. In one of these provinces, Alberta, it pushed the United Farmers of Alberta organization to enter politics, which led to a decade and a half of farmer government in that province. In the United States, it inspired several farmer-labour political alliances and eventually helped elect several Senators who agitated, albeit with little success, for pro-farmer legislation.

Despite the socialistic background of many of the League’s leading lights, including its founder, Albert E. Bowen and its president, Arthur C. Townley, Lansing correctly emphasizes that most US farmers (and this applies to Canadian farmers also) were not socialists. Rather, consistent with the American anti-monopoly tradition and their middle-class identity, they sought a fair capitalism. Simply put, they wanted equality of opportunity, not equality of condition. They felt that, at present, the cards were stacked against them: powerful corporations, not the people, were reaping the benefits of the economic system, sometimes fraudulently, and were generally exploiting farmers through their control of industries affecting agriculture. The npl’s message – and appeal – was that it would level the playing field for producers – give them a real chance to succeed and even prosper – by creating genuine competition in the marketplace though state ownership of key businesses and institutions.

More or less chronologically, Lansing effectively outlines the League’s meteoric rise, its achievements and failures, and its demise. Its quick start owed much to agrarian anger over politicians’ rejection of a voter-approved terminal grain elevator bill, but much of the actual building of the membership was done by well-paid and well-trained canvassers using Model-T Fords to get around the countryside. In the US, the League’s message was spread by its official organ, the Non-Partisan Leader, and by a host of local newspapers purchased by local League farmers. In Canada, the Alberta Non-Partisan, edited by the witty William Irvine, a strong supporter of organized labour, disseminated League propaganda.

Lansing highlights the American npl’s main political strategy, which was not to create a new party or endorse an existing one but to use the direct primary system to endorse candidates who supported the npl’s program, regardless of their political affiliation. This strategy allowed the npl to elect sympathetic politicians in several states and, in 1916, to gain power in North Dakota. It solidified its hold on office in that state in 1918 and, implementing its platform, established state-owned insurance and a state-owned bank, flour mill, and grain elevator.

Lansing demonstrates that, although churches were often divided about the League, it attracted farmers of different religious and other backgrounds. It was, however, primarily a movement of men, and Lansing duly notes its appeal to “agrarian manhood” and “manly independence.” (32, 36) Given this gendered culture, the League was predictably slow to organize farm women, a failure that hurt the League’s growth and political support. When it did belatedly reach out to women, it was somewhat too late because the movement was on the cusp of its decline.

In the US, opposition to the npl began in earnest toward the end of World War I when it was branded as “pro-German” owing to its calls for conscription of wealth and its initial anti-war stance. Consequently, League members were sometimes jailed without charges or warrants. Meanwhile, threatened by the npl’s calls for state involvement in the economy, large business interests and many newspapers actively fought the...