Non-Partisan League

The Nonpartisan League (NPL) was a political organization founded in 1915 in the United States by Arthur C. Townley, former organizer for the Socialist Party of America. On behalf of small farmers and merchants, the Nonpartisan League advocated state control of mills, grain elevators, banks and other farm-related industries in order to reduce the power of corporate political interests from Minneapolis, Minnesota and Chicago, Illinois.

In the 1910s, a different Non-Partisan League operated in Alberta, Canada . Among its candidates was former governor of Kansas John W. Leedy, who had moved to Canada and become a citizen. He ran as a candidate for the Alberta NPL in the 1917 Alberta provincial and federal elections, but was not elected.

The NPL in the United States originated in North Dakota, but eventually spread throughout the American Midwest and Pacific Northwest during and after the Progressive Era. It briefly had the status of a national party. It also attracted members and organization in Canada, with representatives running in provincial elections. Its leaders contributed to development of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan and the Progressive Party of Canada.

The NPL goat served as the US League's mascot. It was known as "The Goat that Can't be Got."

The League developed beginning in 1915, a time when small farmers in North Dakota felt exploited by out-of-state companies. One author later described the wheat-growing state as "really a tributary province of Minneapolis-St. Paul". Minnesota banks made its loans, Minnesota millers handled its grain, and Alexander McKenzie, North Dakota's political boss, lived in St. Paul. Rumors spread at an American Society of Equity meeting in Bismarck that a state legislator named Treadwell Twichell had told a group of farmers to "go home and slop the hogs." Twichell later said that his statement was misinterpreted. He had been instrumental in previous legislative reforms to rescue the state from boss rule by MacKenzie and the Northern Pacific Railroad around the start of the 20th century.

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