AN AGRICULTURAL MELODRAMA
In January, 1911, there was held in the Twin Cities a gathering of the
interlocking directorate, called by A. R. Rogers, lumber magnate, Howe,
the elevator man, and a group of the big bankers; afterwards they got in
the late “Jesse James” Hill, the railroad king of the Northwest. These
gentlemen worked out a scheme, and wrote their checks for five thousand
each. One of them threw in a remark: “It would be worth twenty-five
thousand a year of any man’s money to get Bolley out of the state, or to
keep his damned mouth shut.”
They were going to “educate” the farmers of North Dakota, and they
called their movement the “Hundred Dollar An Acre Club,” subsequently
changing it to the “Better Farming Association.” They appointed an
executive committee consisting of Rogers, the lumberman, Howe, the
elevator man, one farmer, and eighteen North Dakota bankers, with the
president of the First National Bank of Fargo at their head! These
bankers were borrowing money in Wall Street at six per cent and lending
it to the farmers of their state at ten per cent, which represented a
profit of twelve million dollars a year to them.
As manager of their program of “education” they selected one Thomas
Cooper, at a larger salary than any “educator” in North Dakota had ever
been paid before. Forty-five thousand dollars a year was pledged, and
Mr. Cooper set to work to “educate” the farmers as to the wickedness of
Ladd, Bolley, and others. After three years the balance-sheet of the
organization showed liabilities of forty thousand dollars, and assets of
one brilliant idea. The bankers of the organization went to that other
group of bankers who comprised the trustees of the North Dakota
Agricultural College, and proposed that the college should take over Mr.
Cooper and his salary and his deficit, and should give him entire
control of the experiment station and extension division, and joint
authority over the instruction division, with eighteen North Dakota
bankers as an advisory board! This little job was put through in 1913,
and the exact facts were hidden from the people of North Dakota, and two
years later the Nonpartisan League newspapers had to steal the documents
in the case in order to make them known!
Now behold Mr. Cooper and his eighteen bankers in control of a state
experiment station! The first thing they do is to lock Professor Bolley
out of his laboratories, and the poor janitor is somewhat bewildered,
not knowing whom to let in! They even take away from his department the
research money which he had got from the linseed crushers! They forbid
Ladd and Bolley to go to the state capital while the state legislature
is in session. They issue a written order forbidding them to publish
press bulletins or newspaper articles until these have received the O.
K. of Mr. Cooper; and when Professor Bolley submits bulletins they chop
them to pieces and publish them in such garbled form that they make
nonsense. For four years they publish nothing at all of Bolley’s work.
The brunt of the struggle fell on President Worst, not because he had
done anything himself, but because he stood by his professors. In the
fall of 1914 Worst was in Washington, attending a convention of the
agricultural colleges, and the board passed a secret resolution
promoting him to be president-emeritus—an honorary degree hitherto
unknown in North Dakota agricultural culture. They had conceived the
clever idea of putting Ladd in his place, because this would pacify the
people, and they believed that Ladd would prove a poor executive, and
would be unable to hold on. They came to Ladd and begged him to accept,
and assured him that Worst had consented—which was not true.
When the governor of the state learned what they had done, he fell into
a panic, and ordered them to rescind the action, and for a year
thereafter they backed and filled and argued, trying to persuade Worst
to resign and Ladd to take his place. In the following year Governor
Hanna, himself a prominent banker and director in many corporations,
appointed a new board of regents, with a banker as president, and
another banker and his lawyer making the majority. To this new board
President Worst protested against the disorganization in the
institution, and proposed some division of authority. The interlocking
newspapers lied about what he had said, and the board again got up the
nerve to kick him upstairs. The students met, and in mass conventions
denounced and protested, and the board spent three days badgering them
trying to find out who had written an editorial of protest.
Finally, Worst went out and Ladd came in—on condition that he was to
have complete authority, and that Professor Bolley was to remain.
Senator Ladd tells me that as soon as he had been elected, and in the
very room where these conditions had been agreed to, one member of the
board asked him to get rid of Bolley, and called him a “damned fool”
when he refused. After that there was never a single meeting of the
board that they did not pick a row with him over this issue. Soon they
began asking him to resign; at first they asked him to write his
resignation, and later they wrote it for him—all they asked him to do
was to sign it!
Also there were filed some forty odd charges of unprofessional conduct
against Professor Bolley, whom they had now discovered to be “crazy.”
They gave this “crazy” man a busy time for several years. Two members of
the board came to Fargo, to demand that Bolley should be fired; then an
investigating committee of the faculty was appointed, which completely
exonerated him. But the board insisted that this was a partisan
committee; they appointed a committee of their own members, and this
committee called on the chairman of the faculty committee, and abused
him for not making a proper investigation; then they went to Bolley, and
took up one question after another, and Bolley refuted each. After three
hours one member of the board said: “Well, I think it’s time to quit.”
The second said: “If you are satisfied, I am.” The board received this
report of complete exoneration from its committee, and decided they
would have to discontinue the procedure—but they refused to exonerate
Bolley! The controversy was carried to the national government, and the
Department of Agriculture appointed a committee, which also
investigated, and could find nothing wrong with the “crazy” professor.
This whole story of Bolley makes you think of the melodramas we used to
see on the Bowery, where the heroine is tied to a railroad track, or
tied on a log which is going into a saw-mill, and the rescuers come
galloping up on horseback at the instant when the villain seems
triumphant. In the fall of 1916 the Non-partisan League swept the State
of North Dakota, and on January 1, 1917, Lynn Frasier came galloping
into the governorship of North Dakota, and the farmers of the state got
the results of Professor Bolley’s experiments once more. Thunders of
applause from the gallery!