What if I told you that the only state owned
bank the only state owned milling facility and
like arguably the most successful socialist style
political uprising in American history didn't
happen in some progressive stronghold like New
York or California. I mean most people would
probably assume you were making that up. Right.
What if I told you it actually happened right
in the middle of rural conservative North Dakota
and it was spearheaded. by a coalition of incredibly
angry wheat farmers. It completely shatters the
conventional assumptions we have about American
political geography. You know, people look at
a map, they see the upper Midwest, and they just
assume a certain kind of quiet, static predictability.
Exactly. But the actual historical record is
far more complex and, frankly, far more ruthless.
So welcome to this custom -tailored deep dive.
You, the listener, the ultimate learner, reached
out to us with a very specific mission. You wanted
us to completely rewire your understanding of
North Dakota. Yeah, and you provided this totally
fascinating stack of historical sources, agricultural
data, and political records. And you asked us
to focus on three distinct pillars. First, you
wanted to know how the raw physical and economic
landscape was forged by railroads, bonanza farming,
and the modern oil boom. Second, you asked us
to unpack the mechanics of that surprising agrarian
populism. I mean, we really need to look closely
at a group called the Nonpartisan League and
examine exactly how they managed to hijack a
political party. And basically rewire local government
from the inside out. Right. And third, you wanted
the ultimate newcomers guide. So like if someone
is moving to the state today. What is the essential
cultural and environmental history they absolutely
need to know to understand their new neighbors
and the land they're standing on? OK, let's unpack
this. But before we take the plunge, we have
to establish a very clear ground rule for this
deep dive. Oh, yeah. An absolute necessity, given
the source material we're working with today,
because we're going to be dissecting some incredibly
intense political movements. I mean, we will
be analyzing radical left wing agrarian populism
and we'll be examining staunch right wing anti
globalist isolation. Which is a wild mix. It
is. So we want to assure you right up front,
we are not taking sides here. We are not endorsing
any of these political platforms or viewpoints.
No. Our job is simply to impartially analyze
the historical facts exactly as they are presented
in the source text. Right. We just want to understand
the mechanisms of these movements and how they
shape the state. you know, litigating the politics
ourselves. Our focus is on the why and the how,
not on rendering moral judgments. And if we truly
want to understand why these later generations
of farmers and politicians reacted the way they
did, we can't start in the 19th century. No,
we have to go way back. We have to start with
the environmental reality of the land itself.
To understand North Dakota, you have to understand
the people who originally mastered it. That sets
the absolute baseline for every newcomer who
ever stepped foot on the prairie. So let's wind
the clock back thousands of years. Long before
any European surveyor drew a rectangular border
on a map, this vast, imposing landscape was successfully
navigated and managed by Native American tribes.
Specifically, the Mandan, the Hidatsa, the Arikara,
the Sioux, and the Chippewa. And I use the word
manage very intentionally here. One detail from
the source is completely stopped me in my tracks.
It noted that these indigenous groups utilized
at least 349 different kinds of plants. Yeah,
that number requires us to pause and really consider
what it implies. 349 distinct plants. It's massive.
We're just talking about casual foraging, identifying,
processing, and utilizing that many plant species
represents a highly structured intergenerational
botanical science. They had basically mapped
the biological utility of the entire region.
Exactly. They knew precisely which roots yielded
complex medicines, which berries and stalks could
be processed into permanent dyes. Which fibers
possessed the tensile strength required for weaving
rope. And of course, how to maximize caloric
output for food. It is an encyclopedic knowledge
of a landscape that most outsiders just assume
is empty grass. And among these groups, the Mandan
specifically emerged in the early historical
record as something entirely unexpected to the
first Europeans. Right. By the time European
trade networks were just beginning to probe the
interior of the continent, the Mandan had constructed
a highly advanced agricultural and commercial
society. The sources detail the arrival of the
first European explorer, a French -Canadian named
L 'Auverendri, in 1738. He walked onto the plains,
expecting to find a scattering of nomadic temporary
camps. Instead, he found heavy infrastructure.
I mean, he documented large, permanent, heavily
fortified villages. Wow. Yeah, these weren't
temporary settlements. They were permanent earth
lodge cities supported by a massive, reliable
agricultural surplus. But what's fascinating
here is understanding why the Mandan, out of
all the groups, were able to build such a dominant
commercial empire. It wasn't just agricultural
skill. It was an absolute masterclass in geographic
strategy. So let's talk about that geography.
because the physical map is everything here.
Their villages were built right at the northernmost
reaches of the Missouri River. Precisely. And
if you look at a topographical map of North America,
that specific bend in the Missouri River is the
critical choke point. Why? Because it places
them closer than anyone else to the overland
portages that lead straight into the Hudson Bay
Basin. And just for anyone who might not be familiar
with the term, A portage is a stretch of land
where you have to physically carry your canoes
and cargo from one river system to another. Right.
So by controlling that specific bend in the river,
the Mandan were essentially sitting on the most
efficient highway connecting the southern river
systems to the northern river system. Exactly.
It gave them the absolute fastest, most direct
access to the French and British traders operating
out of the north. They became the indispensable
middlemen. You know, I was trying to visualized
this when I read the source material, and I couldn't
help but think of them as the 18th century equivalent
of Amazon distribution centers. That is a highly
accurate way to conceptualize it. Right, like
if you wanted European goods, guns, kettles,
metal tools to flow south, or if you wanted agricultural
surplus and pelts to flow north, it all had to
be righted through these permanent, perfectly
located logistical hubs managed by the Mandan.
They controlled the flow of goods across trade
networks that span the entire continent. And
on top of that geographic monopoly, they also
controlled a crucial local manufacturing resource.
Ah yes, Knife River Flint. Yeah. This was the
premium material for crafting sharp, durable
tools and weapons before the widespread introduction
of metallurgy. So they're sitting at the crossroads
of international trade, holding the premium raw
materials and feeding everyone with their agricultural
surplus. That level of permanence, that absolute
mastery of the environmental and geographic realities,
it defined the region for centuries. But as we
pivot into the 19th century, that reality undergoes
a violent systemic shift. It does. Through a
series of negotiations, pressures and treaties
with the expanding United States government,
the territory of these indigenous tribes was
fundamentally redefined and restricted. And by
1861, this massive geographic space was officially
incorporated into the newly created Dakota Territory.
Which presents the federal government and territorial
officials with a massive logistical problem.
Oh, a huge one. They've just drawn a border around
an ocean of grass that experiences brutally cold
winters. Yeah, and they need American citizens
to move there to secure the territory. But how
do you convince someone sitting in a comfortable
established city on the east coast to pack up
their family and move to an untamed freezing
prairie. You definitely can't just tell them
the truth about the weather. No, absolutely not.
You need to launch a marketing campaign. You
basically need to manufacture a myth. The myth
of North Dakota. Yeah. And it was a highly organized
state -sponsored propaganda effort. Territorial
officials produced pamphlets, commissioned glowing
newspaper accounts. And they distributed them
not just across the eastern United States, but
deep into Europe. They were selling a highly
curated three part fantasy to anyone who would
listen. Let's break down the psychology of this
marketing pitch because it is brilliant in its
manipulation. The first pillar was the myth of
the garden. They deliberately painted this picture
of an Eden like agricultural paradise. The brochures
promised a climate that was actually gentle and
soil so rich that you merely had to drop a seed
in the dirt and wait to harvest your fortune.
The second pillar appealed directly to the ego
and the American ethos. It was the work and win
philosophy. Pure American dream stuff. Exactly.
This was the pure unadulterated promise of the
American dream. The literature insisted that
the only barrier to immense wealth was your own
laziness. If you were willing to put your head
down and toil, the land guaranteed home ownership,
social mobility and total financial independence.
And the third pillar gave it all a sense of moral
destiny. They promoted the image of an empire
in the making, settled exclusively by good, just
and more. So it wasn't just a real estate pitch.
It was an invitation to build a righteous civilization.
Come to the garden, work hard, win big, and build
a moral empire. It's intoxicating. It is. But
as any modern business person will tell you,
a marketing pitch is entirely useless without
a distribution network. Yeah, you can print all
the pamphlets about the myth of the garden that
you want, but... Physically transporting tens
of thousands of humans and their farming equipment
out onto that grass requires infrastructure that
simply did not exist. Which brings us to the
actual engine of this entire historical era.
Who is building the roads to this manufactured
paradise? The answer dominating the late 19th
century is the corporate railroad industry. Without
the railroads, the state of North Dakota as a
political and demographic entity does not exist.
They triggered what historians call the Dakota
boom of the 1870s and 1880s. And the demographic
explosion detailed in the sources is almost difficult
to wrap your head around. In 1870, the recorded
population of the entire Dakota territory was
roughly 11 ,766 people. OK. Just 20 years later,
by 1890, it had surged to over 320 ,000. That
isn't just growth. That is a tidal wave of humanity.
I mean, the number of active farms went from
1700 to over 50 ,000. Townsides multiplied from
six to three 1010. It was this specific railroad
engineered influx that gave the territory the
population density required to split into North
and South Dakota and achieve full statehood in
November of 1889. But what I find truly fascinating
is looking under the hood at how the railroad
companies pulled this off, because we're looking
at two major corporate players here. The Northern
Pacific Railroad and the Great Northern Railroad.
And their business models were completely opposed
to one another. Let's examine the mechanics of
the Northern Pacific first because their strategy
relied heavily on federal subsidy. Right. The
United States government desperately wanted a
transcontinental rail link. So they offered the
Northern Pacific massive land grants. And the
mechanism worked like this. The government gave
the railroad company ownership of alternating
sections of land along their proposed route.
It looked like a giant checkerboard. Yes. The
railroad could then use this vast real estate
portfolio as collateral to borrow the immense
capital required to actually lay the steel tracks.
While the government held onto the remaining
checkerboard squares to offer directly to homesteaders...
On paper, it sounds like a brilliant public -private
partnership. The railroad gets collateral, the
government gets the infrastructure built, and
settlers get land. On paper, yes. But the sources
highlight a massive initial miscalculation by
the Northern Pacific. Building a railroad burns
through cash at an astonishing rate. They were
deeply in debt to bondholders. Oh, right. Furthermore,
owning millions of acres of land meant they were
liable for massive annual property taxes. That's
a huge burden. So to generate immediate liquidity
and shed that tax burden, the Northern Pacific
essentially panicked. They sold off enormous
tracts of their land grants at dirt cheap wholesale
prices to wealthy land speculators and corporate
investors. So they just dumped their greatest
asset for pennies on the dollar to make payroll.
Exactly. But the corporate leadership eventually
realized the magnitude of their error. They were
giving away the future value of the region. So,
by 1905, they completely inverted their strategy.
They stopped the wholesale dumping. Yes. Instead,
they focused on providing reliable train service
and actively teaching arriving settlers improved
farming methods. the value of the remaining land
skyrocketed. Right. The Northern Pacific began
selling land they had once deemed worthless directly
to actual farmers at premium retail prices. They
woke up and realized they weren't just running
a transportation company. They were running a
massive real estate development firm. Exactly.
Now, I want to contrast that heavily subsidized
model with James J. Hill and the Great Northern
Railroad. Exactly. Because this is where the
story takes a turn into sheer corporate aggression.
Oh, definitely. James J. Hill received absolutely
zero land grants from the federal government,
not a single acre. Which is a profound structural
disadvantage. I mean, if you don't have free
land to use as collateral, you have to operate
with ruthless efficiency. Exactly. Hill had to
purchase every inch of his right of way directly
from the government or private owners. And because
he didn't have a massive portfolio of free land
to sell to settlers, he couldn't just sit back
and wait for the government to advertise the
homesteads. He had to actively hunt for customers.
He set up recruitment agencies in Germany, he
set up offices in Scandinavia, he was running
an international marketing machine, printing
glossy brochures in foreign languages, and offering
heavily subsidized low -cost transatlantic tickets
to bring entire families from the old world directly
onto his rail lines in the new world. He was
vertically integrating his customer base. He
understood the fundamental economic reality of
his business. A railroad track lead across an
empty prairie generates zero revenue. Right.
You need stuff to haul. Exactly. He needed human
beings out there harvesting wheat to load into
his freight cars. And this desperate need to
control territory and secure a customer base
culminated in one of the most aggressive corporate
conflicts in Western history. The Railway War
of 1905. The 1905 Railway War. This detail in
the sources feels like a cutthroat boardroom
drama. You have James J. Hill's Great Northern
going head -to -head with Edward Pennington,
who is running the rival Sioux Line railroad.
They both realize that whoever controls the northern
tier of North Dakota controls the future freight
revenue of that entire region. So they engage
in a frantic, no -holds -barred race to lay down
tracks and clean the territory before the other
guy can. This rivalry results in almost 500 miles
of new tract being spiked into the dirt and over
50 completely new town sites being platted on
maps in a single year. It was an explosion of
infrastructure driven entirely by corporate animosity
and the desire to blockade a rival rather than
any organic human demand for those towns. But
wait. I struggle to call that a war or even a
mistake, as some historians imply. I have to
push back here. Weren't these railroads just
aggressively laying down the necessary infrastructure
for the future of the state? I mean, even if
the motivation was corporate spite, laying 500
miles of track connects the region to Chicago
and the Pacific. Isn't this just a brutal but
necessary national growing pain? That is the
argument the railroad executives made. Sure.
But look at the actual mechanism of what they
were doing on the ground. They weren't carefully
planning logistical hubs. They were rushing out,
finding an empty patch of grass, dropping a grid
on a map, and calling it a town purely to secure
the right -of -way and prevent the rival railroad
from building a spur line through that specific
valley. Wow. They were plotting towns where there
was no reliable water source, no geographic advantage,
and no economic reason for a human being to live
there. So they're basically weaponizing urban
planning. They're dropping fake towns like landmines
to block the other company's expansion. Precisely.
And the sources confirm the grim reality of this
tactic. Because there was no organic reason for
these places to exist, many of these 50 town
sites were never settled at all. They were just
coordinates on a corporate ledger. Once the war
ended and the territory was divided up, the railroad
companies abandoned them. They became instant
ghost towns, leaving nothing but empty grids
slowly being swallowed back by the prairie grass.
That is a haunting image. Corporate ambition
literally scarred into the earth and then abandoned.
But while those specific tactical ghost towns
failed, the broader strategy worked. The trains
brought in waves of real people. Yeah, they really
did. But that leads me to a major question. Think
about the psychology of a family who reads a
glossy brochure in Germany, boards a steamship,
takes a train to the end of the line, and steps
out onto a freezing, windswept plane. How do
they actually adapt to the stark reality of the
land once the myth of the garden violently collides
with a North Dakota winter? Well to answer that
we have to examine the complex cultural fabric
of the state during this massive 19th century
boom because the people stepping off those trains
were not a monolith. The demographic data from
the period reveals a deeply divided almost bifurcated
society. Broadly speaking you had two distinct
groups attempting to build a life here. On one
side, you had the Yankees. And these were native
-born Americans, mostly migrating from the East
Coast or the established Midwest. Right. And
the Yankees generally didn't come to break the
sod. They concentrated in the newly formed towns
and cities. They were the merchants setting up
shops, the bankers issuing loans, the lawyers,
the civic leaders. They were importing the social
structures of the East Coast directly into the
prairie towns. Exactly. They controlled the capital
and the municipal power. But out on the physical
land, doing the agonizing, backbreaking physical
labor of turning wild grass into commercial wheat
fields, you had the immigrants. And this population
was primarily composed of German Americans and
Scandinavian Americans. However, within that
massive immigrant wave, the sources isolate a
highly distinct, deeply fascinating subgroup
that requires our attention because of the profound
impact they had on the state's culture and agriculture.
The Germans from Russia. Yes. Their story is
incredible. If you're listening to this and assuming
these are just standard German immigrants who
decided to cross the ocean, you are missing one
of the most bizarre geopolitical detours in history.
This wide a detour. Let's really dive into the
Germans from Russia because they weren't migrating
from Munich or Berlin. They've been living deep
inside the Russian empire, primarily along the
Volga River and the Black Sea for generations.
Right. To understand why they ended up in North
Dakota, we actually have to rewind to the 1760s.
Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia, who
was actually German by birth, wanted to secure
the wilder frontiers of the Russian Empire and
modernize their archaic agricultural practices.
So she explicitly invited these advanced German
farmers to immigrate into Russia. And she offered
them an incredible deal. total exemption from
military conscription, exemption from taxes for
decades, and the absolute right to maintain their
German language, their schools, and their religion.
They were essentially allowed to operate as autonomous
German microstates deep inside Russian territory,
and they thrived there for over a century. But
eventually, the political winds in Russia shifted.
By the 1870s, Tsar Alexander II decided to revoke
those special privileges. He initiated a policy
of Russification. Yes. They began forcing the
German schools to teach in Russian, and most
terrifyingly for these pacifist farming communities,
they instituted a military draft, forcing German
men into the Russian army. So faced with the
erosion of their culture and the threat of conscription,
these communities made the agonizing decision
to uproot themselves again. Between roughly 1890
and the outbreak of the First World War, an estimated
100 ,000 of them fled the Russian Empire and
immigrated to the Great Plains of the United
States. In North Dakota, they settled in massive
numbers in the south central part of the state,
an area that quickly became known as the German
-Russian Triangle. Now, what is crucial for a
newcomer to understand is that these people did
not view themselves as typical German -Americans.
They had a completely different shared historical
trauma. on the Russian steppes by fiercely protecting
their isolation, and they brought that exact
same defensive cultural posture to North Dakota.
They settled in tight -knit, insular communities.
They continued to speak their specific dialects
of German. They raised exceptionally large families
to ensure enough labor for the farms. They built
incredibly distinctive, austere German -style
churches on the prairie, and they buried their
dead using these beautiful, intricate, hand -wrought
iron grave markers that you can still... see
in the cemeteries today. They were determined
to remain a people apart and agriculturally they
brought a specific expertise that permanently
altered the regional economy. While the Yankees
and the Bonanza farms focused almost exclusively
on wheat, many of the Germans from Russia possessed
the intense labor -driven expertise required
to cultivate sugar beets. Which is not a crop
you just casually throw on the ground. No, it
requires grueling manual labor to thin and harvest.
But it paid off. Sugar beets remain a massive,
incredibly lucrative pillar of the Upper Great
Plains agricultural economy to this very day.
They literally changed the agricultural DNA of
the state. They did. But their desire for cultural
isolation eventually collided violently with
global geopolitics. The sources make it clear
that assimilation was largely forced upon them.
When the United States entered World War One
against Germany and later World War Two, a wave
of intense, sometimes hysterical anti -German
sentiment swept across the country. Suddenly,
speaking German in a rural North Dakota town
wasn't just a cultural quirk. It was viewed as
highly suspect, unpatriotic, and in some cases,
physically dangerous. The pressure to prove their
American -ness was immense. The sources note
that by the end of the Second World War, the
public use of the German language in these communities
went into a steep and terminal decline. Today,
the descendants of the Germans from Russia speak
English, though you can still hear echoes of
the old dialects in some traditional localized
singing groups. So you have this landscape completely
transformed by incredibly hardworking immigrant
populations, and they're operating in an environment
where agriculture is rapidly shifting from subsistence
farming to aggressive commercialization. This
is the era of the bonanza farms. These were not
the romanticized small family homesteads we like
to picture. These were massive, highly corporatized,
mechanized wheat farming operations, sometimes
spanning tens of thousands of acres. And they
were heavily promoted and often owned by the
railroad executives and eastern investors. Because
the railroads needed massive guaranteed volume
to make their freight lines profitable. A guy
with a mule and 40 acres doesn't fill a train.
A corporate farm with an army of seasonal laborers
and steam tractors fills a train. But whether
you were a laborer on a bonanza farm or an immigrant
family trying to prove up a small homestead,
your survival was entirely tethered to the brutal
realities of the local economy. And if we really
want to understand the simmering anger that defined
early North Dakota, we have to look at the mechanics
of daily survival. Yes, the retail experience.
How people actually bought their food and clothing
revealed everything you need to know about the
staggering class divide in this society. The
contrast between the rural general store and
the city department store is a perfect microcosm
of the economic tension. Let's examine the rural
mechanism first. The immigrant farmers out on
the prairie were entirely dependent on small
independently owned local general stores. These
businesses operated on razor -thin margins. They
had limited stock, inventory moved very slowly,
and to survive, the store owner had to charge
exorbitant retail prices. But the most critical
detail is this. There were no price tags. None.
The price of a sack of flour or a pair of boots
wasn't fixed. You walked in, and you had to negotiate
the price face -to -face with the owner. And
interestingly, the sources point out that in
these rural communities, the men did almost all
of the shopping. which seems counterintuitive
to modern gender roles until you realize why.
They weren't going into the store to browse.
No, they were going in to secure a line of credit.
Precisely. The rural economy was virtually cashless
for most of the year. The farmers didn't have
liquid capital until their wheat was harvested
and sold in the fall. So they had to buy a year's
worth of supplies on credit, legally pledging
their future crop against the ledger. The general
store owner wasn't merely a merchant. He was
essentially an unregulated risk assessor. His
own financial survival depended entirely on his
ability to accurately judge whether a specific
farmer's crop was going to survive the drought,
the hail and the grasshoppers well enough to
pay off the accumulated debt. It was an entire
economy built on a mountain of high interest
debt, fragile trust and the absolute mercy of
the weather. Every transaction in that store
was fraught with existential tension. Now take
that anxiety -ridden, male -dominated rural negotiation
and contrast it with what the Yankees were experiencing
in the city. The urban elite were shopping at
locally -owned, multi -story department stores.
It is a completely different commercial universe.
In the city department stores, you had a vast
curated selection of goods. And crucially, every
single item had a tag with a firmly fixed price.
There was no haggling, no tense negotiations
over the value of a future wheat crop. And because
it wasn't a credit -based economy, these transactions
were primarily conducted in cash. The entire
demographic of the customer base shifted. The
shoppers in the cities were largely middle class
and upper class housewives. The stores intentionally
catered to them. By 1900, these stores were investing
heavily in attractive glass window displays to
lure in foot traffic. They hired experienced
professional clerks who knew the intricacies
of the products. And these urban stores were
deeply connected to the national commercial grid.
They didn't rely on local barter. The owners
would send their professional buyers out on the
train to Denver, to Minneapolis or all the way
to Chicago once or twice a year to study the
latest national merchandising trends and physically
bring high fashion and luxury goods. back to
North Dakota. Which is absolutely staggering
when you place it side by side with the rural
experience just a few miles outside of town.
Exactly. So what does this all mean? Let's look
at the incredible friction we've just mapped
out. You have the immigrant farmers out on the
freezing prairie doing the brutal physical labor
of wrestling wheat from the earth. They are drowning
in personal debt at the general store. Entirely
at the mercy of the weather and completely hostage
to whatever freight rates the railroad monopolies
decide to charge them. to move their grain. Meanwhile,
the city folks, the Yankee merchants, the bankers
holding the mortgages, and the railroad barons
control absolutely all of the capital. They are
shopping for Chicago fashions with cash while
the farmers beg for a sack of flour on credit.
You don't have to be an economist to see that
this is an unsustainable, explosive situation.
It is the textbook definition of a society ripe
for a populist revolt. The agrarian class gradually
woke up to the realization that the entire economic
deck was structurally stacked against them. The
railroads charged exorbitant unregulated rates
to move their grain to market. The local banks
charged usurious interest rates on their loans,
and the city middlemen, the grain elevator operators
in Minneapolis, were taking a massive cut of
the profit by manipulating the grading of the
wheat. And politically, they had no voice. The
state government in its early decades was entirely
dominated by the Republican Party, which was
heavily aligned with those exact corporate and
banking interests. The very first governor of
North Dakota, a man named John Miller, was quite
literally a manager of one of those massive corporate
bonanza farms. So the ethnic Inbred farmers,
particularly in the north central and northwestern
parts of the state, felt completely exploited
economically and entirely locked out politically.
How do you fight back against a system that owns
the banks, the trains, and the governor's mansion?
You fight back through radical, disciplined organization.
In 1915, a new political entity is formed, the
Nonpartisan League, widely known as the NPL.
And this is where the political history of North
Dakota takes a turn that deeply confuses a lot
of modern political observers. The NPL was a
movement rooted deeply in agrarian populism,
and it found its strongest, most militant base
of support among the Norwegian American farmers.
But the leaders of the MPL were tactically brilliant.
They recognized a fundamental flaw in American
politics. Third parties almost always fail. They
split the vote and die out. So rather than forming
a new farmers party, they decided to operate
as an insurgent faction within the dominant Republican
party. They essentially acted as a political
Trojan horse. They said. We aren't going to fight
the Republicans in the general election. We are
going to run our own radical pro farmer candidates
in the Republican primaries and simply take over
the party apparatus from the inside. It was the
stroke of strategic genius, but their actual
platform was truly revolutionary for the era.
They didn't just want tighter regulations on
the railroads or better interest rates. No, they
explicitly advocated for total state control,
literal government ownership of the key industries
that were exploiting the agrarian class. They
wanted the state government to step in and act
as a massive counterweight to the power of out
-of -state corporate monopolies. OK, let's really
pause here and dig into this because this is
the concept that is hardest to reconcile with
our modern political labels. When most people
think of North Dakota today, they think of a
reliably conserved state that generally favors
free market capitalism, deregulation, and smaller
government. But here we have the historical record
from 1915 showing a massive coalition of conservative
rural farmers successfully campaigning for the
total government takeover of major industries.
That is, by any modern definition, a socialist
platform being aggressively enacted by rural
farmers. How do we make sense of that? This raises
an incredibly important question about how historical
actors view their own motives versus how we label
them retroactively. For these farmers, the MPL
platform was not about embracing Marxist ideology
or reading communist theory. It was about raw,
practical survival. They were not attempting
to overthrow capitalism as a concept. They firmly
believed that capitalism, as it was currently
being ruthlessly practiced by the railroad and
milling monopolies in Minneapolis, was attempting
to overthrow them. They felt the free market
had become a rigged monopoly. Exactly. They viewed
the state government as the only entity large
enough and powerful enough to protect their private
property, their family farms from the predations
of out -of -state corporate monopolies. They
wanted state socialism in specific sectors purely
to guarantee their own survival as independent
capitalists. We need the government to build
a bigger stick so we can fight the railroad.
And the astonishing thing is it worked. The NPL's
electoral success was absolute. In 1916, running
under the NPL banner, a farmer named Lynn Frazier
won the governor's race with a staggering 79
percent of the popular vote. By 1918, the NPL
had swept the elections and won total control
of both houses of the state legislature. And
unlike a lot of politicians, they didn't moderate
once they got into power. They ruthlessly enacted
their radical populist platform. They systematically
rewired the mechanics of the state government
to serve the agrarian class. They established
a state -owned railroad to force freight rates
down. Most critically, they created the North
Dakota mill and elevator. Let's explain the mechanics
of why that matters. Before this, farmers had
to sell their grain to corporate elevators owned
by Minneapolis cartels. The corporate elevator
would artificially grade the wheat poorly, claiming
it was full of dirt or weeds, pay the farmer
a fraction of its worth, and then turn around
and sell it at a premium. The farmer had no alternative.
Precisely. By building a state -owned mill and
elevator, the government provided a massive publicly
-owned alternative. Farmers could take their
grain to a facility that guaranteed fair grading
and fair market prices, effectively breaking
the Minneapolis monopoly. And it wasn't a temporary
experiment. The North Dakota mill and elevator
is still operating today. As is the Bank of North
Dakota, which the NPL also created. It remains,
to this day, the only state -owned bank in the
United States. It was designed to act as a clearinghouse
for public funds and to issue fair, low -interest
agricultural loans directly to farmers, bypassing
the predatory commercial banks. But their legislative
blitz didn't stop there. They established a home
building association to provide state financing
for residential construction. They passed a highly
progressive graduated state income tax that specifically
distinguished between earned income like the
physical labor of farming and unearned income
like stock dividends earned by Eastern investors.
They also authorized a state hail insurance fund.
If a freak hailstorm wiped out your crop, the
state provided a safety net so you didn't lose
your land to the bank. They also established
a workman's compensation fund. It is an incredibly
aggressive, comprehensive legislative record
achieved in a remarkably short amount of time.
And at the absolute center of this political
machine is one of the most chaotic, colorful,
and ruthless characters in North Dakota history.
William Langer. William Langer. It is virtually
impossible to discuss the mechanics of North
Dakota politics without analyzing the career
of William Langer. The sources outline his career
trajectory, and it honestly reads like the script
of a political thriller. He was a bit of an anomaly
in the NPL because he was one of the few urban
college educated lawyers in a movement dominated
by Burt farmers. He gets elected as the state
attorney general on the NPL ticket in 1916, and
he immediately proves himself to be a total wild
card. He views the law not as a subtle instrument,
but as a sledgehammer. The sources note that
he personally led raids to shut down illegal
brothels in the city of Minot. At another point,
feeling constrained by state jurisdiction, he
manages to get himself temporarily appointed
as a federal marshal for the sole purpose of
legally crossing state lines to raid a brewery
operating in Minnesota. He possessed a flair
for the dramatic, but beneath the showmanship,
he was a brilliantly ruthless political operator.
As the NPL grew, Langer was instrumental in transforming
it from a loose, grassroots agrarian movement
into a highly disciplined, almost authoritarian
political machine. his career reaches its absolute
peak and its lowest, most criminal depths during
the Great Depression. He managed to get himself
elected governor in 1932 at the absolute nadir
of the global economic crisis. The state is literally
blowing away in the dust bowl. Wheat prices have
collapsed to pennies and farmers are losing their
land to the banks by the thousands. And what
does Governor Langer do? He doesn't wait for
the legislature. He takes unprecedented massive
executive action. He unilaterally declares a
moratorium on all debt. He legally halts all
farm foreclosures in the state. He even commands
the state -owned grain elevator to institute
an embargo, artificially raising the price of
wheat paid to the state's farmers above the national
market rate. He essentially throws the entire
sovereign weight of the state government between
the desperate farmers and the Eastern banks.
Which understandably elevated him to the status
of a folk hero among the rural population. He
was saving their generational livelihoods. But
his methods for maintaining power were highly
corrupt and legally indefensible. To fund the
NPL's primary political propaganda newspaper,
Langer instituted a policy where he solicited
or rather systematically extorted 5 % of the
annual salary of every single person employed
by the state government. It was a blatant shakedown.
Donate 5 % of your paycheck to my political paper
or you'll be fired from your state job tomorrow.
Exactly. And that brazen extortion finally caught
the attention of the federal government. Langer
was indicted on federal conspiracy charges. He
went to trial, was convicted, and was actually
physically removed from the governor's office
in 1934 under the threat of federal prison. But
the story doesn't end there. Not at all. He launched
a relentless series of appeals, eventually securing
an acquittal on a technicality. He immediately
ran for governor again in 1936, won the election,
and then eventually elevated himself to the United
States Senate, where he served from 1940 until
his death in 1959. That is absolutely wild to
me. The guy gets federally indicted and removed
from office for running an extortion ring on
state employees, and the voters welcome him back
with open arms and eventually promote him to
Washington. Yeah, it's quite a comeback. Why?
How do you explain that level of voter loyalty
to a known corrupt official? Because, as the
historical sources astutely point out, the voters
were making a calculated pragmatic choice. They
willingly overlooked his overt opportunism, the
extortion, and the constant swirl of bribery
rumors because they remembered 1932. During the
darkest, most terrifying days of the Depression.
When the banks were coming to take the land their
parents had bled for, William Langer was the
only politician who actually physically intervened
to save them. He stopped the foreclosures. To
a starving farmer, a corrupt politician who abuses
his power to save your farm is infinitely preferable
to an honest politician who strictly follows
the law and lets the bank take your home. It's
the ultimate triumph of pragmatism over ethical
purity. He may be a crook, but he's our crook.
But speaking of political mechanisms and how
they can be weaponized, we have to mention the
incredible irony of the recall mechanism. What's
fascinating here is that the NPL, in their initial
idealistic push to strip power from the elites
and give it back to the common people, championed
and passed a law allowing for the popular recall
of elected officials. Right. The Democratic theory
being that if a politician betrays the will of
the people, the public shouldn't have to wait
for the next election cycle. They can organize
a petition and vote to remove that official immediately.
Well, the historical irony is almost too perfect.
The conservative opposition to the MPL eventually
reorganized, studied the new laws and utilized
that exact same populist recall mechanism against
the MPL. And Lynn Frazier, the very MPL governor
who championed and signed the recall into law,
became the very first state governor in United
States history to be successfully recalled and
removed from office by the voters. It is a flawless
historical example of how systemic political
tools have no loyalty. Once you create a mechanism
of power, it can and will be wielded by your
opponents. Exactly. Now as we move out of the
trauma of the Great Depression and enter the
1940s and 50s, we see this intense laser focus
on protecting the local agrarian way of life
start to mutate. It transitions from being strictly
a local economic policy into a comprehensive
philosophical lens through which the state views
the entire rest of the world. If we connect this
to the bigger picture, the radical agrarian populism
of the NPL evolves directly into a fierce incredibly
unified congressional isolationist bloc. In the
post -WWII era, North Dakota's delegation in
Washington, which included Senators William Langer
and Milton Young, along with Representatives
William Lemke and Usher Burdick, became some
of the loudest, most persistent voices against
American global interventionism in the entire
country. The sources list their voting records,
and it is a comprehensive wall of no. They vehemently
opposed the military buildup of the Cold War.
They opposed the creation of the United Nations.
They voted against the Truman Doctrine. They
voted against the financial aid of the Marshall
Plan. They fought the formation of NATO. They
opposed the Korean War. Basically, if a treaty
or a policy involved global entanglement, they
fought it tooth and nail. And again, we must
ask why. It is very easy for modern observers
to dismiss this voting record as simple backward
contrarianism, but it was actually a deeply logical
extension of the state's demographics and their
specific economic trauma. First, we have to remember
the ethnic makeup we discussed earlier in the
19th century. The deep -seated historical fears
of the German and Scandinavian American populations
played a massive, undeniable role here. These
were communities who had literally fled Europe
to escape militarism, endless wars, and forced
conscription. They had absolutely zero desire
to see American wealth spent and American blood
spilled intervening in the very European conflicts
they had sacrificed everything to escape. And
beyond the deep ethnic ties, there was a profound
localized economic fear. Representative Usher
Burdick, in particular, was a fascinating figure
to read about. He was a populist who deeply feared
the spread of communism, yes, but he equally
feared the concept of a world government, which
he viewed as a direct existential threat to American
sovereignty. To Burdick and the farmers who voted
for him, abstract diplomatic concepts like the
United Nations or NATO weren't noble peacekeeping
efforts. They were massive, unaccountable machines
designed to drag rural boys into foreign wars.
And war with its rationing price controls and
conscription was a direct obvious danger to the
state's fragile agricultural economy and their
peaceful lifestyle. They looked at the growing
global order and essentially said we just want
to be left alone to farm. They firmly believe
that globalism only served the financial interests
of the munitions manufacturers and the wealthy
East Coast banking elites, the exact same people
who had exploited them in the 1920s, while the
rural farmers would inevitably be the ones paying
the brutal price and higher taxes and lost sons.
Leave us alone to farm. It is a powerful, deeply
ingrained sentiment. But the supreme irony of
this era is that while these politicians were
fighting tooth and nail in Washington to protect
the traditional independent farming lifestyle
from external global threats, the farming lifestyle
itself was being completely dismantled and rebuilt
by technology right beneath their feet. By 1956,
the political landscape experiences a seismic
shift as the remnants of the radical MPL finally
merge into the mainstream Democratic Party. But
far more importantly, the physical day -to -day
landscape of agriculture is transforming. The
post -war period brings rapid advances in agricultural
technology. The widespread adoption of massive
mechanization, gasoline and diesel tractors replacing
horses entirely, along with the massive introduction
of chemical fertilizers and pesticides fundamentally
altered the economic math of farming. The sources
highlight a stark, undeniable trend in the data.
The farms increased massively in total acreage,
but they decreased dramatically in sheer numbers.
The era of the 160 acre family homestead was
dead. You didn't need 50 guys with horse -drawn
plows to harvest a section of land anymore. You
needed one guy sitting in the air -conditioned
cab of a massive combine harvester. Exactly.
The need for human labor plummeted. Farm tendency
diminished significantly. The types of crops
being grown also shifted to maximize efficiency.
Traditional cash grains were increasingly replaced
by feed grains and roughage designed for livestock.
And furthermore, because of federal government
interventions like the soil dang programs and
strict wheat acreage allotments designed to prevent
another collapse in prices, over 30 % of the
state's arable cropland wasn't even being planted
or harvested. So on an industrial level, the
efficiency of the state goes through the roof.
The standard of living for the mega farmers who
managed to survive and consolidate land went
up significantly. But the human cost of that
incredible agricultural efficiency is a devastating
decline in the rural population. Fewer farms
means fewer families. Fewer families means the
local general stores go bankrupt, the rural post
offices close, and the schools and churches are
forced to consolidate or board up their windows
entirely. For nearly a century, stretching from
the end of the early pioneer boom days right
up to the year 2000, the demographic data shows
flat or actively declining population numbers
in these vast rural counties. It genuinely looked
as though the state had long ago reached its
peak ecological carrying capacity, realized it
had overextended, and was slowly, painfully deflating
back to a sustainable baseline. But then as history
is so fond of doing, a massive new technological
variable was introduced that completely violently
reversed a century of established trends. We
jump forward to the dawn of the 21st century.
The year 2000 hits and suddenly the state experiences
an explosion of growth that rivals the 1880s.
But this time it isn't because of a new strain
of drought resistant wheat and it isn't because
of a new transcontinental railroad. It is because
of what was buried miles deep beneath the earth.
The perfection of horizontal drilling and hydraulic
fracturing unlocked massive previously inaccessible
reserves of extractable oil in the back and shale
formation in western North Dakota. The back in
oil boom. It triggered a modern -day hyper -industrialized
gold rush. The demographic impact was instantaneous
and staggering. By 2013, the census reported
that North Dakota's population had surged to
hit an all -time historical high of 723 ,393
residents. A state that had been bleeding population
for decades officially became the fastest growing
state in the entire nation. It's an incredible
whiplash -inducing reversal of fortune. Suddenly
you have this massive influx of newcomers flooding
into the western counties, echoing the Dakota
boom of the 1880s. But the sources provide us
with detailed sociological survey data. on the
profile of these modern migrants. And the reality
completely upends expectations. It really does
defy the popular media stereotypes of a rough
-and -tumble, lawless oil boom town filled entirely
with transient roughnecks. The survey data shows
that these new residents are overwhelmingly young,
which is vital for a state that had an aging
demographic. 60 % of the newcomers are between
21 and 40 years old. Furthermore, they are highly
educated. 45 % hold four -year college degrees
and another 35 percent possess some college or
specialized vocational training. But here is
the single most striking counterintuitive fact
from that survey data. When you ask these highly
educated young people why they packed up their
lives and moved to North Dakota, you would naturally
assume the number one answer is money. It's an
oil boom. The salaries are huge. But the data
shows they're actually motivated more by intangible
quality of life values than by pure economic
incentives. The survey asked them to rank their
motivations. The top reasons they cited were
a desire for a safer place to live, which 58
% mentioned as a primary factor. 54 % stated
they wanted to be closer to relatives, indicating
a return migration of people who had previously
left. 48 % were looking for a lower, more manageable
cost of living compared to coastal cities. And
remarkably, 47 % specifically cited the quality
of the natural environment as a major draw. I
really had to let that sink in when I read it.
People are migrating to the absolute epicenter
of a massive heavy industrial oil boom. And almost
half of them are doing it because they desire
the quality of the natural environment. It is
such a fascinating paradox, but it makes a strange
kind of historical sense when you zoom out. The
desperate newcomers in the 1880s came because
they were sold the romanticized myth of the garden.
The educated newcomers today are coming for a
sense of physical safety, family proximity, and
the stark beauty of the natural landscape. Despite
all the advanced technology, the satellite -guided
combines and the massive oil rigs, it all still
fundamentally comes back to the psychological
pull of the land. It inevitably always comes
back to the land, which brings us to the most
controversial, the most hotly debated, and perhaps
the most important historical theory about North
Dakota's existence. If we're going to synthesize
all of this, the aggressive railroads, the radical
MPL, the shrinking family farms, and the modern
oil booms, we have to look at the work of a historian
named Owen B. Robinson. He wrote what is still
widely considered the only truly comprehensive
definitive history of the state. And Robinson
wasn't interested in just listing dates and governors.
He attempted to identify the underlying DNA of
the state. He identified five core themes that
he believed defined the North Dakota experience.
Dependence on outside forces, radicalism in politics,
economic disadvantage due to geography, constant
adjustment to the climate, and the highly controversial
Too much mistake. The too much mistake. This
is essentially the grand unifying theory of North
Dakota history, according to Robinson, and it
is a concept every resident must grapple with.
OK, let's break this down clearly. What exactly
is the too much mistake? Robinson argued that
during that initial frantic Dakota boom in the
1880s and 90s, driven by the deceptive myth of
the garden and the hyper aggressive corporate
expansion of the rival railroads, North Dakota
simply built too much infrastructure for its
geographic reality. They plotted far too many
towns on the map, laid down thousands of miles
of unnecessary railroad track, opened way too
many small town banks, built too many local schools
and redundant government institutions, and ultimately
brought in hundreds of thousands of too many
people for what the land could actually sustainably
support in the long term. Because at its core,
and this is the vital environmental truth, North
Dakota is a subhumid grassland. Exactly. We need
to define subhumid grassland. It means the region
operates on a permanent structural precipitation
deficit. It is not the lush, easy, well -watered
paradise the marketing pamphlets promise the
German immigrants. Rainfall is highly variable,
often localized, and frequently insufficient
for dense agriculture. Drought is not a rare
anomaly there. Drought is a regular expected
feature of the climate cycle. The environment
is harsh, stark, and dictates its own unforgiving
terms. Therefore, the idea of giving everyone
a 160 -acre homestead and expecting them to thrive
was a geographic delusion. You need thousands
of acres to survive a drought year. Robinson
argued that because the state's entire foundational
infrastructure was overbuilt based on a false
marketing driven premise. It was doomed to a
painful, protracted future. He stated clearly
that the state would face a binary choice. It
would either have to slowly, painfully revert
back to a natural grassland as people starved
out and left. Or the population would have to
rationally, purposefully control its government
and aggressively lower its expectations to adjust
to the stark reality of the land. Basically,
he looked at the empty ghost towns created by
the 1905 railway war and said, that isn't just
a corporate mistake, that is a microcosm of the
entire state's trajectory. And as you can imagine,
the political establishment absolutely hated
this book. Oh, I can completely understand why
politicians despise this theory. If you are a
governor or a chamber of commerce president trying
to attract outside investment and new businesses
to your state, the absolute last thing you want
is the state's preeminent historian publishing
a book that tells the entire country, hey, we
actually capped out our geographic potential
in 1890, and everything we've built since then
is essentially a structural mistake. The sources
mention that politicians, like a state official
named Joe Satrem, openly and bitterly blamed
Robinson's book for inspiring a whole generation
of state leaders to adopt a defeatist attitude
and lower their expectations for the state's
economic future. They wanted cheerleaders who
believed the state could grow endlessly through
sheer willpower, and Robinson was telling them
the environment had a hard mathematical cap.
But whether the civic boosters and politicians
liked his terminology or not, Robinson had tapped
into a profound undeniable truth that the state's
writers, poets, and artists have always intrinsically
understood. If you are a newcomer moving to the
state today, understanding this cultural mindset
is absolutely essential. When you look at North
Dakotan literature, whether it's historical fiction,
modern poetry, or personal memoirs, The narrative
constantly, obsessively revolves around the land.
It's unavoidable. It is the main character of
every story. The literature highlights the immense,
almost spiritual beauty of the wide open spaces,
but it constantly contrasts that beauty with
the land's total unforgivingness. It explores
the deep solace of the prairie, juxtaposed against
the terrifying, stark uniformity of a winter
blizzard. The literature acknowledges a fundamental
truth. This landscape demands incredible, grueling
physical and psychological hard work just to
survive on a baseline level, let alone thrive.
The fundamental relationship between the human
beings and the landscape has barely shifted a
single degree since Le Verandrie first walked
into those Mandan villages in 1738. The tools
and the technology have certainly evolved. We
have transitioned from trading Knife River Flint
to operating massive satellite guided combine
harvesters and utilizing complex hydraulic fracturing
rigs. But the core underlying negotiation with
the harsh environment remains exactly the same.
You either adapt to what the subhumid grassland
allows or the grassland expels you. It really
is an incredible humbling perspective when you
pull back and view this entire historical timeline.
We started this deep dive with the Mandan tribes
brilliantly managing vast continent spanning
trade networks from their permanent fortified
hubs on the Missouri River. We watched the Gilded
Age railroad barons violently carve up the prairie,
aggressively planting fake towns like chess pieces
just to blockade their corporate rivals. We saw
the fiercely independent Germans from Russia
arriving after fleeing the Tsar, desperate to
plant sugar beets and protect their isolated
culture, only to find themselves trapped in an
unregulated economic system that slowly bled
them dry through debt. which in turn sparked
one of the most incredible counterintuitive political
uprisings in American history, the Nonpartisan
League, where conservative rural farmers essentially
hijacked the Republican Party and enacted a socialist
framework of state -owned banks and grain mills
simply to survive the predations of the free
market. A desperate survival instinct that eventually
morphed into a fierce, uncompromising national
isolationism during the Cold War, driven by a
deep -seated fear that globalism would destroy
their localized agrarian peace. And finally,
we arrive at the modern era, where over a century
of declining rural population and farm consolidation
is suddenly, violently reversed by the back -and
-oil boom, bringing a massive new wave of highly
educated young people searching, some hold ironically,
for a pristine natural environment and a quiet
safe life amidst the oil derricks. It is an absolutely
wild, completely nonlinear historical ride. It
truly is a history defined by extremes. If we
connect this all back to the bigger picture,
the foundational struggle of North Dakota is
the eternal human struggle of balancing immense
boundless human ambition against the stark, unyielding
mathematical realities of nature. Which leaves
me with one final lingering thought that I can't
shake. Yeah. If historian Elwin Robinson was
fundamentally right about that 19th century too
much mistake. If he was correct that the state
massively overbuilt its railroads its banking
towns and its agricultural infrastructure for
environment that simply couldn't sustain it long
term. It forces us to ask. How will historians
a century from now view the massive, rapid, multi
-billion dollar infrastructure boom happening
right now to support the back in oil fields?
Exactly. Are we currently witnessing the birth
of a sustainable, technologically advanced new
era for the state that will last centuries? Or
is this massive influx of people and capital
just the 21st century version of the 1905 railway
war? Is it just a temporary, frantic corporate
frenzy destined to eventually exhaust the resource,
fade away, and leave its own beautiful, stark,
multi -million dollar ruins out on the prairie
grass. Only time and the ultimate carrying capacity
of the land will tell. Something to seriously
think about the next time you look at a map or
the next time you fly over the upper Midwest
and assume it's just empty space. Thank you,
The Learner, for sending us these incredible
historical sources and for prompting us to take
this journey. We hope this custom deep dive delivered
the perspective you were looking for. To all
our listeners, Keep asking difficult questions.
Keep looking beneath the surface narratives and
always remember to question the history buried
in the earth beneath your feet.