large water powers and large commercial lumber tracts."
Five years ago a Non-Partisan League of farmers was organized in North Dakota. It stands for "State ownership of marketing facilities, such as terminal elevators, flour mills, packing houses, cold storage plants, and State banks." At the present it controls the North Dakota Government and has State officials in Minnesota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Nebraska and Colorado. A year ago, it had 188,365 members, and since then it has grown very much. In its last convention it added to its program the Plumb Plan and government ownership of the coal mines.
In North Dakota, labor has coöperated with the League from the start. Recently there has been formed in Minnesota, a Non-Partisan League for workingmen, which, in alliance with the Non-Partisan League of farmers, has become a very strong political combination. In the State of Washington a similar alliance has been made.
The programmes of the Non-Partisan Leagues, the Labor Party and the Committee of 48 unite in demanding the public ownership of a number of industries. The Labor Party stands for the public ownership of the largest number of industries of any of these groups, calling for the public ownership of basic industries and the banking and credit systems. All of them attack Capitalism as now organized and extended, but at the same time all leave a wide field for private ownership. They even leave a wide field for capitalistic organization. None of them plans the common ownership, for example, of factories engaged in other than basic industries and thus none of them proposes the elimination of capitalistic business.
For these reasons, although public ownership by their success would he extended over a large part of industry, the Socialist society would not be inaugurated.
