party but in ambitious efforts
to capture the dominant party in the State. Thus in Wisconsin the
president of the state union of the American Society of Equity, a
farmers' organization which has heretofore been mainly interested in
cooperative buying and selling, was recently put forward by a "Farmers
and Laborers Conference" as candidate for the nomination for governor on
the Republican ticket and had the active support of the official organ
of the society. In North Dakota, the Non-Partisan League, a farmers'
organization avowedly political in its purposes, captured the Republican
party a few years ago and now has complete control of the state
government. The attempt of the League to seize the reins in Minnesota
has been unsuccessful as yet, but Democratic and Republican managers are
very much alarmed at its growing power. The organized farmers are once
more a power in Western politics.

It is not, however, by votes cast and elections won or by the permanence
of parties and organizations that the political results of the agrarian
crusade are to be measured. The People's Party and its predecessors,
with the farmers' organizations which supported them, professed to put
measures before men and promulgated definite programs of legislation.
Many of the proposals in these programs which were ridiculed at the time
have long since passed beyond the stage of speculation and discussion.
Regulation of railroad charges by national and state government,
graduated income taxes, popular election of United States Senators, a
parcels post, postal savings banks, and rural free delivery of mail
are a few of these once visionary demands which have been satisfied by
Federal law and constitutional amendment. Antitrust legislation has
been enacted to meet the demand for the curbing of monopolies; and
the Federal land bank system which has recently gone into operation is
practically the proposal of the Northwestern Alliance for government
loans to farmers, with the greenback feature eliminated. Even the demand
for greater volume and flexibility of currency has been met, though in
ways quite different from those proposed by the farmers.*

* In July, 1894, when the People's Party was growing
rapidly, the editor of the Review of Reviews declared:
"Whether the Populist party is to prove itself capable of
amalgamating a great national political organization or
whether its work is to be done through a leavening of the