During the administration of Gov. Frank Briggs (1897-98) the Spanish-American War broke out. The entire National Guard volunteered its services, but many members could not be accepted because of the quota set for North Dakota. North Dakota volunteers took part in 30 engagements and skirmishes during the Philippine insurrection.
Governor Briggs died in July 1898 and his term was completed by the Lieutenant Governor, Joseph M. Devine, who later served several years as commissioner of immigration. Both Briggs and Devine were Republicans, and they were succeeded in 1898 by another member of their party, Frederick B. Fancher, a leader in the Farmers' Alliance. Fancher declined a second term, and was succeeded by Maj. Frank White, who had served in the Philippines. White found the State debt the chief problem of his administration. He served two terms and yielded his office to E. Y. Sarles.
Legislation during Sarles' term tended toward control and regulation of corporations. A board was created to supervise State banks, and the manner of organizing insurance companies in the State was prescribed.
Sarles was defeated for reelection by "Honest John" Burke, a Democrat, and the only Governor of this State to serve three terms. From the governorship he left North Dakota to become United States Treasurer under President Wilson, later served as chief justice of the North Dakota Supreme Court, remaining a member of the court until his death in 1937. Crawford, in his history of North Dakota, has said, "The legislative history of the Burke administrations is an instructive illustration of the ideals and motives which were so characteristic of the [Theodore] Roosevelt era." State institutions were liberally provided for, a primary election law was enacted, prohibition laws were enforced, schools were improved, and various regulatory offices and boards were created.
A second revolution in North Dakota political history was ushered in with the election of Burke. The Progressive Republicans, enthusiastic supporters of the so-called "LaFollette reforms," had formed a coalition with the Democrats to elect this first Democrat Governor of North Dakota. "It was," according to Judge Andrew Bruce in his book The Non-Partisan League, "the revolution which laid the foundations for the present Non-Partisan League, for in it the farmers found a new war cry and new objects of anathema. The war cry was 'North Dakota for North Dakotans' and the objects of their anathema were 'Big Business, McKenzie, and McKenzieism.'"
Gov. Louis B. Hanna succeeded Burke in 1913. In 1912, a Presidential election year, North Dakota's electoral votes went to Woodrow Wilson. New apportionment gave this State three representatives in Congress instead of two. Governor Hanna asserted his belief in businesslike administration of government offices, and revised the accounting methods in State departments. Throughout this period tendencies in the State were progressive: social legislation was favored; the State grew rapidly in population; new towns were springing up; the automobile age had arrived.
Through all this ran the thread of the second political revolution which Burke's election had begun, and which was continued through the Hanna administration. It was directed principally against injustices in the grain trade. Farmers were incapable of developing their own marketing facilities. Millions had been invested in the mills and elevators of St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth, and in the "line" (corporation) elevator companies throughout North Dakota. The farmers complained of unfair methods of grading and docking their grain; they claimed that the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce was a closed corporation, and that its members were identified with the big milling and elevator interests. Even conservative Senator McCumber of North Dakota protested in 1916 before the United States Senate against abuses in the grain trade.
The Equity Exchange had been organized in 1909 to act as a farmers' general selling agency in St. Paul, but had been denied membership in the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce. The Society of Equity and the Equity Exchange tried to get a bill through the 1915 legislature for the establishment of a State-owned elevator, but the attempt failed. Indignation at the defeat of the bill resulted in the birth, in February 1915, of a new political party, the Nonpartisan[1] League.
[1] The party name was originally spelled "Non-Partisan" but through usage has been changed to its present form.
A. C. Townley, a genius in the art of organization, spread the league gospel through the State. Townley had begun life in poverty, had failed in a large-scale flax-growing enterprise, and had for a time been identified with the Socialist Party. A. C. Bowen suggested the formation of the league. Charles Edward Russell was the first editor of the newspaper, the Non-Partisan Leader, and Walter Thomas Mills drafted many of its laws. All three of these men were Socialists.