"[3] Although they did not alter the control of the Republican Party during this era, progressives found support in the Norwegian-settled state, especially in the east.

[3] The initial organization and calls for reform laid a foundation that would soon grow into a statewide socialist workers' movement that eventually spread throughout the Midwest.

[3] North Dakota Republicans favored progressive presidential candidate Robert M. La Follette over Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

Once in office, he and his legislative allies halted the creation of a state-operated grain elevator, which may have convinced progressives to unite in 1915.

[3] When Arthur C. Townley came to Bismarck, North Dakota, in 1915, he saw strife between a conservative legislature and farmers' interest groups.

[4] He knew that with the recent strife in Bismarck between a conservative legislature and the American Society of Equity and its farm following, the time was ripe for a political revolution.

The goals of the league were to use their collective best efforts to secure the nomination and election of men for office within the state who would support legislation to save millions of dollars each year for farmers.

[4] The League program consisted of five planks: Each was designed to remedy what the farmers conceived as an abuse, and each was to lower the cost of producing and marketing grain.

[3] Those that called themselves insurgents aligned liberally with pro-farmers' union, pro-organized labor, and pro-Democratic party groups.

Over the next four years legislative polarization grew and the Nonpartisan League eventually split in two; in 1956 North Dakota was fundamentally realigned into a two-party system.

The new party introduced a full slate of candidates for state office and adopted a liberal platform that included the repeal of the Taft–Hartley Act, creation of a $1.25 an hour minimum wage, and a graduated land tax on property worth $20,000 or more.

[5] The Nonpartisan League laid a foundation of enriched public ownership and responsibility in such institutions as a state bank.

One study has drawn conclusions that publicly operated institutions such as the state bank have helped North Dakota weather economic storms.

[6] The Bank of North Dakota was created to address market failures associated with monopoly power among large financial and business institutions in the early twentieth century.

The public-private relationship establishes roles assigned according to what each sector does best, allowing the mutual benefit of public and private banks balancing out inequality and building equality, thus creating an economic safety net for North Dakota citizens.