A. C. Townley
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Arthur Charles Townley (December 30, 1880 – November 7, 1959) was an American Socialist Party organizer best known for creating the Non-Partisan League, which adopted as its platform most of the immediate demands put forward by the Socialists. The League was a grass-roots organization of North Dakota farmers which unexpectedly swept to victory in the state elections of 1916.
Townley was a thriving flax farmer near Beach, North Dakota who was financially ruined in 1913 by a combination of a freak August snowstorm and the fluctuations of a speculative grain market. After running unsuccessfully for the state legislature on the Socialist ticket in 1914, he abandoned the Socialists and criss-crossed the state in a borrowed Model-T Ford, signing up members in the new political party. His message resonated with the grievances of small farmers against the exploitative big interests: the Minneapolis grain merchants, the railroads, and the eastern banks.
In 1916 the Non-Partisan League candidate, Lynn Frazier, won the North Dakota gubernatorial election, and in 1919 the state legislature enacted the entire NPL program, consisting of state-owned banks, mills, grain elevators and hail insurance agencies. However, the political winds soon turned, and Frazier became the first U.S. state governor to be recalled - the only one until California's Gray Davis in 2003.
Townley's popularity declined along with the NPL. In 1934, he ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Minnesota, and later for the U.S. Senate from North Dakota. In the late 1940's he lived near New Effington, S.D. with a faith-healing group. During the McCarthy era of the 1950's he lectured for donations, somewhat ironically, on the evils of communism. He also ran for U.S. Senate in North Dakota in 1958.He was an insurance salesman when he was killed in a car-truck accident in 1959.
