Anyhow, here are these land grant colleges, some of them big and prosperous, educating the farmers’ boys, and as yet not aspiring to the snobbery of the big universities. The interlocking directorate wishes to get hold of these institutions, and to see that dangerous thoughts are kept out. I purpose to show you what they did in one state; I bespeak your careful attention, because the story of one is the story of all, and in reading about North Dakota you will also be reading about Maine, Vermont, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Colorado and Oregon.
John H. Worst, at that time lieutenant-governor of North Dakota, became president of the Agricultural College in 1895. It was a small institution at that time; by seventeen years of hard work he built it up until he had over twelve hundred students. Also he conducted, in connection with the college, a government experiment station, in which he had some devoted scientists. One of these, Professor E. F. Ladd, now United States Senator put in office by the Non-Partisan League, was a chemist, who became state pure food commissioner, and carried on a vigorous campaign against light weights and short measures, and the adulterating and misbranding of food. He went to the shelves of the grocery stores, and showed that the stomachs of the people of North Dakota were made a dumping-ground for timothy seed, gelatine and coal tar dyes. He exposed the use of dangerous poisons in patent medicines, and denounced the practice of bleaching flour—nor was he content to prove these things in his laboratory, he went out and taught the people of the state, and helped to put through laws against these practices. As a result, he incurred the mortal enmity of whiskey rectifiers, baking-powder manufacturers, paint manufacturers, the Beef Trust and the Milling Trust. I talked with Senator Ladd in Washington in June, 1922, and he told me that the last libel suit filed against him—for one hundred thousand dollars—had been dismissed on the fourteenth of the previous April; prior to that time, for twenty-two years he had never been free from libel suits and injunctions. At one time there had been six hanging over his head, and never one had been filed by a citizen of North Dakota, nor had he ever lost one.