Also there were filed some forty odd charges of unprofessional conduct against Professor Bolley, whom they had now discovered to be “crazy.” They gave this “crazy” man a busy time for several years. Two members of the board came to Fargo, to demand that Bolley should be fired; then an investigating committee of the faculty was appointed, which completely exonerated him. But the board insisted that this was a partisan committee; they appointed a committee of their own members, and this committee called on the chairman of the faculty committee, and abused him for not making a proper investigation; then they went to Bolley, and took up one question after another, and Bolley refuted each. After three hours one member of the board said: “Well, I think it’s time to quit.” The second said: “If you are satisfied, I am.” The board received this report of complete exoneration from its committee, and decided they would have to discontinue the procedure—but they refused to exonerate Bolley! The controversy was carried to the national government, and the Department of Agriculture appointed a committee, which also investigated, and could find nothing wrong with the “crazy” professor. This whole story of Bolley makes you think of the melodramas we used to see on the Bowery, where the heroine is tied to a railroad track, or tied on a log which is going into a saw-mill, and the rescuers come galloping up on horseback at the instant when the villain seems triumphant. In the fall of 1916 the Non-partisan League swept the State of North Dakota, and on January 1, 1917, Lynn Frasier came galloping into the governorship of North Dakota, and the farmers of the state got the results of Professor Bolley’s experiments once more. Thunders of applause from the gallery! CHAPTER XLIII THE UNIVERSITY OF WHEAT The state of North Dakota is small in population, likewise in its influence in the academic world; but its story is important, because its people have blazed a path upon which the rest of us are destined to travel for the next decade. What has happened in North Dakota education will happen in hundreds of our institutions, and therefore it is desirable that academic liberals should know the story. The University of North Dakota is located at Grand Forks. The president from 1909 to 1913 was Frank L. McVey, who was chairman of a tax commission in Minnesota, and got in the way of “Jesse James” Hill, and was shunted off to North Dakota to get rid of him. That he was not a dangerous radical may be judged from the fact that in 1912 he objected to three of his professors taking part in the Progressive movement. In 1914 Professor Lewinsohn of the law school resigned his position with a dignified statement, and the president replied by a letter, in which he set up the contention that college professors are in the same position as judges.