Archives West Finding Aid

The Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union, later to become the National Farmers Union, was founded in 1902, in Rains County, Texas, by Isaac Newton ("Newt") Gresham. It spread rapidly around the South during the next few years, but then started to decline. As it declined in the South, however, membership in the Upper Midwest and especially North Dakota began to increase.

The first Montana local was formed at Ronan in 1912, with a Polson local established shortly thereafter. Under the leadership of Ronan local president J.F. Olsen, the union expanded into other Montana counties, with locals established at Power, Dutton, and Limington in Teton County; at Lake Basin in Stillwater County; and at Lake View in Yellowstone County. The national Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union sent in Warren McCurtain, who organized over 100 new Montana locals during 1914-1916.

Prior to 1916, the Farmers Union in Montana was weakened by the lack of a state organization. The national charter required a combined local membership of 5,000 before a state could be chartered. Montana's farm population was too small, too widely scattered, and too unstable to qualify. In April 1916, therefore, national president Charles S. Barrett granted Montana a state charter under a special dispensation. The organization just barely survived the drought years of 1917-1919, then had a brief boom during the prosperity of 1920-1921, only to be hit by the great depression, which started in the mid-1920s for Montana farmers. However, spurred by the widespread unrest of farmers during the Depression, the Union grew rapidly throughout the late 1920s and the 1930s.

Dedicated to the interests of the family farm, the Farmers Union pursues a three-fold program of education, cooperation, and legislation. The Education Department sponsors a lending library, summer camps, workshops, and correspondence classes for farm families. Farm cooperatives, while not a formal part of the Farmers Union, have always been closely allied with the Union, often using the name "Farmers Union" as part of their title. The cooperative movement met the desperate need of the drought-and- depression-hit farmers to cut costs and to get better prices for their products. In addition to its educational and cooperative role, the Farmers Union maintains active political lobbies on both the federal and state levels to push for legislation benefiting family farms.