Public Banking Institute National Conference, Philadelphia · Oct. 22, 2026
The Activist Origins and Great Promise of Public Banking
North Dakota has owned a profitable bank since 1919. Your state should own one too.
Christopher Armitage
Publisher, The Existentialist Republic · Owner and Editor in Chief, Gavel Grab
Bismarck, February 1915
"Go home and slop the hogs."
Treadwell Twichell, Republican legislator from Cass County, to the farmers who had come to the capitol for the 1915 session, as the farmers told it.
The farmers of the American Society of Equity were meeting in Bismarck while the Legislature sat. They had waited years for the state terminal elevator they had been promised, and the Legislature had a 600-page report in hand recommending against building one.
Sources: North Dakota Studies, "Origins of the Nonpartisan League"; Encyclopedia of the Great Plains and Wikipedia, "Nonpartisan League"
North Dakota, 1915 to 1919
They did not go home.
They asked the only people whose permission mattered: the public.
In 1915, North Dakota farmers paid up to 12% interest and lost up to $55 million a year to grain grading.
12%
Farmers paid up to 12% to borrow. National banks could not lend on farm mortgages, and the state's banks depended on out-of-state money.
$55M
The elevators graded the farmers' wheat as lower quality than it was, at a cost of up to $55 million a year.
$91.80
Freight on 60,000 pounds of wheat cost $91.80 from Minot to Grand Forks, and $61.80 from Moorhead to Minneapolis, 45 miles farther.
1915
That year the farmers stopped petitioning legislators and set out to replace them.
The grain went to Minneapolis mills and the loans came from Minnesota banks. The state's own cash, meanwhile, sat in private banks. The remedy the farmers chose was a bank the state owned, holding the state's cash and lending it inside the state.
Source: The BND Story, the Bank of North Dakota's history site, "The Case for a State-owned Bank" and "NPL Gains Support"
A broke flax farmer organized North Dakota's farmers farm by farm, and their League backed candidates in the Republican primary.
In February 1915, at Frank B. Wood's farm near Deering, Arthur C. Townley, a flax farmer who had gone broke, proposed a league tied to no party. Townley drove a borrowed Ford Model T from farm to farm, and the organizers signed farmers up for $6 in dues, paid with post-dated checks cashed after harvest.
The League started a weekly, the Nonpartisan Leader, in Fargo in September 1915, and later bought a daily, the Fargo Courier-News.
The League backed candidates in the Republican primary, the party that already held the state, and the organizers canvassed the entire state making their case.
A Kidder County paper called the organizers "smooth strangers" and suspected a confidence game.
A writer for The Nation, sent to mock the 1917 Legislature, found the majority "sensible, moderate and intelligent."
The BND Story, "NPL Gains Support"
Sources: The BND Story's pages on the League and on A.C. Townley; North Dakota Studies and Wikipedia on the Nonpartisan League
From a farm near Deering to a state bank in four years.
Feb. 1915
The Nonpartisan League is founded on a farm near Deering.
1916
Lynn Frazier, a farmer from Hoople, is elected governor with 79% of the vote.
1918
Candidates the League backed win both houses of the Legislature.
1919
One session creates the Bank of North Dakota and the State Mill and Elevator, and orders the bank open within 90 days.
June 26
Opponents force a statewide vote. All seven League measures pass; the bank by 23,256 votes.
July 28
The bank opens in Bismarck with 46 employees.
1921
Frazier is recalled by 1.8%, the first governor recalled in United States history. The bank stays open.
The bank's first transfer to the state's general fund came in 1945: $1,725. In 2025 the bank earned the state $231.8 million.
Sources: The BND Story and the Bank of North Dakota's 2025 annual report release; North Dakota Secretary of State election abstracts, 1916 to 1921
The 1919 Legislature ordered the bank open within 90 days of adjournment.
The session created the Bank of North Dakota and the North Dakota Mill and Elevator Association and put both under a three-member Industrial Commission chaired by the Governor. A second law made the bank the sole legal depository of state funds.
The bank opened on July 28, 1919, at Seventh and Main in Bismarck, with 46 employees. The law authorized $2 million of state bonds for the bank's capital. Under the bank's 1919 operating policy, the bank was to help the state's other financial institutions and do them no harm.
Today the bank still holds the state's cash by law and lends in partnership with North Dakota's other financial institutions.
"All state funds must be deposited with BND unless specific authority allows for outside investments."
The bank lends "in partnership with a majority of North Dakota's financial institutions."
Bank of North Dakota, BND operations and The BND Story
Sources: The BND Story, including "The Birth of the Bank" and "Open for Business"; Bank of North Dakota, BND operations
The League's opponents organized the Independent Voters Association and forced the whole program to a statewide vote. On June 26, 1919, the voters approved all seven measures.
The Independent Voters Association, which the banks and the grain trade backed to stop the League, referred the 1919 laws to the voters. All seven passed, and the bank carried by 23,256 votes.
The same opponents sued to stop the bond sales and worked with eastern financial interests to boycott the bonds, which delayed the bank's capitalization until 1921.
The bank opened anyway, on July 28, 1919, a month after the vote.
Statewide referendum, June 26, 1919
7 of 7
The voters approved all seven League measures.
Margin on the bank
23,256
Sources: The BND Story, "Opposition to the Bank" and "Organized Opposition Tried to Take the Bank Down"; Bismarck Tribune, June 27, 1919; Schneiberg, 2013; Wikipedia, "Bank of North Dakota"
Green v. Frazier, 253 U.S. 233 · Decided June 1, 1920
"With the wisdom of such legislation and the soundness of the economic policy involved we are not concerned."
Justice William R. Day, for the Supreme Court of the United States, upholding the Bank of North Dakota and the rest of the League's program. "Whether it will result in ultimate good or harm it is not within our province to inquire."
Taxpayers sued to stop the treasury from paying a dollar toward the bank or selling a bond for the bank. The Court answered that the people of a state may own a bank if they choose to.
The decision "merely permits the people of a State to do what the majority wants done."
The Cincinnati Post, on the ruling, as quoted in The BND Story
Sources: Green v. Frazier, 253 U.S. 233 (1920), and Scott v. Frazier, 253 U.S. 243 (1920); The BND Story, "Organized Opposition Tried to Take the Bank Down"
On October 28, 1921, the voters recalled the governor. On the same ballot, they voted to keep the bank.
The Independent Voters Association organized a recall of all three members of the Industrial Commission that oversaw the bank, Governor Lynn Frazier among them. Frazier lost by 1.8%, the first governor recalled in the history of the United States.
The measure to abolish the Bank of North Dakota was on the same ballot, and the voters rejected the measure by 4,238 votes. The farmers lost their governor and kept their bank.
R.A. Nestos, the IVA candidate who replaced Frazier, kept the bank open. Frazier went to the United States Senate the next year.
"It seems to me that it is but right and just and wise to give it a full, fair, and honest trial."
Governor R.A. Nestos, on the bank, after defeating the League
"Nothing upset IVAers more than the thought of the state going into the banking business."
D. Jerome Tweton, historian
Sources: The BND Story, "Organized Opposition Tried to Take the Bank Down"; North Dakota Secretary of State, 1921 recall election; Wikipedia, "Nonpartisan League"; Wikipedia, "Lynn Frazier"
What it took in 1919 is what it takes now.
1
Townley's organizers signed up the farmers who carried the grievance, farm by farm, before the opposition knew to organize.
2
The farmers backed their own candidates in the Republican primary, inside the party that already held the state.
3
Their candidates won both houses of the Legislature, and the Legislature passed the whole program in one session.
4
The Legislature wrote a deadline into the law: 90 days from adjournment to an open bank.
5
The opposition forced a referendum, sued, boycotted the bonds and recalled the governor. The bank stayed open.
Stop defending. Start building. Launch a democracy offensive.
We can build public banks within existing legal frameworks, and where those frameworks are ambiguous, we do what North Dakota did: build first, fight later.
Sources: The BND Story; North Dakota Secretary of State election abstracts, 1916 to 1921
No private board would approve a plan that pays costs for ten years before the revenue starts, because that plan is the one that fails.
A bank earns its money on the spread between what borrowers pay and what depositors earn, starting with the first loan it buys, so a bank that takes deposits and spends a decade getting ready pays its staff and its rent the whole time with no spread coming in.
North Dakota, 1919
90 days
The 1919 law required the bank to be open and doing business within 90 days of the Legislature's adjournment. The bank opened July 28, 1919.
Source: The BND Story, "Open for Business"
The banks that hold the public money today pay a great deal of money for very smart people to come up with completely logical and rational reasons why it can't be done.
"You'll lose in court."
The Supreme Court of the United States upheld the bank in Green v. Frazier on June 1, 1920.
"The state can't run a bank."
The bank has operated continuously since July 28, 1919, and S&P Global Ratings rates the bank A+.
They have excuses but what do we have? We have a century long working use case, and North Dakota heard every one of those same excuses in 1919.
Sources: Green v. Frazier, 253 U.S. 233 (1920); The BND Story and the Bank of North Dakota's 2025 annual report release
States and cities already own liquor stores, power companies, gas utilities, fiber networks, a flour mill and an investment fund.
$194.6M
Pennsylvania's state-owned liquor stores sent the General Fund $194.6 million in cash in fiscal 2024-25, plus $620 million in taxes.
$120.2M
New Hampshire's 65 state-run liquor and wine outlets earned $120.2 million in net profits in fiscal 2025.
$18M
Philadelphia Gas Works, the largest city-owned gas utility in the country, paid the City of Philadelphia $18 million in fiscal 2025.
$1M a day
San Antonio's city-owned utility, CPS Energy, sent the city's General Fund more than $1 million a day in fiscal 2025.
$186M
Chattanooga's city-owned utility, EPB, launched America's first community-wide gigabit internet in 2010, and the fiber business brought in $186 million in 2024.
100%
Nebraska is the only state served entirely by publicly owned electric utilities.
$1,200
Alaska is paying each eligible resident a $1,200 Permanent Fund dividend this fall, more than $800 million in all.
$26.6M
The North Dakota Mill, created in the same 1919 session as the bank, earned more than $26.6 million in profit in fiscal 2025.
Sources: Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, Nov. 19, 2025; New Hampshire Liquor Commission, fiscal 2025 annual report; Philadelphia Gas Works, 2025 annual report; CPS Energy, fiscal 2025 fact sheet; EPB, Sept. 20, 2024; Nebraska Public Power District; Alaska's News Source, Sept. 30, 2026; Inforum, July 30, 2025
Public Banking, Public Prosperity: A Declaration of Financial Independence
The farmers were told no, so they replaced the politicians who said it, and the bank was open within the year.
We're long overdue to build the next one.
You can ask your own state senator and state representative directly: can our state do this, and will you file it?
Questions
Christopher Armitage
Publisher, The Existentialist Republic
Owner and Editor in Chief, Gavel Grab
theexistentialistrepublic.com · christopherarmitage.com
At the book table, free: The American Reformation and Toppling Tyrants
This code opens The Existentialist Republic on Substack, home of Offensive Democracy, the essay behind this talk.
My academic work, Oppositional Federalism: A Taxonomy of State Constitutional Postures Under Authoritarian Capture, is free to read on SSRN.
Tier 0
Cooperative federalism
Tier 1
Uncooperative federalism
Tier 2
Soft secession
Tier 3
Oppositional federalism
Tier 4
Constitutional non-compliance
A public bank is tier 2 opposition to authoritarianism, soft secession, when states implement policies that serve as harm reduction and self-sufficiency.