William Langer

• William Langer
• Born: September 30, 1886
• Died: November 8, 1959

Political leader, progressive, and isolationist, was born near Casselton, in the northern Dakota Territory (now North Dakota), to Frank J. Langer, a farmer, banker, and insurance executive, and Mary (Weber) Langer, both natives of Germany. The first son and fourth of five children, Langer grew up in comfortable circumstances. He attended rural schools and Casselton High School, graduating in 1904; after finishing a two-year law degree at the University of North Dakota in 1906, he matriculated at Columbia University, completing his B.A. and LL.B. in 1910 as valedictorian and president of his class.

Virtually all Langer’s adult years were devoted to politics. Admitted to the bar in 1911, he established a practice in Mandan, North Dakota, was elected state’s attorney for Morton County in 1914, and quickly gained statewide attention for strenuous enforcement of the corporate-tax, prohibition, vice, and flag laws. Langer’s activism led to his nomination by the insurgent Nonpartisan League (NPL), a farmers’ group that demanded state control of all marketing facilities, for the office of attorney general of North Dakota in 1916. He won the race and was reelected in 1918, both times on the Republican ticket. In 1918 he married Lydia Cady of New York City, with whom he had four daughters: Emma Bulkley, Lydia Cady, Mary Erskine, and Cornelia Lyndon.

In 1919 Langer split with Arthur C. Townley, the Socialist president of the NPL, and became the candidate of the opposition Independent Voters’ Association in the 1920 Republican gubernatorial primary election. After losing to the incumbent, Lynn J. Frazier, Langer built a successful law practice in Bismarck, North Dakota, and served on several state boards.

In 1928 the NPL again nominated Langer for attorney general. Though defeated in the Republican primary election, he undertook to revitalize the league and in 1932 received its nomination for the gubernatorial race, in which he was the victor. During his turbulent term he imposed an embargo on grain shipments from North Dakota in order to raise the price of wheat, proclaimed a moratorium on farm-foreclosure sales, settled a violent strike at the construction site of the new state capitol by calling out the state militia, slashed state appropriations by 50 percent, and made extensive use of his patronage privileges. Convicted of federal campaign-law violations—specifically of soliciting political contributions from federal employees—he was removed from office in 1934, but successfully appealed his case in 1935, underwent two subsequent trials, and was eventually exonerated.

In 1936 Langer was again elected governor, consolidating his control over the Nonpartisan League. In his bid for the U.S. Senate in 1938 he was defeated in both the primary and general elections by Gerald P. Nye, the incumbent; two years later he upset incumbent NPL Senator Lynn J. Frazier in the primary and then won a three-way general election. A Senate investigation into charges against Langer of vote fraud, tax evasion, and graft failed to unseat him. Langer was reelected in 1946, 1952, and 1958 by ever-increasing majorities. In his final contest, the aged and infirm Langer made his single campaign appearance on television.

Langer’s large following was a result of personal charisma, personal services to constituents, and spectacular actions while in office. As attorney general and governor of North Dakota, he sought to eliminate favored-tax status for corporations, opposed corporate agriculture, used the state militia to enforce his antiforeclosure moratoriums, and consistently supported women’s rights. As a senator, Langer voted against military spending and peacetime conscription and against the Taft-Hartley Act and other bills restricting organized labor; he introduced measures to improve public health and to provide federal aid to revitalize the rural economy. He urged that foreign-aid programs be dismantled and the funds used for domestic food production and agricultural development and opposed American participation in the United Nations and alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1953-54.

Few senators have more consistently worked to ensure that the federal government’s actions encourage the less advantaged to become politically organized and economically self-sufficient. Such actions often set Langer apart from his colleagues, and he was once dubbed “the most dispensable man” in the Senate. He became a symbol of uncompromising independence to North Dakotans. He died a year into his fourth term, at the age of seventy-three, in Washington, and was buried in St. Leo’s Catholic Cemetery in Casselton. His wife, who had run for governor in 1934 after Langer’s first trial, died the same year.

Langer’s papers are held by the Orin G. Libby Manuscript Collection at the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks. The extensive literature about his career includes G. H. Smith, Langer of North Dakota: A Study in Isolationism, 1940-1959 (1979), and A. Geelan, The Dakota Maverick: the Political Life of William Langer, Also Known as “Wild Bill” Langer (1975). See also Current Biography, February 1952, and The Dictionary of American Biography, supplement 6 (1980). An obituary appeared in The Fargo Forum, November 9, 1959.