The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, April 27, 1916, Page 6

E FARMERS of North Da- kota are proud of our state. We know its re- sources. We know the richness of its soil. We know what it has produced and what it can produce. We want it to be the greatest state in the union.- We believe it can be. ‘We want to make it so. We believe there are certain things holding back the growth and develop- ment of the state and we want to get those things out of the way. For the life of me I can’t see why everybody else in the state shouldn’t be willing to cooperate with us on a program like that. The things we want are the very things that will permanently benefit every person who lives in the state and has legitimate property in- terests here. My own idea is this: I want to see North Dakota become in greater “de- gree the home of prosperous farmers. I-want to see more prosperous farm- ers in the state. I want those who are not prospering now to thrive and to accumulate property. I want to see better houses, better equipped farms, farms that will afford a living for more people. I want to see com- fortable and substantial rural homes all over the state, with happy com- munities in which will be better LR schools, better facilities for acquaint- -~ anceship and enjoyment and better roads. I want to see also less of tenantry in the state and more of direct ownership without harassing debt. FARMERS CAN'T AFFORD TO WAIT ANY LONGER Now to accomplish all these things I'd like to see .something done. I'm not satisfied just to sit down and wait for these things and I don’t:believe you should be. We farmers’are be- ginning to have some pretty definite ideas of the reform that will bring these things about. The farmers have gotten together to bring them about. They are resolved, to support all these things and they feel that they can reasonably call upon citizens of the state to work with them. I want to say right here that I know that there are persons engaged in trying to make it out that this movement of the farmers through the Farmers’ Neonpartisan Political Lea- gue is a class movement and that it will destroy business and hurt prop- erty values. They are wrong about that. They may be honestly mistaken, or. they may not be, but at any rate they are wrong. Such an idea is not in my mind and not in my purpose and I feel sure it is not in the minds of the other farmers of this state. The things that we believe are hold- ing us back are many. One of the primary matters is that of grain grading and dockage, the handling of the grain. As it is now we are de- pendent upon the Minnesota grades and we are at the mercy of the com- bination of the big milling interests, the Minneapolis chamber of commerce and the old line elevators in market- ing our wheat. - One of the chief results of this is the huge economic loss through the failure to retain the by-products and the soil-enriching values of the wheat here in our own state. President Ladd and others of the Agricultural college have pointed out better than I can point it out the immensity of this loss. We are stripping our soil -to maintain our existence and to meet our obligations. The day of reckoning must come. BUILD UP INDUSTRIES OF NORTH DAKOTA . The League is committed to a pro- ject of trying to find the way toward independence - of these powerful marketing combinations in the grad- ing and selling of their grain. They can not find any such independence as long as it all pours into the great hop- per . at’ Minneapolis. They want ‘a - .will furnish them an independent market and will permit this state to establish its own fair grades. They are commiited to the prin- ciple of building up the milling in- dustry in this state on a basis which impoverishing and. state-owned terminal elevator which. will permit them to retain their grain - | = by-products and to utilize them for - THE NONPARTISAN LEADER hat North Da | J}/ #nn ‘7 ragier The farmers’ problems are the vital issues for every citizen of the state. Read thisstraight-from-the- shoulder talk by the man whom the League has indorsed for governor. “For the life of me I can’t see why’everybdily else shouldn’t be ~ willing to cooperate with us.f’ % feeding livestock. " The ‘prices they east of there tfiey can take our now pay for flour and feed and all mill products are based upon the cost of shipment to Minneapolis and back. agaip, whether the products actually- move -there and back or not. The result is that our bran and our shorts - and our screenings’can be: bought' in Minneapolis cheaper than they can be bought in North Dakota and right down there in Minnesota and eyen Editor Nonpartisan Leader: ' 'SUCCESS SURE, SAYS O’HARE I sincerely appreciate the kind treatment I received at your hands during my stay in Fargo as a delegate, and am also delighted with the } open and above-board manner of the delegates and of the officers-at the of- our organization. I feel that we have an organization with a’ leadership. that can not be excelled. There are master minds handling the affairs of our League, and everyone may rest assured of its success; . as long as the rank and file do their part. . - 2 e e y - Indorsed candidate for cattle—our stockers and feeders—and fatten them for the -market to better advantage than we-can do it ourselves. One of the great obstacles to diver- _sified farming in this state is this yery matter of the price of feed, which is governed by the way we are now forced to . e our grain. e = Then there is another thing, and that is the market for our livestock. K O'HARE, presentative fota Needs. " We have no.more to say about how - our stock shall be marketed than we ‘ _off their places or converted into _in the rural high schools. They must - in" themselves nearly all 41st district. P have about the marketing of our grain. - We need packing plants that will be able to use our cattle, our sheep and our hogs when we have fattened them ready for packmg_ pur- poses. We can not build up this. in- dustry of fdeding stock, even if we get the feed at right prices, if we have to ship to a distant market and buy our own meat products on the basis of a long haul back. LAW-MAKERS’ NEGLECT IS HOLDING BACK STATE These are just two of the matters & upon which the failure of our law- makers to give us what we consider reasonable relief has resulted in holding back the progress of the state and denying its citizens the ad- vantages which their labors' and the wealth of the natural resources of the state should have entitled them to. Then, too, there is the question of farm credits and the relations of the farmer and the banker. In the older and eastern portions of the state where. the land security is of the very highest grade farm loans are being obtained for 6% and ‘7 per cent, but \ that is not the case in the newer . regions. I believe it to be a fact that < many farmers are paying 10 per cent and upward on their money. No farmer can prosper and pay 10 per cent interest, Neither can any mer- chant. In the end such an interest rate will bankrupt them.- When men go inte 2 new country With small capital and pledge them- selves to pay such rates they are going to almost certain disaster., The state can’t be developed on that basis. The ;farmers will be foreclosed out of their farms and will have to leave them or become tznants. Now it is_all wrong to have inde- pendent hard working farmers turned tenants. The process should be just 3 the other way. Tenants should have their opportunities to become owners, yet the present conditiions make that almost impossible.. It is the tenant who is forced to chattle mortgage everything he has at an enormously high -rate of interest—often a usurious rate of interest—and to pay : out all his earnings in interest. %Ve % must find a way to remedy this condition. . TEACH MARKET PROBLEMS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS We have one avenue of progress to better things in the schools and it must be used more fully than it has ever been before. The schools have made progress in teaching scientific farming, but none of them have been teaching what they ought to teach about the problems of marketing and the problems of farm finance. It is ~ not enough-to teach’ these things in the colleges. They must be taught taught in the country common schools. : : P i The farmers of.this ‘state haven’t had much outside help in solving their problems and they needn’t ex- pect their sons will have. What they want to do is to make conditions tolerable so - that their sons and daughters will ‘be content to make their homes upon the soil of this state % 4 and to develop the state and to enrich ; it, not only by material products but ok e * by an intelligent- and happy manhood : A and womanhood. They want to equip their sons and daughters so that they ‘ can handle their own problems better Ci than ‘the fathers have been able to 22 handle them, 3 S e Our state is ‘wonderfully rich and has wonderful possibilities. It will grow apples as fine i where on earth; i it will ‘grow be firam, of ‘grass and of vege as all the possibilities for ‘'making 8 the finest of farm homes, producing (ST ties and the comforts of life:; not be a state of great grain s alone, with a high proportion. of tenant farmers and absentee’ o It can support a much greater la%%n, in much %:eater comfort