The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, May 25, 1916, Page 14

N ~EHRE ple; a-‘\\ hez nEg / e~ “do it. And yet Dr. Ladd, working quiet- - Danger 1 The Leader’s Washington Bureau 302 Riggs Building ~ ASHINGTON, D. C., May 23— North Dakota, the State Agricul- tural College and Dr. Ladd had a great inning this week before the senate committee on agriculture and furnished some very important and almost sensa- tional news. --It. was about the grading of grain and standards of grading and the point was that the great department of agricul- ture, with its millions of appropriations and its army of experts, discovered that it would have to -come to North Dakota to learn the basic facts about wheat. It was at a hearing before the com- mittee on the grain. grading bill, which has been tacked as a rider on the regu- lar agricultural appropriation bill. “Ttis a very bad measure, there is no doubt of that, but it is likely to get through in the way the rural credit fraud was put over. That is to say, it pretends to be in the interest of the farmer, and few men have the courage to oppose anything that makes a pre- tense, no matter hHow bad it may really be. Senator Gronna made a statement be- fore the committee and certainly rattled the dry bones before he got through. ‘When he told of Dr. Ladd’s remarkable chemical and baking tests of wheat and other grains the members of the commit- tee stared at him with open eyed won- der. They had never heard of “the like before. They constituted 2 committee whose business is supposed to be to learn of all such things, but this was new to them. It was just as new to the experts of the agncultural department. For many _years that department has been trying to find a scxentlfic method of standard- izing grain and has never been.able to ly away in his laboratory, has been able to do what none of these experts has found a way to do. WHAT GOVERNMENT HAS . | FOUND OUT IN NINE YEARS. Senator Gronna pointed out that since 1907 Congress has appropriated all told $700,000 for the department of agricul- ture’s work on grain standards. The net 'v-..~result -of all that money and the labor of these years is that the department has established just ome grain grade, which is this: ] Corn should not contain more than 12 per cent of moisture. This rule contains ten words and has cost $700,000. Senator Gronna thinks that this is the highest rate for writing ever paid in the world—ten words for $700,000 or $70,000 a word. Aside from corn these government ex- perts have achieved nothing, and as to corn their rule amounts to no more than this, that corn containing more than 14 per cent of moisture is excluded from - interstate commerce. What has the $700,000 really been spent for? -Unless the govemment officers that ‘ought to know have an airtight explan- ation, Senator Gromna will probably ask for an inquiry by Congress. MAY ASK DR. LADD TO COME TO WASHINGTON. You can tell that the grain.grading bill has nothing in it for the farmers from the fact that every board of trade and millers’ association in the country is urging its passage. Senator Gronna is protesting to the ° senate committee that it is not really a federal grain grading.bill, nor.even a federal inspection bill, bet a'federal supervision bill, with ‘all the rights for fixing the grades and standards 'in ‘the hands of the grain exchanges, - -The government will merely have its men on hand to see that the farmers, in their shipments, comply with the grades ' fixed by the millers. If farmers violate any of these grades 1In Would Penahze Farmer for Mlstakes—- Senate Astonished at Ladd’s Discoveries ‘By WILLIS J. RUTLEDGE Leadér Staff Correspondent. they will be in danger of going to the penitentiary. - Such is the true nature of this vicious and perilous measure. It is the rankest specimen we have yet of the kind of trick legislation that will be slipped over on farmers so long as they are not represented but are at the mercy of attorneys for corporations and exchanges. 3 Senator Gronna expects to make a strong fight in the committee and on the floor of the senate either to defeat this bill or to provide in it that Dr. Ladd’s milling tests be used as the basis of de- termining federal grades for grain. In this fight he may bring Dr. Ladd to Washington if the doctor’s health will allow him to come. FARMERS IN DANGER OF HEAVY PENALTIES. As the:bill now stands any North Da- kota farmer-is in danger of heavy pen- alties although in shipping: his- grain he may have acted in perfectly good faith. It will obiously be impossible for the government to maintain an inspector at every railroad switch in the wheat coun- try. Yet farmers shipping from points where there are no inspectors stationed will run heavy risks. The bill says they may be fined $1,000 and sentenced to a year in the penitentiary for every ship- ment of grain in interstate commerce . that does not make .the grade-alleged for it by the shipper. There is no loop- hole-at all for the farmer's escape. If an inspector errs in grading- grain pro- perly he can escape prosecution, for the bill reads that he must “knowingly” grade it falsely to be liable to prosecu- tion. But the farmer is made to suffer whether he errs innocently or not. For instance, if a North Daketa- grow- er next fall, when harvesting his crop, wires his commission man at-the ex-. change in Minneapolis to sell 1,000 bush- els of No. 1, and then ships grain which does not make No. 1 grade, he can be prosecuted as a criminal in the federal court, although he may have believed his.wheat to be No. 1 grade. Of course, this case’ could not happen 4t any point where an. inspector is stationed, the lat- ter being responsible for the grading, but there will be thousands of shipping points where no inspectors are stationed. At such points the farmers must take the risk of improper grading. The North Dakota senator will not only make a fight for government stand- ards, if possible based on Dr. Ladd’s tests, but he will also endeavor to change the place of inspection. Instead of ‘having inspection at the shipping points, Gronna would have it at termin- als, where the federal officials would fix the standards of all grains coming in and ‘thus relieve the farmer from the danger of mnoc_ently violating the law. - VALUABLE ITEMS ADDED 'TO AGRICULTURAL BILL. -Gronna is working with considerable success in the committee on agriculture adding amendments to the agricultural appropriation bill of mterest to North Dakota. The subcomnuttee strnck from the bill the’ $5,000. appropriation. for Sullys Hill National Park granted by the house, but Gronna succeeded in havmg the full ‘com- mittee restore this item. . - “The house bill pnmded $10,000 for ex- periments in bestmg flax to determine its possibilities in paper manufacture. Gronna will ask for an additional $10,- 000 for experiments to determine the possibilities of northwestein flax fibre in ‘the manufacture of coarse linens. The subcoxmmttee sh-uck from the house . bill the $40,000 appropriation for study and experiments in dairying and livestock production in the semi-arid and irrigated regions of the west. In the full committee Gronna not only succeed- ed in having this item restored, but he increased it to $87,500. Gromna has proposed an amendment to extend the wheat rust investigation, "authorized by the House, to oats and bar- ley rust-as well, and for this he is ask- ing $20,000. . The house as it passed the agricul- tural bill virtually killed the free distri= bution of trees from the Mandan gov- ernment station by adding the proviso that trees should be given away for ex- perimental or demonstration purposes only. Only by deception could the distri- bution continue under this' provision. The senate committee adopted Gronna’s resolution” striking out this‘ limitation, and giving absolutely free distribution of the government trees. The nursery- men of the northwest have fought this provision vigorously. Gronna has pending an amendment to provide '$50, to be used by the gov- ermnment - in eradicating the disease of abortion among horses and.eattle. On the motion of ‘the North Dakota senator the committee struck out ‘the provision of the bill ‘that continues the free distribution of garden and flower seeds by congressmen. In lieu of this distribution - the ‘committee has doubled . the appropriation for rare geeds distrib- uted to farmers for . experimentation directly by the department of agrieul- ture. - A fight to retain the free seed dis- tribution is’ expected ‘on the floor of the senate. FARM CREDIT BILL BAD e HOUSE MEMBERS ADMIT. : In the debate on the rural credit bill last week Representative George M. Young called attention to the fact that the bill does not give the proposed land banks the power to accept ordinary .de- posits. Young wis the only member of the house to emphasize or even mention this objection to the bill. He made a vigorous speech on the Subject, and later introduced an ‘amendment providing for deposits, but was voted down by the house -machine, although his amendment attracted considerable support. In the course of his remarks on the hill Young said: “It would ‘seem to me that. the- agen- cies created by this bill might be more appropriately called government loan agencies than government land banks. There is nothing in this bill if it should be operated for a hundred years.that will ever take the farmer out of the position of having to go to somebody else to get his money. There is nothing there that will help the farmer to establish a real bank through which money will be slow- ly collected and conserved so that the farmers would sometime come to the position where others w not fix the rate of interest for them. “At this time the price is fixed by someone else on everything that the farmer buys aud on everything he sells. I am absolutely unable to find anything ~ in the bill whereby if these banks (re- ferring to the land banks created by the .bill) ‘be operated for 100 or 200 years the farmer will ever be taken out of that position.” . We had some very qneer ‘Scenes in the house . when this fake bill was being jammed through, and Representative " Young was not the only observer that was amazed and disgusted. | Member after member arof® and said that he knew the bill was worthless and could never be anything but a failure in themm,bnthefe!tcompenedtoyote for it because congress has fooled with the subject many years and produced nothing and: this bill, bad as it was, rep- :resented the best that could be put through the present session. So, in effect, a very bad measure was successfully- palmed off 'on a house that knew it was bad but didn’t have the nerve or means to beat it. NO HELP TO POOR MAN SAYS REPRESENTATIVE HUMPHREY This raises a new and serious situa- tion in congressional affairs and one that we shall not hear the last of with this session. 3 Representative Humphrey of Wash- ington spoke: the thought of scores of members when he said this: “The more I know about this bill the less- enthusiastic I am about supporting it. I doubt whether it will help that class that most needs help—the farmer that is struggling with poverty and debt. - I doubt if it will help any man to se- cure a home for himself and family. Yet as it is the only legislation of this char- acter that the Democratic party will per- mit congress to consider, poor as it is, failing as it does to meet the promises made to the country by: the majority, and solely because we can't get some- thing better, I shall support it, hoping that it may be of at least some benefit to the farmer and trusting it will do him no harm.” Similar remarks were made by Fess of Ohio, Murray of Oklahoma, Bennet of New York and many others. There was a long line of mourners making ‘confes: sion that they' were voting for a bad bill because ‘they couldn’t do anything else. This sort of thing has aroused pro- gressive men to wonder how the power of Wall street can be curbed when it ‘is able to put over one of its” rottenest measures and -everybody knows it is:rot- ten ‘and: yet control -things so that: the bill ‘nust be passed. Representatxve Bennet disclosed the important fact that nine years ago con- gress passed:a law like this to establish rural credits in the Philippines and not a bank has ever been organized under it nor has the thing ever been of the slightest use. f Members of the Society of Equity and of the Farmers’ Union. that put-up a good fight - against the bill have no reason to be dismayed because it was passed. They were perfectly right and their time will come when somebody tries to put this law into effect. SHORT NEWS OF INTEREST TO NORTH DAKOTA FOLK. Dr. B. H. Kroeze, presldent of James- town, N. D., college, was in Washing- ton last week on his way to New York, In company with Representative Young he visited the postoffice department and urged free dellvery of mail for the col- lege. A postoffice inspector has been ordered to investigate the case and re- port on it. .Representatxve Young’s plan to make the military and naval academies more democratic by throwing open his ap- pointments to all boys in his distriet, appointing those passing highest in com- petitive examinations, worked splendid- ly in the case of his Anmnapolis appoint- ment. Henry S. Neilson of Jamestown, who passed highest in the competitive examination, has just passed the en- trance examination at the academy, set- boystoahootat. Hewasngenazmd ing of perfect in his mathematics, the most difficult branch of the entrace ex- amination , and . ‘the one -on which the authorities place most stress. He will take the physical examination in _June and enter the academy immedi- " ately. . Senator Gronna has offered an amend- ° ment increasing ‘to $100,000 Senator Sheppard's proposed '$50,000 appropri- “ation for the smdy ofthe ufihzation ot lignite coal. ting a mark for scholarship ‘for other. (]