The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, February 1, 1917, Page 3

In the interest of a square deal for the farmer Tlonpartisan Teader A magazine that dares ty print the truth National Parer of the Farmers’ Nonpartisan Political League VOL. 4, NO. & FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1917 WHOLE NO. 72 AN INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR VIEW BILL 441 [ QAES I e e, The sounds coming out through the door would indicate there was something doing inside. Well, welll Look who is inside making all this noise. Some friends of the farmers, to be sure! Unless we felt sure it couldn’t possibly be true we would guess that these good friends of the farmers were Big Biz & Co. But we must be mistaken. They would never oppose House Bill 44 in the North Dakota legislature, the new constitution bill. Oh,_no. ‘Hectoring the People’s Representatives determined men, elected by the people, can when they want to, hew to the line and redeem their campaign pledges with- out horse play, delay or quibbling. Such an example of political honesty ought not to be rare in North Dakota, but it is a fact this is probably the first house of representatives that ever worked at Bis- marck that put through an important people’s measure without weeks of parliamentary nonsense and volumes of fervid and useless oratory. According to precedent, House Bill 44, submitting a new constitution to the people to be voted upon next June at a special election, ought to be full of jokers that will annul its effect and full of veiled language that will conceal its meaning. But the majority of Nonpartisan members of the lower house smashed precedent. They permitted no tricky amendments in the bill. They let the minority rid itself of what hot air it had on tap against the measure and passed the bill—a straight-forward, open and aboveboard proposition to place a new constitution before the people for adoption or rejection next June. It is now up to the senate. * % & USED ALL THE OLD TRICKS HE anti-League minority in the house, led by Divet and Tenne- son, lawyers, the former an old-time politician who has been in at the killing of many a farmers’ piece of legislation, used all the old tricks. The gang press of the state pretended to be astonish- ed that the League house majority refused to listen to pleas for delay, more debate and innumerable foolish amendments, put forth by Divet and Tenneson, et al.- Every representative knew what the bill con- tained ; every one knew that the people demanded it. Yet the minority tried all the filibustering tactics for delay they could think of and tried ‘to tack on amendments for no other purpose than to hamper the ma- jority which was there to do business for the people on the people’s orders. - . ; : 3 _Some of the antics of the minority in the house during the de- bate were laughable. Divet found that somewhere in_the revised cen- stitution before the house the words ‘‘patriotism’’ and ‘‘morality’’ TEE people of North Dakota last week found out how honest, THREE had been dropped ouf and terms of the same-meaning, ‘‘purity’’ and ‘‘publie spirit,”’ substituted in their place, in the part of the constitu- tion defining the things the public schools are to teach. This primed him for a bit of fine arm waving and grandstanding. “‘The hand that held the pen that struck those words out of the constitution would put poison in the wells in front of his own army and lead his sister to the brothel,’’ yelled the patriotic Divit. He might have added: ‘‘The cloven HOOF has shown its HAND.”’ The League members gave him the laugh, but the gang press reported his righteous wrath over the work of the men who framed House Bill 44 and who had struck a blow at our homes and our be- loved country. That sort of thing used to go down; it was stock in trade of the politicians who framed the laws. ‘‘Soak the people, but lard it with fine phrases about morality and patriotism,’’ was their -motto, and is still Divet’s. Was it Walpole who said that patriotism was a cloak for many a scoundrel, or was it Pitt? Anyway, it was an Englishman. % & @ TRUSTING THE PEOPLE HE big play by the anti-League house minority was on the prop- I osition of a bonded indebtedness limit in the constitution. The constitution as reframed provides that the state can guarantee bonds issued against state-owned utilities, which bonds are to be re- deemed and the interest paid by the income of these utilities. The minority pictured the horrible probabilities of the state plunging head- long into financial ruin unless a limit was set. ‘What they wanted, of _course, was an amendment that would annul the carrying out of the League program. They were answered aptly by Representative Cole, who pointed out that no debts could be contracted without the legislature’s consent and that the new constitution provided that any act of the legislature could be referred to the people on a 10 per cent petition—certainly ample protection against any wild-eyed proposition to plunge the state into useless and inadvisable indebtedness. It was simply a proposition of the minority wanting to set a limit on what the people could do by their own vote. : : | e ——— St S