The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, March 8, 1917, Page 11

~ Making People’s Savings Safe - About a Man Who “is Onl Law He Got for North_ D By RaI;:h Harmon GREAT bank had just failed. Chicago’s streets were filled clamoring, begging, fighting for their savings of a life- time.. And the police were fighting, too—clubbing the men and women, men in overalls and women with shawls over the heads and some with babies in their arms. The police were trying to keep orderly the leng line which stretched for blocks from the big mar- ble front of the bank. The line waver- ed and crumpled up, was clubbed straight, and wavered and crumpled and writhed again and again, in spite of all the police could do. A North Dakota farmer saw this scene years ago. It made an impres- sion on him that he never forgot, and it has resulted in North Dakota get- ting a law guaranteeing bank deposits and making the people’s savings for- * ever safe, North, Dakota, has got this law as a result of the Nonpartisan League and of the activity of Charles Drown, farmer, senator elected by the farmers tbrough the League, Who is “Charley” Drown? If you asked-him, he would say, “Why, I'm just a farmer.” They. know Charles Drown well in his dis- trict in Cass county, North Dakota. - But outside of that he was not known a year ago. The farmers, when they Leagug Man Senator Martin Thoreson of Fingdl, Barnes county, a non-League senator who voted with the minority to save House Bill 44 in the senate. Senator Thoreson is one of two prominent “neutrals” in the senate, and has helped the League on several rolicalls. The other “neutral” is Senator W. E. Mar- tin of Morton county. planned to capture the government of Ncrth Dakota, didn't care whether “Charley” Drown was a famous man thiroughout the state or not. They simply found out he was loved and re- spected among his neighbors in-a cor- ner of Cass county, comprising one of the 49 legislative districts of North Dakotg. They didn’t care if he had never been .in politics before—they rather thought that to his credit. So they nominated this farmer and elected him on the League ticket. And “Charley” has made good. Guarantee of bank deposits was no part of the League program, but Charley Drown thought, nevertheless, that it would be a good thing for the state, and so he fought it through the legislature, which included a senate dominated by the politicians,. and the people ‘of North Dalkota can rest easier o’nights when thinking of those savings in the bank —they dre safe now. So it will be interesting to learn something more of this man who “is only a farmer” and this law that he put on the statute books. DROWN BEGAN LIFE BACK IN MICHIGAN les Drown began his life, one ht say, as a speculator. To be kure it was speculation on a modest with frantic men and women, depositors of their lifelong savings, never left any cruel heartaches behind. But the spirit of investing money, and making it earn something, had an at- traction for him from his earliest days. If it. had not, he might not have ac- quired the hard-earned education he got in the country school at Ionia, Mich., during the “seventies,” for he . was left an orphan at 16 years of age, and he has faced the world in a one- man, hand-to-hand battle ever since, now winning, now losing, but fighting al every step of the way for the com- mon people whose problems he has shared, and still shares every day of his life. 4 On the farm he learned to swing the old back twisting cradle, and working at 50 cents a day he saved up his spare dollars until he had a small fund. Then, like all the boys of that day, who had ambition to. make the most of life, he took his money and went to school. Living at the home of a mar- ried sister, he took care of the doc- _tor’'s horse and the lawyer's horse at one dollar per week each; did some chores around home and studied. Some of the farmers of Michigan then were just beginning to show the first symptoms of dairyitis, which has ‘since developed into the great cen- tralizers; ‘the ‘co-operative creameries, the fine blooded herds of cows on farms in Minnegota,, Wisconsin, North Da- kota’and adjoining states, and Charlie’ got in on it jn a limited way. With money he had saved, he bought a cow from a neighbor and rented the cow out for half of the cow’s earnings. This proved fairly profitable, and he repeated the operation, as soon as the earnings from the first, and his small wages made this possible. Some other farmers, who heard - of this country school boy- capitalist sought him _out’ and he.had to get 'cows -for them.: When his own money ran out, he borrowed some at a bank where he was well known, and so he promoted the milking fever and - became in a small way a speculatbr, Cows were cheap then—a whole herd would cost no more than one of the present day record breakers whose photographs are a signal for applause at every dairy convention. A cow that would fail 4in a Minnesota testing association to- day, when single cows produce tons of milk in a year, was then a pretty good critter, and so Charley made a little money. ~ WENT TO BIG FAIR AT PHILADELPHIA And yet it wasn’t much. When 1876 came, and his young American blood began to pulse with accounts of the Centennial exposition in Philadelphia, he hadn't saved up much more than $100 of clear money above his expenses. But he wanted to make the Revolu- tionary and Civil. war history he had been studying live before his mind; he wanted to see the world, the old build- ings of the Quaker City, the Liberty bell, the relics of Washington's age. He could not resist and so-he went to the exposition. A good many of the neighbors went along too and they all enjoyed the trip. It was the-longest journey many of them had ever taken, and it was the longest train any of them had ever seen. As the excursion train wound through - the Alleghany - -~mountains young Charley could stick his bushy head out of the car window and see three engines tugging at it all at once. It was the greatest three weeks of his life‘for many a vear to come, and he absorbed much of what is sometimes called a “liberal education.” Then back to Michigan to school, the cradle and the cows. Mingled with his farming there was a little more advanced study than most of his chums succeeding in get- ting, for he spent a year in a law of- fice, and at one time had the hope of becoming a lawyer, ‘but he took Horace Greely’s famous advice to.go west, and in 1884 he found himself ‘in Barnes county, North Dakota, a pioneer farm- er with the whole future of a raw prairie state before him. He was fairly successful, acquired some farm land and other property, and thought he was ‘getting to the top as a pros- " perous farmer, when his-creditors clos- ed in on him and set him at the bot- tom to ‘start all over again. And he has made good a second time. During the 34 years since he came to North Dakota he has been only a farmer. His neighbors who had learn- ed of his ability to take care of him- self in some of the tight places that farmers who have to face lawyers and mortgagees know all about, have called on him for help from time to time. He was willing to share such experi- ence as he had gained and so, while no one has ever thought of calling Charley an attorney, a good many have thought of asking him to go through the motions of one, and he has saved property for his neighbors and his neighbor’s friends, and once in a while saved some good farmer boy from 10 days in jail, which might have befallen "him if it hadn’t been for Charley’s aid. HELD OFFICES IN HIS TOWNSHIP N So it'went from year to year, and as justice of the peace, and member of the township and the school board he " served his community, keeping .a shrewd eye on what was happening outside. 'When Oklahoma haltingly put into practice the first guaranty Helped League Representative G. Patterson, chair- man of the house committee on state public utilities, which prevented the snap-judgment sale of the state- owned street car line by bringing in a report to indefinitely postpone Senate Bill No. 122, bank deposit law ever enacted in the United States, some 12 or 14 years ago Charlie Drown had his eye on it. Per- haps the law was not as good as it might be, but the idea struck’ him as a good one. Some other states fell in behind Oklahoma, and Drown studied the. way their guarantees worked for the welfare of depositors. Then, one time, while he was in Chicago attending the National Live- stock show, he saw the scene described at the start of this story and that crystalized his determination to find a way to make safe the lives of the people who trust banks with their sav- .ings. The Nonpartisan League gave him that chance. The League farmers liked his ways. They chose him senator from the eleventh district in Cass county, although his neighbors were Repubiicans and he was a Democrat. That made no difference. Such imma- terial distinctions don’t worry Non- partisans in any state. They put him in office and he went to work on his bank idea. The first result was booked as Sen- ate Bill 107, but the one that got by was Senate Bill 217, both of them Senator Drown's. He was not-so set on a particular kind of a bill that he failed to appreciate advice, and so the suggestions of the 15 bankers who visited the committee and talked over the forthcoming law were gladly utiliz- ed. And in spite of the fact that bank- ers will have to pay something for operating under the law, most of them liked it, and some were eager for it. HOW HE ARGUED TO GET IT PASSED The arguments that Senator Drown used to convert some who were doubt- ful were these: If the people have to give the banks all the security the banks demand, when they borrow money from them, why should not the ELEVEN . and can be just as safe, y a Farmer” and the Bank Deposit Guaranty akota— “Charley” Drown Has Made Good . 8cale, and it never deprived any bhank banks have to give sufficient security to the people when they take that money? Banks get mortgages, but de- positors gab only.slips of paper—and Senator Drown knew of cases where those slips of paper were worthless. The state demands that these state banks guarantee the public funds de- posited with them. Then why not de- mand that they guarantee private funds deposited with them? These banks are created by the state, and acquire their rich opportuuity for profit by the goodness of the people who have made them possible under the law. ‘Why should these creatures of the people not make good to the people? ‘Well, the arguments won, and the senate passed the guaranty bank de- pesit bill, and so did the house. It provides that one-twentieth of one per cent of the average daily deposits of every bank under the law, shall be set agide to guarantee depositors. If a bank in Bowman county should fail, Cavalier county would help to pay off the Bowman county depositors. At first Senator Drown had this percent- age higher, but the bankers gasped, grabbed their pencils and figured a lit- tle, and the result was that Senator Drown receded. At one-twentieth of one per cent a -fund of a little more than $50,000 is created in one year, arnd the law further provides that there may be four assessments a year. Fig- ured to a “gnat’'s heel,” this would yield a fund of § 134 in one year to pay off the depositors of state banks ‘that might fail in North Dakota, and that is enough. 3 ‘What will happen? Senator Drown and friends of the measure believe the state banks will get the postal savings funds in a hurry. In the postal banks théy draw two per cent, in the state banks they may draw four per cent National banks, iunless they get a national guar- anty law, will have to yield up some cf their profits. Other states that have ,not such a law will have to see their money drain over into North Dakota, or guarantee their own citizens. The farmers and laboring men of North Dakota in the first session of the Nonpartisan League legislature have been asgured. a security they never had before. They have been given a con- fidence in the banks that the banks without this Nonpartisan League mea- sure never could have built up for themselves, and they have these things because. a bushy-headed farmer lad, who has grown to be a bald-headed senator, has a heart and a head that he uses as he knocks about the world seeing things and geining experiences. And who can tell but that the specu- lative itching he used to feel, when he made a few dollars renting cows out to farmers, may have given him such . an insight into the speculative temper- ment that he thinks now in his sober years it ought to be curbed? FOR THE CAUSE Stanley, N. D., Feb. 16, 1917. Editor Nonpartisan Leader: Just a few words in regard to our “friend,” the Mountrail County Promo- ter., It appears from an article pub- lished in the above named paper that the young editor is heartily in sympa- thy with our “farmers’ movement,” but alas, conversely, he is young in years and he is also young in thought. I would like to write more in regard to the stand taken by the “Promoter” but time will not allow it at this time. I enclose a clipping from the “Promoter.” I am heartily in sympathy with the speediest way . possible of pushing House Bill 44 through, and will gladly do all I can for the “birth and dawn of a new state.” Yours for the public welfare! T. B. ETLAND. CHEERS THEM ON T The campaign of vilification and misrepresentation regarding the Nonpartisan League that is now being conducted by the Grand Forks Herald, can have no other effect than to solidify the ranks of that organization. It will steel the nerve of those forty thousand farm- ers who are members of that or- ganization until they will be ready for any test. The farmers of this state are determined upon having some things that they believe will be of benefit to them and the Grand Forks Herald, or any other object, will not deter them — especially. when slander and misrepresenta- tion are the only weapons possessed by the opposition—STARK- WEATHER (N. D.) TIMES. e AT 2 o e — !