The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, May 31, 1917, Page 5

* = = 0 "BOND FOR STAT . INDUSTRIES - IT 1S DANGEROULS! ET THEM BY DIREC AND PACKING PLANTS ON OUR) JOWN. CREDIT! Ve 3 o o e e TR G TR N X 3 2 e The towns and cities enjoy the benefit of publicly owned ness_interests and some town and city folks object to the farmers—the utilities by that method. utilities built by Bond issues secured by the re it of the pu —city-owned light and water systems and improved streets. The farmers do not o ) e blic. They are entitled to these improvements bject to their using the public credit to build them. Why should powerful busi- : prqducers—also using the public credit, through bond issues, to build public utilities, like state-owned elevators, cold storage plants, mills, etc., to give farmers justice in the matter worst of the argument. He pretends to favor building these utilities by taxation, of marketing? The fat gentleman in the picture seems to have the because he knows it will probably be impossible for the farmers to build such The Good Old Nag “Done Broke Down” to date and efficient. You would of course expect it to meet ordinary conditions of weather and roads. But you would expect even more than this of it, especially if it was a high-priced machine of a make extensively advertised, widely used and much praised. It would have to make good in emergencies. You would ex- pect it to take you up a steep hill if occasion arose, or to pull you through a particularly bad muddy or sandy stretch. Any old bunch of junk or four wheels can roll along over level paved streets or go down hill without pushing. = All this is perfectly obvious. We all know that the real test of worth of an automobile is its ability to meet emergencies. We all Eknow that’s the test of efficiency and worth for everything, be it man or machine. 'We are-now getting to the point of this editorial. The point is this: The food marketihg system of the United States—that costly, much-defended, widely-praised, economic machine provided for us by the geniuses of Big Business—can not MEET THE EMERGEN- CY OF WAR TIMES. “‘Poor ole Nancy, she was a good nag, but ghe done broke down.’’ LET’S say you have bought an automobile, guaranteed to he up * * = THEY ALL SEE THE POINT NOW ES sir, they are about to junk our venerated marketing system. i President Wilson has recommended and congress is going to pass stringent measures for ‘‘mobilizing’’ the food crops. This program undoubtedly’will mean strict price regulation, if not absolp.te guarantee of returns to farmers, big enough to pay them a fair profit. This is hitting old General Supply and Demand a pretty hard jolt. You remember that they have been telling us—that is the ‘‘plutes’’ and the politicians have—that the Old General was an aboslutely fair old chap. But they are going to rout him out of the trenches of Big Business now. HE CAN’T MAKE GOOD IN AN EMERGENCY. Then the food speculator and gambler-are going to go, ‘‘for the duration of the war,”’ at least. Congress has not decided this yet, " exactly, but it doesn’t have to. The people have decided it, and con- gress must fall in line. In one voice the people have decreed the sup- pression of the speculator. Just think of it—going to put the fellows out of business that they have told us all these years are neecessary ‘%o ‘‘absorb the surplus’’ and ‘‘stabilize the market.””” Then the gov- ernment is likely to take over the elevators, the warehouses and the railroads for the war. ‘‘Confiscating private property,’’ ‘‘invading personal property rights,”” ‘“Socialism’’ and what not! Yes, they used to call such policies that—and worse. * * * FARMERS ALWAYS KNEW IT T ISN'T necessary any longer to prove that the economic system I the farmers have been fighting to change through the Nonparti- san League is inefficient, unfair and corrupt. It ish’t necessary to prove it, because many of the very fellows who have been bolstering it up and fighting the farmers’ movement admit that the present market- ing system can not meet an emergency. And when they admit it can not meet an emergency—can not stand up under stress—they admit just wv]gat the League has claimed, just what the Leader has said, just what the farmers have:always known. Tor if it can not work EFFICIENTLY IN AN EMERGENCY it is a “bum’’ machine, just like the automobile we talked about a minute ago. But what of all this talk about discarding this unfair, inefficient marketing system FOR THE DURATION OF THE WAR ONLY? If it’s all wrong to trim the farmers and cheat the consumers in war times by the slick methods of the great middleman’s system, why is it all right to do it in peace times? If government operation of ele- vators, warehouses and railroads is ‘‘un-American,’’ ¢“Socialistic’’ and ‘‘visionary”’ in peace times, why is it ‘“patriotic’’ and ‘‘efficient pre- paredness’’ in war times? . * % % WILL WE GO BACK TO IT? T’S going to be pretty hard when peace comes to give up an cffi- I cient, up-to-date system of marketing, put in during the war, and go back to the “‘I'll-grab-mine-andt’ell-with-you’’ system of feeding the world that has existed all these years. Men and women are going to ask why something that has served them well in an emergency is not good for ordinary usage. ‘They are going to want to have right along the kind*of an automobile that will take ’em up the steep hills when need be. THEY WILL WANT TO BE PRE- PARED henceforth for EMERGENCIES. We’ll admit they have had a jolly fine time cornering .the food supply, building up unfair monopolies and combines and taking out unnccessary profits between producer and consumer all these years. It’s all been in the game, we’ll say—the game of peace times. But we’ll be patriotic and cut it out for a while ‘‘during the war.”” Then we’ll go back to it again when peace is declared. . Will we? IT IS UP TO YOU.