The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, October 4, 1917, Page 6

. AT AN EDITOR Nonpartisan Teader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League—Every Thursday. Entered as second-class matter September 3, 1915, at the postoffice at Fargo, North Dakota, under the Act of March 3, 1879. OLIVER S. MORRIS, EDITOR Advertising rates on application. Subscription, one year, in advance, $2.60; sIX months, 551'.50. Communications should be addressed to the Nonpartisan Leader, Box 941, Fargo, North Dakota. 4 MEMBER OF AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS THE S. C. BECKWITH SPECIAL AGENCY, _Advertising Representatives, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City. Quack, fradulent and irresponsible firms.are not knowingly advertised, and we will take it as a favor if any readers™will advise us promptly should they have occasion to doubt or question the reliability of any firm which patronizes our advertising columns. '] UST because we fight without rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we should wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel conf- dent, conduct our operations as belligerents wi.hout passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and fair play we profess to be fighting for.”’ " —Woodrow Wilson. POISONING THE NEWS HE five thousand earnest and patriotic members of the Nonpar- I tisan league and organized labor who met at St. Paul to assist the government in solving the serious economic questions grow- ing out of the war, adopted a set of resolutions. These were published in full in the Leader last week. THESE RESOLUTIONS ALONE REPRESENT THE ATTITUDE OF THE CONVENTION. They were ‘adopted unanimously, without a dissenting vote, after the resolutions committee, picked from every interest and organization represented in the convention, had listened to the speeches and carefully canvassed every phase of every question presented. The resolutions committee worked two days on the resolutions. Despite the fact that everyone knows that these resolutions, and these alone, were the only action of the delegates present, and alone represent the views of the delegates, an attempt has been made by the controlled press WITHOUT PRINTING THE RESOLUTIONS, to play up garbled aceounts of some of the speeches and call those the views of the delegates. This has been done by the press hostile to the people and friendly to the war profiteers, because there was nothing in the resolutions that could be eriticized, and because they thought prejudice could be worked up against the producers’ and consumers’ movement by singling out and exaggerating the importance and distorting the meaning of some of the specches. . The purposes of the Big Interests that these papers are anxious to forward could more readily be served by thus poisoning the news of the econvention. The League had to buy advertising space in some of the St. Paul papers to get the resolutions before the publie, for the papers refused to print the text as news. : The resolutions committee and the convention took a position di- rectly-opposite to that of some of the speakers on many of the ques- tions discussed. The thirty or .so statesmen and economic experts who addressed the delegates were there to give their personal views, to be taken by the convention for what they were worth. But the con- vention is bound only by its own action, and its only action was the adoption of the resolutions referred to. 3 ® = w Again let it be said that the side of the people can not be made to look treasonable, and the side of the war profiteers made to look pa- triotic. * * ® LA FOLLETTE’S SPEECH ENATOR LaFollette of Wisconsin and Senator Borah of Idaho, S because they have been leaders in the fight of the people to ob- tain a fair taxation of war profits, were asked and did speak to the great Producers’ and Consumers’ conference at St. Paul. Senator LaFollette’s subject was ‘‘Representative Government,’’ a subject he is eminently qualified to discuss, because of a life-time devoted to the cause of the people. It was a carefully prepared written speech which in no way touched on the senator’s attitude on the declaration of war by the United States, and did not discuss the war except in its economie phases at home. Due to the sensational stories published by the Pioneer Press and Dispateh of St. Paul and the Journal of Minneapolis in the despicable attempt to distort the purposes of the convention and inflame the peo- ple of the Twin Cities against the meetings, on the ground they were disloyal meetings, a few persons took seats in the gallery, the night- Senator LaFollette spoke, for the purpose of ‘‘heckling’’ him. These few persons would not permit him to go on with his written speech. PAGE BIX AL SECT They goaded him with insulting epithets and plied him with questions about things not referred to in the speech he was making. The senator foolishly began to reply to the ‘‘hecklers,”” and finally laid aside his written speech to enter into a defense of himself for his opposition to the declaration of war. The provocation was of course - great, but in his heated defense of himself under the goading of the “‘hecklers’’, the senator said things he should not have said, no matter how honestly he holds these views—things for which those in charge of the program of the convention and the convention itself take no re- sponsibility whatever. The press hostile to any plan of the consumers and producers getting together to stand for fair play at home during the war, knew these to be the faets, but saw an opportunity, it thought, to diseredit the great St. Paul conference by playing up some of LaFol- lette’s remarks as the sentiment of the delegates. But it didn’t work. Enough newspapers have carried the true report of the meetings and the people know the truth. The fair reports included the text of the resolutions, which alone represent the views of the labor and farmer delegates and the Nonpartisan league, under whose auspices the con- vention was called. These resolutions, among other things, approve President Wilson’s definition of the war aims of the United States and promise the sup- _bort of the farmers and working men in prosecuting the war until these aims are realized. They also pledge support to the government in efforts to obtain the fair taxation of wealth and war profits, and in regulating prices on all commodities so that they shall be fair to both producers and consumers. * ® * On the whole, the national news gathering associations handled the news of the great ‘St. Paul conference with fairness, as did the special correspondents of several eastern newspapers, sent to cover it. It re- mained for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch and Minneapolis Journal, organs of Big Business, to garble the speeches, falsely report the views and sentiments of the delegates and smear themselves in as dirty a a bit of mud-throwing as dishonest journalism could stoop to. Not to be outdone by these disreputable newspapers, part of the small town press, imitators of the Twin City papers, of which the Fargo Forum and Grand Forks ‘Herald are examples, copied the Journal-Press-Dispatch distorted versions, casting aside the fair reports of the regular news services serving them, which, of course, carried the news but none of the editorial attacks on the farmers and working men who attended the con- ference. X * ¥ @ WHY THEY DID IT ; THE Minneapolis Journal, organ of the grain combine, did not slander the Producers’ and Consumers’ congress because, as the Journal sought to show, it was a ‘‘disloyal’’ Journal knew it wasn’t a disloyal meeting but a very loyal and patriotie one. It raised the foolish and insincere ery of ‘“‘disloyalty’’ because the Journal, as a paper of Big Business, objected to the stand the con- vention took for taking the profit out of war, and objected to the con- vention’s stand against the grain combine. - 2 The St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch were not really indignant because Senator LaFollette spoke to the St. Paul conference—they only pretended to be. Their real grievance was because the conference had brought together farmers and working men of the cities ON A COM- MON BASIS TO FIGHT BIG BUSINESS AND SPECIAL PRIVI- LEGE, which these papers are anxious to defend and which see a menace in the fact that PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS ARE GET- TING TOGETHER TO INSIST ON FAIR PLAY. The hired editors of the small town imitators of these Twin City papers—the Fargo Forum and Grand Forks Herald—did not froth at the mouth because they believed or because the facts showed that these meetings were ‘‘unpatriotic’’— : because the facts showed Jjust the oppo- site. They denounced the mee tings because they are politically oppos- ed to the farmers’ organizatio . n and its program and because, if these meetings could not be discredited, meeting—the next year, as the gang fondly g them any basis for their slan the speeches. " None of the editors who used their to question the loyalty and i ; ho‘n'est and patriotic Purpose, and that that These editors are well informed. They knew exactly what took Place at the conference, They knew that th.;t took plafze there, if presented in its true light, would displease their masters if it became publie, and so they did not report what