The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, November 1, 1917, Page 6

SR e et A et 5 A AL ECT lNonpartisan Tea 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 38, 1879. OLIVER S. MORRIS, EDITOR Advertising rates on application. -Subscription, one year, in advance, $2.50; six months, $1.50. Communications should be addressed to the Nonpartisan Leader, Box 941, Fargo, North Dakota, MEMBER OF AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS THE S. . 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. ; TEDDY AND THE LEAGUE ! READER writes us inclosing an editorial from the Kansas City Star written by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. Our reader says that the Colonel thinks he has diseovered a new popular issue, and points out that the Colonel is roasting the Nonpartisan league a good part of the time these days. Our correspondent leaves it.for us to infer that he means that Teddy would not be jumping on the League unless he thought the League was unpopular, and that he could gain popularity thereby. Such is the lack of confidence on the part of many of our citizens in our public men of today. It is doubtful if much of what Teddy is saying against the farm- ers’ movement is getting to members of the League to any great extent, because most of the farmers have stopped taking the newspapers for which our cclebrated ex-president is writing—they have found them to be poisoned Big Business organs and have quit them. So, in fear that many League men will not know what Teddy is saying, we here repro- duce a sample: ‘When thé Nonpartisan league movement was first started I was in- clined to hail it, because I am exceedingly anxious to do everything in my power to grapple with and remedy every injustice or wrong or mere failure to give ample opportunity to the farmer. With most of the avow- ed objects and with some of the methods of the Nonpartisan league I was in entire sympathy, although there were certain things it did which I felt should be condemned, and certain ways of achieving its objects which I believe to be mischievous. But when the League, on the disloyalty day in question, ranged itself on the side of the allies of Germany and the enemies of this country, it became necessary for every loyal American severely to condemn it.. Morally, although doubtless not legally, it thereby came perilously near ranging itself beside the I. W. W., the Ger- man-American ~alliance’ and the German Socialist party machine in America. 3 X We won’t stop to make mueh comment on this statement by the Colonel. Readers of the Leader know all about the St. Paul confer- ence to which he refers as a ‘‘disloyalty day’’. Teddy’s pretended pious desire to support the League, only to find that he can’t do so because it is “‘disloyal’’, is funny. It really belongs in our ‘‘Between the Rows’’ column instead of on the editorial page. Teddy is making a big mistake when he thinks his fight on the League will help him to get in the president’s chair for a third term. The patriotic American farmers, who have the votes, do not fancy being called Germans, Socialists and I. W. W.s, or having their organ- jzations or conferences or delegates called by those terms. THE CENSORSHIP ship set up by United States Postmaster General Burleson. ‘We believe, judging from some of his statements and acts, that a war censorship, which should deal only with suppression of military information of use to the enemy and of treason and sedition, is apt to be used to annoy if not to suppress radical reform publications of unquestioned patriotism. We state this as constructive eriticism of a governmental policy, and do so freely because Mr. Burleson himself has been broad enough to announce that criticism of himself or his department will not be con- strued by him as sedition or treason. We therefore feel safe, as well FHE Leader is frank to say that it does not approve the censor- as justified, in pointing out a few things in regard to Mr. Burleson’s interpretation of the broad powers given him by eongress. ‘We find that the Associated Press quotes Mr. Burleson as follows: For instance, papers may not say that the government is controlled by Wall street, or munition manufacturers, or any other special interests. This, we believe, is carrying the eensorship to an unwarranted ex- treme. As authority for our brief, we are pleased to quote presiden Wilson himself on this point. Says our President: One of the most alarming phenomena of the time—or rather it would be alarming if the nation had not awakened to it—one of the most signifi- cant signs of the new social era is the degree to which government has become associated with business. Our government has been for the past few years under the control of heads of great corporations with special interests. This is from the president’s excellent book, “‘The New Freedom”’, Again in that book he says: The gentlemen whose ideas have been sought (by the governmeflt) are the big manufacturers, the bankers and the heads of the great rail- way combinations. The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States. That last sentence of the president’s is pretty strong. It might have applied when the book was published (1914), but the Leader would hesitate to make as strong a statement as that in regard to the present situation. The point we make, however, is this: If the president of the United States goes to this extreme in criticizing the government (Mr. Wilson was president when this book was published) why should a member of the president’s cabinet, ap- pointed by the president, interpret such statements as sedition or treason? The Leader is not pleading for its own right to make as strong a statement -as the president himself has—we have no desire to go that strong, nor yet have we any fear of suppression. While we do not be- lieve that the Big Interests are, as the president says, absolutely the ‘“‘masters of the government’?, we realize that THEY WOULD BE IF THEY: COULD, and that it is necessary for all progressive movements and publications to-keep up a constant fight to prevent them from be- coming the masters. We are confident that in this fight the people’s chief ally in power in the United States at the present time is Mr. Wil- son himself. 3 : However, we submit that it is a matter of opinion as to what de- gree the Big Interests influence congress and the government. There are good arguments to support any opinion on this subject. We do not - believe that any opinion on the matter, no matter how strong, can be either sedition or treason, even if Mr. Burleson does choose to-call it by such names. g TN | ~—~—— J,{'. " THE PARTNERSHIP BUGABOO ! ANY readers of the Leader outside of North Dakota are probs M ably not familiar with all the' details of the fight made on the : Nonpartisan league last year in that. state. Certainly the Minnesota country press that is fighting the League at the present time does not know of the erack-brained schemes that were tried in North Dakota and failed so miserably. If it did know the Minnesota country press would not be trying the same discredited methods. An instance is the Long Prairie (Minn.) Leader and the Alexan< dria (Minn.) Citizen, two of the many country papers that are aping the Twin City Big Business press and two of several country papers in Minnesota that are now charging that the Nonpartisan league is a ‘‘partnership’’ under the law, and that every member of the League ( . is a partner in the legal sense, and therefore liable for the debts of the League, should there be any. League members one day during the campaign last year in North Dakota got up one morning to find that every daily paper in the state had opened a campaign against the farmers’ movement on the ground that it was a partnership, with each member liable for the debts of the organization.’ The great black headlines in the papers said that the League was tottering financially, being about to go bankrupt. Each paper contained a solemn warning to the farmers to immediately re sign and repudiate the League. If they did not, the papers said, when the League blew up its creditors would swoop down and make League members individually come through for the big debts of the organization. ' Daily for weeks the papers hammered on this subject. But there was one funny thing about it. Not a paper published an opinion of a single lawyer as support for the charge that League members were liable individually for debts of the organization. This was remarkable because some of the most eminent lawyers of the state were opposed to the League, and if there had been any truth in the statement, these lawyers would have been only too ready to give authority to the charge over their names. The papers said that ‘‘eminent attorneys’’, PAGE SIX ¥ e et