The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, November 15, 1917, Page 8

DN TOR Nonpartisan Teader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League—Every Thursdav. 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, $2.50; six months, $1.560. Communications should be addressed to the Nonpartisan Leader, Box 941, Fargo, North Dakota. 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. THAT SEVEN BILLION GRAB OTHING could show more forecefully how the Big Interests put N things over on congress than the articles from the Leader’s Washington bureau, one last week and one in this issue. Big Business has a proposition before congress to allow a private grab of over seven billion dollars worth of waterpower sites in the United States, now publicly owned and controlled. This does not include the public oil resources that it is also proposed to take away from the people. The two Liberty loans totaled five billion dollars, a stupendous sum of money that staggers the imagination. We never learned to think - in sums so big until the war. And yet this proposed waterpower grab involves more money than the two Liberty loans. The waterpower bill, already favorably reported by a senate committee, was born in secrecy. Senator Knute Nelson of Minnesota, wrote about this bill to Rome G. Brown of Minneapolis, a waterpower attorney and lobbyist for Big Business—also one of the backers of the National Citizens’ union, formed to fight the Nonpartisan league on a national scale. o T enclose you a confidential print of a proposed bill,”’ said Sena- tor Nelson writing to Mr. Brown. Mr. Nelson tells Mr. Brown, whom he calls ““My dear Mr. Brown,’’ that he (Brown) can be of -great assistance in helping to frame the bill. Why should there be any ¢‘confidential’’ or SECRET copies of any bill before congress? Why is the advise of Mr. Brown of GREAT ASSISTANCE—Mr. Brown, who is a waterpower company attorney, a lobbyist for the Big Interests? Did Mr. Nelson ask the opinion of the PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA as to this grab, and does he think that THEIR opinion isn’t of ‘‘great assistance’’? The Leader’s articles from Washington on this subject have been VERY ILLUMINATING. C. B. KEGLEY HE president of the Washington State Grange, C. B. Kegley of I Palouse, is dead. He died recently in a Spokane (Wash.) hospital of pneumonia, at the age of 62 years. The farmers of ‘Washington and of the nation have lost a true friend. Kegley was a fighter, much the kind of a man that the late George S. Loftus of the Equity society was. A man once asked a friend of Kegley’s this question: “YWhy do the farmers stick to this fellow Kegley? He is utterly diseredited—a crook, you might say, and personally ambitious, using the farmers to forward his own interests.’’ “Diseredited?’’ asked Kegley’s friend. ‘‘Why discredited?’’ ““Why, the papers are full of his questionable doings,”’ was the reply. ‘‘You can’t pick up an issue that doesn’t show him up in some way.’’ This was true, and many people who did not know the facts but who depended on the newspapers to shape their opinions for them, probably. -believe today that the state of Washington has benefitted by the death of this unselfish patriot. Kegley was pursued and hounded by the press like many other leaders of the farmers in whom they have placed their trust. To break up the Washington Grange, which became a power in Wash- AL SECT ington under Kegley’s leadership, and to discredit the progressive polit- ical and economic ideas that Kegley and the Grange stood for, this man was marked as a vietim by the hired press, and slander was heaped upon him without stint. At one time, certain newspapers even refused to permit his name to be used in lists of hotel arrivals. . The order was that his name was never to appear in the paper except in a damaging connection. Kegley and Loftus were true leaders of the farmers. They were men the Big Interests, the politicians and the press with axes to grind could not use. Hence they were ‘‘dangerous’’ men to these interests, and they sought to besmirch and discredit them. They hoped that the farmers, misled by this abuse, would repudiate their own interests by repudiating these men. But it did not work in the cases of Loftus or Kegley. The farmers Jhave a way of knowing their real friends. Year after year— for 13 consecutive terms—Kegley was elected master of the Washington State Grange, and he always represented the state of Washington in the national counsels and conventions of the organization. Part of Kegley’s big work was to help in uniting the labor unions and the farmers of Washington. For years the working men of the cities and the toilers of the farms co-operated through a joint legisla- tive committee, and much legislation of benefit to hoth classes was ob- tained. This in itself was sufficient of a ‘‘crime’’ in the eyes of the - politicians and press to warrant the press attacks on Kegley. Lately Kegley was given some recognition by the government for his work for the farmers. He was appointed appraiser for the federal land bank at Spokane. He was one of the leading farmers of Wash- ington who invited the Nonpartisan league to that state, and he was a warm friend of the League and what it stood for politically and economically. : The farmers of Washington and of the country have lost a true friend. . WAR EFFICIENCY i HEN it is considered that ‘‘precedent,’”’ a few anti-reformers and the Big Interests are the only things that stand in the way of many plans that might be worked out to make this nation really efficient in war, it is to wonder at the docility of the - American people, who do not rise up and demand that certain things —the obvious things to do—are not done at once to help win the war. We are not indulging in any carping criticism of the president or of the government, as the unpatriotic Roosevelt has done in his charges of ‘‘muddling’’ and ‘‘broomstick preparedness.’”” We merely wish to refer to what could be done, if the people would give the president sufficient support, in the case of certain industries. The ship building industry is an example. There have been strikes and other trouble between the workers and the employers, seriously menacing the government’s ship building program, so neces- sary to win the war. The ship yard workers have not been trying to hold up the government. They have themselves been held up by the monopolists and an economic system which has made a dollar that they, now earn have the purchasing power of 50 cents a few years ago. They, merely want justice and fair wages. If their patriotism has been doubted, that lie has been nailed by their own statement, which shows the way the government program can be carried out, and which is the point of this editorial. 3 The ship yard workers have offered to build Uncle Sam’s ships at cost—not a cent of profit. ‘‘Give us the materials and furnish us the yards to work in, and we will build your ships without profit to anybody,’’ say these workers to the government. *‘You pay us the fair wages we ask, and you will get your ships at a figure that will astonish you.”’ 2 To make this effective, all the government has to do is to com« mandeer the ship yards—take them over from the owners at a fair rental—and turn the ship yard workers loose to do the.job. No more strikes, no more holding up of the -government’s program, no more greedy profits for ship yard owners, fair wages and working condi- tions, contented workers, plenty of ships for the government, confi- dence of the people in their government firmly established—sueccess in the war! : But this would be ‘‘unprecedented’’; they would eall it ‘‘Social- ism’’ or ‘L 'W. W’ism; probably it would be ‘‘treason.’”’ In fact, it is ‘‘unthinkable’’—to the Big Interests controlling the ship yards. But maybe we will do just that if the war lasts much longer, as it has every chance of doing! :