The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, December 10, 1917, Page 8

RS TORIAI Tonpartigan Teader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League—Every Week 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, s'iao. Communications should be addressed to the Nonpartisan ader, Box 941, Fargo, North Dakota. 5 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 firresponsible 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. UPHOLDING THE LAWS NHE unequivocal way in which the national administration through a statement by Secretary of War Baker and a speech by President Woodrow Wilson, has denounced mob outrages in America deserves the heartiest commendation from all lovers of fair play and justice and believers in demoecratie political institutions. The Leader has taken occasion from time to time to protest against these outrages, which culminated recently in:the kidnapping and lashing of Herbert Bigelow by masked cowards, who pretended to disagree with Mr. Bigelow’s attitude on the war, but who probably used this as a pretext to ‘‘get’’ him because of the part he has taken in progressive politics in Ohio and his stand cu ceonomic questions. Besides protesting such outrages, we have given publicity to such papers as the Fargo Forum, an open advocate of mob violence when the war first started, and a paper that violently denounced Governor Frazier of North Dakota for issuing a proclamation intended to prevent just such subversions of government as the Bigelow incident. It is therefore with some satisfaction that we find Seeretary Baker and President Wilson taking the same position that we and many other progressive and liberal publications have taken. The president’s words on this subject should be followed by vigorous action by federal and state authorities, whenever anarchy of the kind mentioned shows its head anywhere in this country again. The president in his speech to labor at Buffalo said: I have been very much distressed, my fellow citizens, by some of the things that have happened recently. The mob spirit is displaying itself here and there in this country, I have no sympathy with what some men are saying, but I have no sympathy with the men that take thcir punish- ment into their own hands, and I want to say to every man who does join such a mob that I do not recognize him as worthy of the free insti- tutions of the United States. 5 I respect the ancient processes of justice, and I would be too proud not to see them done justice, however wrong they are. And so I want to utter my -earnest protest against any manifestation of the spirit of lawlessness anywhere or in any 'cause, ‘Why, gentlemen, look what it means: We claim to be the greatest demo- cratic people in the world, and democracy means, first of all, that we can govern ourselves. If our men have not self-control, then they are not capable of that great thing which we call democratic government. A man who takes the law into his hands is not the right man to co-operate in any form' of or development of law and institutions, HOLD YOUR LIBERTY BOND cent issue, have been selling on the New York Stock exchange as low as $97.10. This is $2.90 per bond less than persons who subscribed for the loan paid for them. - At this rate the discount on the bonds in $50 denominations would be $1.45 per bond. The Liberty bonds were sold on the representation that they were the best kind of investment, even for the savings of widows and orphans. That is true. 'With all the credit and resources of the government and péople of the United States back of them, they are probably the best investment in the country today. Why, then, the heavy discount on the New York Stock exchange? Why have Wall street bond traders hammered them down in price? : v The fact is that all securities in America have taken a great slump LIBERTY loan bonds in $100 dehominations, of the recent 4 per PAGE EIGHT - AL SECT ‘'the growing conviction that the roads are fat S i on acount of the war and the general inflation and- it is said the Liberty loan is simply following other kinds of bonds. The average price of all standard bonds a year ago, $100 par, was $87.50, against about $69 now. But somehow, in spite of this supposed excuse, one wishes that government war bonds, patriotically subseribed to at par by millions of wage earners and poor people, could be made immune from the operations and price fixing of the traders and gamblers on the stock exchanges. ‘What is happening is exactly what President Wilson said would happen when he recommended, at the outset of the war, that half the war' expense be borne by bonds and half by well conceived ‘taxation on excess war profits, swollen incomes, ete. He said otherwise there would be inflation and a fall in security values. Many were sur- prised the president did not insist on his original proposition. But he let congress pass bills which raise many times as much by bonds as by taxation. One of the results is the slump in- values of securities, ineluding the government’s own war bonds. Congress must take this in consideration when the next revenue bill is framed. It isn’t a matter entirely of sentiment or justice, this demand for heavier taxes on swollen wealth and excess war profits—it is good, sound finaneial business, as our allies have found. Omne result of the hammering down of the price of Liberty bonds on the stock exchanges is bound to be the transfer of a large part of the bonds into the hands of the wealthy, exactly what the government has tried to avoid. The Liberty bond selling campaign was planned with the idea of spreading the bonds among as many people as possi- ble, placing them in the hands of the wage workers and people in poor and moderate circumstances. Many of these people will have to sell them, as they will need the money. g - The rich capitalists will buy up the bonds at ‘a heavy discount, having the ready cash to do so and being in a position to hold the bonds till their value recovers after the war. This will mean, if the trend continues, in the years to come’a comparatively few people will own the bulk of the Liberty bonds and will be harvesting rich incomes from the interest. Bonds these rich investors buy now for $97, $3 below par, yield them four and one-eighth per cent, and in addition pay them $100 at maturity, instead of the $97 they originally invested, making the actual yield much higher than 4 1-8 per cent. The injustice of this is only - too apparent and the -government should do something about it. We don’t want a horde of rich men getting richer with excessive interest at the expense of poor but pa- triotic people for two decades after the war is over. Sound finéncial z'xdvice at this time would appear to be to hold onto your Liberty bonds, if you possibly can, until the bond market recovers after the war, thus preventing the bonds passing into the hands of rich investors at a big discount, enabling them to make a big harvest at your expense later. 3 HE railroads'are laying the wires to ask congress for a bounty frem the United States for increasing their efficiency. In spite ; of the frequent reports published by the Interstate Commerce coml.mssion, which have almost uniformly shown railroad Pprofits to be soaring at each quarterly announcement, the railroads say they are bro_ke. They say this in spite of the findings of the valuation experts, which have shown in many cases that the roads are capitalized at twice their real value—in other words that the modest § or 7 per cent which they say they would be content with earning, is really 12 to 14 per cent. Recently the general managers of the Texas railroads made a public appeal for sympathy by advertising in farm papers, to offset X tening with its, said, among other things: sTR Lt o ‘“Unfortunately the inability of the railroads to earn anything like adequate returns makes railroad investments very unattractive and'’ accounts for the almost complete cessation of railroad construetion.’’ o About this time the Interstate Commerce commission issued one .of its fllumipating bulletins of faet, in which it was stated that the south- ern railroads had increased their net earnings $1,450,000 for the month, and the railroads of the whole country $3,000,000 over those of the corresponding month last year, Thi5v~.is only a sample of the official reports reaching the pubiit;. and s'howmg the facts. A year or two ago the railroads were openly g.loat,mg over these facts, for profits have bulged enormously ever since _the war began. The Big Business newspapers were publishing them in glee with big headlines. Now they conceal them in small type and obscure corners of the paper . 8. That, t0o, is part of the concerted game of the railroads to have the United States lend them $100,000,000 P ORI T