The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, December 10, 1917, Page 9

Bl e e S — e S 7 Tnace on honds drawing 3 or 4 per cent, for them to reinvest in property yielding 6 to 7 per cent on present valuations, and almost double that on actual valuations. But the railroads realize that the people, who enthusxastlcally oversubseribed two Liberty loans, would probably not relish a $100,- 000,000 government bond issue for the benefit of the railroads, and hence the widespread and carefully laid campaign to build up a senti- ment favorable to such an issue. Watch to see.this railroad proposition sprung in congress at an early date. The big bankers and big railroad men are for it. The ‘‘railroad war board’’ seems to favor xt. . They intend to try to get it. LEAGUE IS “INVESTIGATE HE. Nonpartisan league has grounds for feeling itself highly I flattered. The League has been ‘‘investigated’’ by J. C. H. Reynolds of Spokane, Wash., secretary of the Employers* Asso- ciation of the Inland Empire. -Mr. Reynolds, who, with the organiza- tion he represents, for years has been conducting a campaign against organized labor in the state of Washington, gave an interview to Spokane papers in which he assured the public that he was “‘going East’’ to Chicago, St. Paul and Fargo to ‘‘investigate’’ the League. A few days later he gave out another interview, stating he had been to Fargo, Chicago and St. Paul ‘and obtained all the facts, and he told some of the things he had ‘‘found out’’ on this flying jaunt ‘‘east’’. Maybe Mr. Reynolds came to Fargo. If he did, he -carefully avoided calling on the Leader staff. We should have been delighted to meet him. Maybe he got enough'‘‘dope’’ on the League in Fargo from our: friend, Norm Black of the Forum, or from Judge Young, at- torney for the N. P., and didn’t need to: ask us about it. These two ought to have given him an earful. Among other thirigs, Mr. Reynolds ‘‘discovered’’ (so he says in his interview in the Spokane papers) that the League captured North Dakota politically last year and that the League is-rapidly extending into adjoining states. He is some sleuth, all right. »How did he ever get hold of such damaging facts? Mr. Reynolds is to give a somewhat more ‘‘confidential’’ report on the League to the Employers’ assoeiation. We await a report of this further announcement of his ‘“‘discoveries’’ with anxiety, and in the teantime reprint herewith the comment of the Spokane -Labor World, the organ of organized labor in Spokane, in regard to Mr. Reynolds and his “mvestlgatlon The Employers’ association does not want the League to get a footing here (’tis’ too late, brothers—the League has been firmly established for- months), because it is afraid of a success in Washington similar to that of North Dakota and elsewhere. The realization has been forced upon the association that the Nonpartisan leagus, although an infant in mat- ters political, has brought about wonderful changes in the economical and political life of the farmer, a.nd has’ xiractlca.lly made obsolete the word ‘“spoils.” Of course the Employers’ association doee not want this to happen here, so its man Friday has been sent to “Investigate.” Well, he will see and hear things that should make his eyes open in amazement, ‘were he not paid to see and hear things in a perverted manner. And these continual “invest.lga.tlons" by Reynolds and his organiza- tion are productive of nothing but annoya.nce The activities of himself and his associates remind ‘us of the story a prominent single taxer used to tell. The story is of a man who stopped one night at a little country hotel and after retiring to his room and his bed was very much annoyed by something biting him. He arose, lit the lamp, searched the bed and finally. found a bed-bug. . He picked up_the dlsturber, laid it in the palm of his hand and addressed it something after this fashion: “Well, you are not very large, in fact rather insighificant, Now I have nothing particular against you, and you can’t do any pa.rtlcula: harm, but I don’t like the damned business you are in.” ° - Now we have nothing particular against our friend Reynolds nor hll associates, for they can do no particular harm, but we don’t like the business they are in when they meddie in the affairs of such instituflonl as the Nonpa.rtisan league and the. organized labor -moyement, : ; WE AWARD A MIEDAI. EE Leader has already awarded several leather medals to news- I papers and magazines for printing ‘‘prize writeups'’ of the Nonpartisan league.. In addition to the usual leather medal, we hereby‘ award {The Paeker'f of Clucago A framed photograph of 'Anamas a.nd present it-with.one, qf the Ba.cred eye-lashea .of . Baron Munchausen. 'We confer this honor on The Packer, the ofllcml organ of the produce‘bnsmess, for an artlcle headed {“Nonpartisan. League to. Open’ 4n, Ne York, appearmg' in The Packer for November 123, If you can find another “wnteup” anywhere that beats The Packer’s we w111 eonfer upen.it, in addition to the above honors,-a splinter from the Big Stick, honorary emblem of the le elub £ormed by tlu lage. Theodore Roosevelt. ing up!: It says that the League has ‘‘no influence,” which in ‘‘proved’’ by the fact that it fought the recent Liberty loan, in spite of which the people of the states where the League is organized over- subscribed the loan! It says: ‘‘Mr. Townley made a tour of North Dakota in which he spoke very bitterly against the Liberty bond cam- paign. He advised the farmers not to buy the bords.”’ Leader readers are of course familiar with the facts. Mr. Towne ley’s tours before and during the bond campaign were marked by his vigorous indorsement of the Liberty loan. The bonds were boosted by Mr. Townley and other League speakers, and the free advertising given the bonds at League meetings and by the Leader probably was the chief cause of the people oversubscribing the loan so heavily in states where the League is organized. After becoming entirely irresponsible to that extent, The Packer goes on to say: ‘‘Mr. Townley also has been accused of advising the farmers not to sell their wheat at the price of $2.20 per bushel, which was fixed by the government.”’ Not only have the League’s most ardent enemies, till now, refrained from even ‘‘accusing’’ such a ridiculous thing, but Mr. Townley would be in jail if this and the other Advocating or urging refusal to things The Packer says were true. subsecribe to a GOVERNMENT WAR LOAN is sedition, and you may well believe that, with all the enemies Mr. Townley has, none of them would have overlooked getting him in jail if he had advocated oppo- sition to the bonds, instead of supporting them as he did. ‘We have saved the best part of the The Packer’s ‘‘writeup’’ for the last. IT IS A ‘“DISPATCH’’ FROM NEW YORK. One would think that information concerning the Nonpartisan league would be sought by The Packer in the Northwest, or in some state where the League is organizing and where the facts are known. Instead, The Packer gets its ‘“news’’ about the League from New York (probably ‘Wall street), with the result shown. ‘We still have a supply of leather medals for any new candidates who want to write up the League. AFTER THE WAR—WHAT THEN? HEN the war is over, what will happen? There are now more ‘than 1,000,000 men in'the United States military and naval V by the end of the war, who ean tell how many? It is worth while now for the United States to look back a few years to the winters of 1912, 1913 and 1914. Remember the nation- ~ wide lack of emponment the bread lines, the soup lines, the heavy demands upon every private charity. These were, comparahvely normal years. Most men had work during the summers of these years,’ harvestmg, at road work, in the logging camps, but the operatlons of “‘normal’’ industry depnved them of the cha.nce of labor in the winter. Hence their suffering. If this condition obtained during a ‘‘normal”” year, picture what may happen when 1,000,000 or 2,000,000 or, if the war lasts long enough, 10,000,000 soldiers and sailors are thrown back upon civil life, just at the time when war munitions factories are closing down and throwing other hundreds of thousands out of work. ‘The prospect is not a pleasant one. Every winter during the so called ‘‘hard times” years (really comparatively normal years) there has been mueh talk that ‘‘next year!’ the government should undertake some broad plan of publie improvement—the building of roads, ‘'of dams, of canals, the straight- ening and deepening of rivers—to equalize the ex:stmg mequalmes in seasonal employment. But every year such action was put over again until ‘“‘next-year’’ and finally came the abnormal years of world war with greater:labor demands, which for the time ended the hitterness of the rec¢urring winter misery. But there is a time coming after the war when such a plan will be a vital necessity. It will be too late to make arrangements when 1,000,000 or 10,000,000 men are crying desperately for work that will enable them to earn that day’s living. These things must be planned in advance. - It occurs to the Leader that mstead of handing over water power sites to be developed by private interests, as is. proposed by the Shields bill now pending in congress, ‘the government ‘might well, while the war is on, ‘lay its plans for: developmg this water power itself for the beneflt of all the people of the country. Such development can be extended rpr a long penod of yea.rs. It will not. only give industry (mcludmg the farmmg mdustry '.all the power that it needs at the cost of develepment but it will also provide chieap nitrogen to restore fertil- 1ty to the Western farm lands which are rapidly bemg “mmed” of their most. mportant elements; it w111 provxde the government a cheap and plentiful source of explosives should another war ever be necessary for the United States. And above all it will do more than, any other thmg to end a social and, economJe cond‘mon, recurring regularly in ‘o, ] mal’’ years, which is one of the greatest shames of the country. service; by the end of 1918 there will be more than 2,000,000; R T P e e R VR TTT