The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, December 17, 1917, Page 5

Morris, Leader cartoonist, attended the big meeting in New York city which was addressed by, President A. C.Tow IR New. York Mail the sketches of the speakers printed on another page -of this issue. And then he drew this cartoon for significance of the metting. The farmer and labor smiting the ‘man between! prices than would have been his. if he had been accessible to foreign as well as domestic manufacturers. Protection and tariffs had no meaning for the farmer; he had an export surplus. “1t was the farmer who bore the burden of the creation of our fac- " tories, mills and our railroads. He bore the burden in the form of higher prices for shoes, clothes, lumber, wagons, tools. The burden of creating those industries was for a long time rightly born by the_ un- rivaled richness of our virgin prairies. But those days are gone. The process of having the country live on the farmer is at an end. 4No ‘more. These farmers of North ‘Dakota are going to have their own flour mills. They are here East begging the consumer to form co-operative societies which shall buy directly from the organ- _ized farmers’ unions, Here is a political party with a real issue at last. Here is a party that offers a solution to the greatest probIe:n’ of the day,, the high cost of Ilymg. That is why we city people listen to Townley as we listen to none of the old political orators, with out- 'worn shibboleths. ° «“A great heart and hand from the Northwest have reached out to us. Labor, as consumers, has reached out to take that hansi. . The result may be a small economic ‘revbiution in the United Stat'es. This ' may mean the co-operative organization of producing and con- suming the necessaries of _Ilfe in these United States. It is not . Socialism. It is the alternative .tou 'Socialism as a remover of the evils and the waste of this portion of our competitive economic system. Politically speaking, it would be ‘hard to conceive of a more effec- tive combination against Socialism than the farmers of the United /States and organized labor.” Farmers and other people of the East are awakening, as the above edi- fore the meeting in Cooper Union. Drawn expressly for the Leader by W. C. Morris nley of the Nonpartisan league. He drew for the the Leader, to express his idea of the Morris certainly caught the spirit of the meeting. “There is something Lincolnesque about A. C. Townley, the North Dakota farmer who spoke be- His homely, simple illustrations went direct to the heart, as did his unaffected manner.”—From editorial in the Evening Mail, New-York. See text for complete editorial. torial of the Mail shows. The New York Sun shows the same thing in quoting one of the speeches at the great Cooper Union meeting of which Mr. Townley was a guest. The Sun says: EAST SEIZES UPON THE LEAGUE IDEA ““Some inkling as to what the farm- ers are driving at was indicated in a talk by H. C. Collingwood, editor of the Rural New Yorker. Mr. Collingwood said there are 81 lawyers in the state legislature out of 17,138 lawyers in the state, while there are 23 farmers in the legislature as representing 945,000 “Townley won his audience heart and soul. His homely speech, his direct, logical argu- ment made his story as effective as it was pie- turesque.”—From report of Mr. Townley’s speech at Cooper Union in New York World. See text for reports of what other New York papers said. Union tonight,” said the. Post. ' “Al- though the officials of the Labor Food conference under whose direction the meeting is to be held, denied that the meeting was to be of any political sig- nificance, the fact remained that it was to have the active indorsement of the Farmers’ Nonpartisan League of North Dakota, a militant farmers’ organiza- tion which elected John Baer to con- gress. Both Representative Baer and A, C. Townley, president of the League, will be among the speakers at the meeting. “A combination ot tarmers and labor- union men was seen by some as the probable result of the meeting, which, farmers in the state. Of these farmer legislators, he said, there are only eight real farmers. Mr. Collingwood did not disguise the fact that it might be well to send 50 farmers to the legislature next year. The farmers are going to start out in January to try to bring this about.” The very arguments that the farm- ers of the West have been using, tak- ing root in New York! All great, pro- gressive political ideas have always come from the West. The New York Post reported that the politicians were puzzled over this new thing of farmers and working men of the cities getting together. “Politicians were-puzzled today over a mass meeting of farmers and con- sumers which will be held at Cooper according to the announcements, was designed to lead to a close union of the producer and the consumer.” ALL PAPERS QUOTE MR. TOWNLEY’S SPEECH ‘Well may the politicians of New York be nervous, if the big Cooper Union meeting does prove the opening wedge for a co-operative campaign of labor and farmers in New York against the exploiters of both classes. And now as to some of the things that Mr. Townley said at this meeting, that gave him big headlines in all the Eastern papers. : The New York Tribune quotes him as follows: “The first purpose of my visit is to bring about an arrangement whereby PAGE FIVE the surplus of the farm will :go to the city, and the surplus of the city worker will go to the farm,” said Mr, Town- ley. “If we can establish conditions whereby you of the city buy from the farmers the things you need, giving no man an illegal profit, and we of the farm buy from the city the things we need without giving an illegitimate profit—and we will and must do that— no sacrifice will be too great.” The New York Mail quotes another part of his speech as follows: “The farmers of the Northwest raise 50 times as much as their grandfathers did, but they’re further and further into debt all the time. Tenantry is in- creasing, and, like the farmers of the country at large, they are realizing, what the government has computed, that their average income is $318.22 per VA iimaiva onss “Out of the $29,000,000,000 which the consumers of the United States pay in one year for products that come off the farm, the farmers get $9,000,000,000. We have been told that organized workers in the cities are getting the difference, or $20,000,000,000, which we farmers think we are losing. Have you got it? (Laughter.) No? Well, I'm sorry that you haven't. b “We decided that if the farmers would handle the wheat they raise they would get $55,000,000 a year more out of the wheat crop, and that would be $1,200 for every farmer in North Dakota.” TOWNLEY ANSWERS “DISLOYAL” CHARGES President Townley took occasion to counteract the charge that the farmers were unpatriotic, as the following re- port of something he said, from the New York World, shows: “Opponents of the League have spread the report that the organiza- tion is seditious. The first issue of bonds (Liberty bonds) came at a time when the farmers had invested all their money for seed for crops next year, and North Dakota’s quota was not subscribed. We oversub- son-of-a-gun of a S e i T e s S 3 -