The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, December 17, 1917, Page 7

Some o —— 'England Cuts Out iddlemen Labor Delegates From British Trade Unions Approve Plair for Co-operation of Farmers and City Workers i Washington' Bureau, i, Nonpartisan Leader RTHUR A. HAYDAY and John ] Hill, the two fraternal dele- gates from the British Trade Union congress to the con- vention of the American Fed- eration of Labor, which met recently at Buffalo, were as much interested in the story of the farmers of the United States,’ as told -to the convention by President Townley of the National Nonpartisan league, as were any other two men in the hall. Both ‘of them, as trade union offi- cials, have had to serve on government boards during the war, and they have had to deal with Britain’s food prob- léem., Both of them hate the food- profiteer. They both are enthusiastic- ally in favor of doing away with un- necessary middleman, and they be- lieve the British people are on their road to doing that very thing. Hayday, a big, genial, favorite-uncle sort of a man, sat down. with the writer on a .bench at the back of the hall' and told about it. “Our government is limiting the middlemen’s profits,” he said, “and is fixing the date at which the dif- ference in price between early po- tatoes, for instance, and second- early potatoes, shall take effect. And recently a man who charged above the maximum price was given six mpnths in prison and a fine besides. Then the government has set out to help the farmers meet the labor problem. In some places it has built and leased farm tractors, which are used by all the farmers of that neighbor- hood. It has fixed the conditions in various ways, to help produc- tion. “But we are asking our government to take over and control all the neces- saries, and that it do so in order to secure equal distribution. You know there is a great loss, or wastage, of freight transportation. Foodstuffs pro- duced in one section are shipped across the countiry, at a high cost for hauling, &nd goods of the same character are shipped the same distance in the oppo- pite direction. We are asking that this be stopped, and the one way to stop it is for the state to control the Jz‘a&zfiifil TR Qe in turn handled that butter in the normal course of commerce. We elimi- nated three, and now we are arranging for a co-operative ° enterprise which will permit us to deal with the pro- ducers of the butter themselves.” Hayday smiled, when asked about the treatment given the British people by their railway companies, in this matter of food costs, “Before the war,” he said, “farm- ers could ship potatoes from our east coast to Rotterdam, and then trans-ship back to London, cheaper than the railway that also owned these very steamship lines would carry the potatoes, though it was but one-fourth the distance.” . I asked him whether government ownership and operation of flour mills and elevators and abattoirs was now an issue in England. “Well, you see, we have state con- trol of milling and baking, and the price of bread, now,” he replied. “We are asking for state control of all the necessaries, as I told you. But not government ownership in the way you speak of it. “We as a trade union movement are asking something more ‘fundamental than that. We are asking that the land itself—the farming land and the mineral land and s on—be taken over and held and controlled by the state. "The question of state operation of the means of marketing the products of the land will be incidental, after we have the land itself. HILL 1S A “FIGHTING MAN” IN ENGLAND “That may sound somewhat ambi- tious, but with us it is a matter of majority discussion today. ‘Three things we demand shall be nationaliz- ed, as the basis for meeting the food shortage and the burden of debt which we must carry after the war—we de- mand the nationalization of the land, ‘the minerals and the railways. *] ought to explain that we have al- ready a government order which re- quires landowners to report the amount of their arable land and the amount under cultivation, and requires them to put under cultivation for the production of food a certain part of the land, regardless of their own pref- .ArH\urA Hgyda. 5 : Gt lrgham. s QU These two men were fraternal delegates from England to the national con- vention of the American Federation. of -Labor, which was addressed by President Wilson and A. C. Townley. ~maarketing 'of these things. Food should be marviketed in the immediate region where it i.. produeed if possible, It ghould not pass through the hands of middlemen, except the necessary agent for its delivery. LABOR IN ENGLAND WOULD CONTROL LAND “A board on which I serve was deal- - ang with butter prices. ‘We were going to apply the rule laid down by the government that only one profit-should be permitted to- the ‘collecting” agent ° who made the shipment, and one profit, gpecified in amount, to the receiving agent. But we found that there-were four sets of agents or middlemen . leaders over there. erence. From that to the complete control, through the state’s taking it over, we in the British labor movement consider only: another step. And we think the nationalization of the land is among the possibilities of the readjust- ment at the end of the war.” John Hill is a grizzled shipbuilder, from Newcastle-on-Tyne. The gov- ernment has conferred on him the title and duties of Justice of the Peace, which often goes to distinguished labor He is -a fighting man at home, and his political senti- ments almost got expression once or twice ‘while. here, but he manfully re- . strained himself, 'When asked what he thought of the Nonpartisan plan of the claiming the second profit, since each - farmers of the -United States, as Mr. Townley had described it, and what he thought of the appeal for an alliance between the trade unionists and the organized farmers, as voiced both by Mr. Townley and by Gifford Pinchot, he said: “I believe that the co-operative movement opens a wonderful oppor- tunity for your farmers and your trade union movement to meet and join hands. That is the means by which the unnecessary middleman can be eliminated, and every element of the cost of marketing the product of the soil can be reduced to its minimum with injury to no one. Our farmers are, as you know, in quite different situation from your farmers, such as I have heard described there. With us, the farmer is"a landlord, a prosperous man as a rule with many tenants. The co-operative movement, if it were ap- plied extensively here, would enable 1\ll --‘ Our Amateur Department your farmers to get their machinery and supplies, their household goods, all they must pay money for, at prices which are not unfairly increased by the middleman; at the same time it would enable wage workers to get the same benefits in all that they must buy.” Later on, when called upon to accept a souvenir watch from the delegates, Hill commented upon the speeches of Townley-and Pin- chot as among the most informing things he had heard, and he urged the delegates to see to it that be- fore the next convention thero should be completed a last link be- tween the American farmers and the American wage workers—a great co-operative plan which would hold them together in in- creasing bonds of common interest. MLEC.WAGNER. South Dakota takes the dollar this week! The cartoon is by Morris C. Wag- ner, Newark, S. D. It shows the Nonpartisan league “Flyer” overtaking the Old Gang “Dinky” with the farmers saying “Hurrah! You'll ketch it yet!” In judging the merit of cartoons for this department the editor considers the age of competitors. Morris is only 14 years old. A good idea and a good drawing for a lad of that age! “My father belongs to the League,” says Morris. “I like to rcad Rip the Reporter and iook at the cartoons in the Leader.” Best of all, Morris hasn’t any foolish ideas of going to the city to be a policeman or a politician. “l wish to be a farmer when 1| grow up,” he says. ought to be proud of a boy like that, and he is, too, we'll bet. Morris’ father There is no more honest occupation, and few as honest, as that of farming, Morris. And if you and your dad and all the other farmers *'stick”, farming will be a more profitable and safer business when you grow up than it is now! The Leader pays a dollar for cartoons accepted in this department. We do not return unused cartoons or correspond about the contest. We have received scores of good ones that we can not use, because they are not drawn on white, unlined paper in black ink. To reproduce a cartoon—make a “cut” of it-——the original first has to be photographed. Now, to photograph well, the “copy” or cartoon to be reproduced must stand out BLACK on a white background. Some kinds of ink won’t photograph at all—blue, for instance. We got a dandy amateur cartoon from a Montana contestant, but alas! it was in BLUE ink. It was so0 good that we took it to our engraver (the man who makes our cuts), but he shook his head. 1t was in blue ink and wouldn’t reproduce. Then we get a lot of cartoons in green ink or pencil, but have to pass them up. Remember the rules, boys and girls. League Plan is Right Only by Organization Can the Farmers Hope to Combat Corporate Greed (From the Plentywood, Mont., Pioneer Press) The farmers throughout the North- west for a considerable length of time have been in search of some plan of organization whereby their interests could be protected upon a co-operative basis. Local farmer clubs have been tried, county organizations have been resorted to, and finally in such state- wide associations as the American So- ciety of Equity did they think they had an opportunity to eliminate the un- necessary profits acquired by the mid- dleman, but without speaking dispar- agingly of any of those organizations it was finally found that none were broad enough in their scope, nor suffi- ciently organized to overcome the op- position of corporate interests which had appeared to dominate the control of agricultural pursuits. But the advent of the Nonpartisan league seems to provide an opportunity for the farmer to secure the results which have beep so long desired. Na- tional in its nature the League is bound to become powerful enough to success- fully combat the interests placed in the road of the farmers’ progress by Big Business. The equalization of taxes, an open market for farmers’ grain and products, and the people’s control of the legislation of the nation, are some of the important features to bz enacted through the offices of the X.eague if the farmer will but become a part of the organization and stay. !t's up to Foising iz »PAGE SLVEN the farmer to make his organization what it is really intended. The day has passed when the vapor- ings of scattered opposition will alter in the least the course of the League. In fact, the bickerings here and there of some newspaper attempting to “startle the natives” with an alleged attack on the policy of the League, by assailing in a personal way some of the officers, or a few individuals actively engaged in the League's interests, should receive no attention whatever from the rank and file members of the League. The Nonpartisan league af- fairs are too rapidly sweeping the country, and the League is too big an organization, its purposes too general in the benefits to be brought about to * be affected seriously by such silly by- play. Let the farmer “stick” to his or- ganization, and time will prove that the desired results will be achieved, and the few missiles thrown along the pathway intended for stumbling blocks will only be “run over by the cars” as the farmer procession passes by. GERMANY HAS CATTLE . Since its occupation of mnorthern France, Germany has seized about 2,700,000 French and Belgian cattle. By these depredations and by restrictive measures at-home, Germany has main- tained practically .all her original share of cattle, according to informa- tion reaching the United States food administration from French sources. i TG B =55 |