The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, December 24, 1917, Page 4

A %typicar scene when the North Dakota farmer hauls his grain to market. seven elevators in 1915 than was handled at any other primary shipping poi HIS story is not written for North Dakotans, who know all about it already. It is written to tell the farmers of Wisconsin and Texas and Washington and other states, far re- moved from the birthplace of the farmers’ movement, how North Dakota farmers fought their enemies in the years gone by. North Dakota is no winter resort. In the encyclopedia is a' weather map with'lines called “isotherms” running across it. These lines indicate that the same kind of weather prevails at all points which the line touches. And the same line that touches Alaska, Nova . Scotia, the southern tip of Greenland, Norway and Sweden, dips down in the center of the American continent to cross North Dakota. it is not _because North Dakota is near to the North Pole that it has’such bitter winter weather. It is because there are no mountains, no hills, no forests, nothing but an occasional barbed wire fence, to stop the wind that comes direct from the pole— sweeping down at the speed of a war aeroplane and carrying with it a heavy blanket of snow that gathers every- where in great drifts, banking up against houses and barns, blocking roads and often stopping even the traf- fic of the transcontinental railroad lines. A WORSE ENEMY THAN THE WEATHER ‘When a real blizzard is on—and the blizzards and the snowdrifts they leave cover nearly six months of the year— it is impossible, of course, to do any farming or any other outside work. So for six months in the year farmers are compelled, against their will, to remain “holed up” in their homes like a hibernating bear, and for the other six months they have to hustle like the very dickens to make up for the s§ix months of enforced idleness. With the winter climate of Green- land and Alaska the North Dakota farmers naturally can’'t make much of a success at growing bananas, oranges, grapefruit and alligator pears. More hardy fruits, such as apples, can not be grown successfully, and the farmer is taking grave chances when he at- tempts even grades of corn supposed to be acclimated to northern weather. As a matter of fact the list of things that CAN'T be grown would fill a good sized book, but there is one product that CAN be grown and is grown. And that is wheat. In an average year North Dakota raises 85,000,000 bushels, more than any other state. Tt is the real bread basket of the nation. But even wheat growing is no soft snap. The severity of the winters makes fall planting largely impractic- able. Besides the severity of the weather the farmer has to take chances on tornadoes, which have a habit of coming twisting across: the country, He has to take chances against being *“hailed out” by storms as destructive as a tornado. His enemies include the drought, which may burn up his crop—the case with nearly all the western part of the state: this year—the rust, which madeé the 1916 crop a virtual failure, and gophers and grasshoppers, which eat up mil- lions of dollars worth of grain every year. s HOW THE MARKET _PRICE WAS “FIXED” But in ‘all seasons there has been an enemy working against the interests of the wheat growers of North Dakota worse than the tornadoes, worse than the hailstorms, doing more injury than the drought or the rust or the gophers or the grasshoppers. This enemy of the farmers has been the influence of the organized grain gamblers. For the North Dakota farmers were " in the habit of merely raising the wheat, allowing the other fellows to handle it and to fix prices. Prices -were fixed by the. Chicago Board- of Trade and by the Minneapolis:Chamber ' of Commerce. They were. fixed, the grain'. gamblers said, by the law:of supply and demand. s R The farmers noticed that every year when their crop was ready to market, - prices went down, ‘down, down, ‘at Chicago and Minneapelis. They no- ticed every year, after the grain hag been marketed, that prices - went up, up, up again, so that the grain gamb- lers made a fat profit on every bushel * handled; above the “usual”’ commis- sions. But' there didn’'t seem to be anything the farmers .could do. As soon ‘as the farmer. had harvested his crop the banker and storekeeper start- ed pounding him on the back to sell importance. ERS’ with North Dakota, the pioneer herewith. and other details. fietion—if it is told in an how to tell it. 7 able for reference in the future. - ‘the gamblers. ‘Read the North Dakota story heréwith and watch for the others. Save these stories and file them away; they will be valu- tempt has been made by anybody to tell the fall story of the farmers’ struggles in all the states mentioned. : so that he could get money to pay his . bills. One thing that the farmer began to notice, though, was that the law of “supply. and demand, which the gamb- 7lers said was. fixing-the price of his wheat, was being amended a little by They were helping it ~along. For one thing, for every sale of - actual wheat made in Chicago . or Minneapolis, a hundred sales of ima- ginary. wheat were made, The farmer began to see that if he offered to sell one bushel of wheat for a dollar, and 100. gamblers-all offered to sell bushels of imaginary wheat for 80 cents, promising to make deliveries a month or so later, the price would drop to ~80 cents or even less, and that would enable the gamblers to buy real wheat later at this price. Announcement—Important dE Leader herewith begins another big series of illustrated articles. No work of investigating and reporting that the Leader has done will exceed this new series in interest and This series is to be A HISTORY OF FARM POLITICAL. AND ECONOMIC STRUGGLES FOR JUSTICE IN EVERY STATE WHERE THE LEAGUE IS OR- GANIZED OR ORGANIZING. The first article properly deals League state, and is presented Don’t get the idea that this is going to be a dry recital of faets. It is going to be an intimate, personal story of what farm- ers have been up against during the last 30 years in 13 different states, what they have done to remedy economic abuses, who their leaders were and to what extent they succeeded. S5l Mr. Fussell, Leader staff investigator and well known to our readers, is now on the ground gathering the facts for this history. He is getting his information direct from the men who had a part in farmers® fights in the past and who know the facts. He is not getting his facts from anything that has been published before, and he will rely on official records only for accuracy as to dates:. The real, intimate, personal story will be from the men, many of them now old and gray, who participated in the struggles that will be retold. Watch for the story about your state. In the meantime, read the stories about the other states and learn what your neighbors and the generation before them are doing and have done—how they have met the same problems you have met and fought the same fight with various degrees of success. ‘What do you know, for instance, about the great Farmers’ alliance of 30 years ago—a powerful farmers’ political and economic movement that at one time had sixty men in congress? ‘Wouldn’t you be interested in finding out how that movement started and how far it got—what finally broke it-up and how farmers’ organizations of like character today can avoid its mis- takes? Of course you would. There are gray-headed League members today who belonged to the old Alliance, and they will tell you about it through My. Fussell. d And then there was the Populist party, the political ship that at one time carried the hopes of the farmers. If you do not know about the Populist party, your father does. It was a polit- ical revolution that accomplished much, but it finally broke up. ‘Why? Politicians today do -not tell the truth about the old ‘“Pops,’’ as they were and are yet contemptuously ealled. But many a gray farmer today is proud that he was a “‘Pop.’* Every state where the League is organized or organizing has an interesting story that will keep you“out of bed these long . winter evenings to read it, once you get started on this series. Mr. Fussell is going to visit and talk to the old-timers in South Dakota, Wisconsin, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Colorado, Okla- homa, Texas, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa and perhaps other states. , These fact-stories are going to be more interesting than fiction, for fact is always more strange and fascinating than interesting way, as Mr. Fussell knows It is the first'time that an at- PAGE: FOUR i - This picture was taken at New England, N. D. More grain was handled through these nt in the United States. ; 3 The farmers noticéd, _also, that the control of the market gave the grain gamblers power to fix the grade of ° wheat. While the price of No. 1 wheat might be a dollar, the gamblers, by the adoption of technical rules, would arrange grades so that much grain, as good for flour manufacture as No. 1, would bring, say, only 90 cents. The farmers noticed that the larger the wheat crop they produced, the less money they got for -it and the poorer they were. But they noticed that the grain gamblers, who “handled” their grain for them, got richer and richer. Ang the not unnatural idea occurred to the farmers, “Why not go into the grain handling business ourselves? ‘Why not have our own terminal eleva- tors and establish. our own market, where we can sell all real wheat, and no imaginary wheat—a market where the lJaw of supply and demand will work without any assistance from the grain gamblers?” The writer has tried to discover who originated this idea. It wasn't A. C. Townley or Governor Lynn J. Frazier. It started before their .day. Theodore G. Nelson or J. M. Anderson, who led the fight 10 years ago. It started before their time. «The idea started nearly 30 years ago, in the old Farmers' alliance days, but who thought of it first no one seems teo know, It just popped up in one of the Dakota alliance platforms at about the - time the territory was divided and the states of North Dakota and South Da- kota were created, and that is all any- one can tell. SOCIETY OF EQUITY ENTERS THE FIELD The Farmers’ alliance did not make a great 'deal of headway in North Da-" kota. There was a live organization covering the territory of the two Da- kotas before statehood, but most of the live wires appear to have lived in South Dakota, and after the two states were created the organization split. As a matter of fact, North Dakota.was such pioneer country at the time of statehood, its population so scattered, that it was hard to keep the farmers together for a common purpose. And | such farmers as there were were so busy proving up on their homesteads, trying to meet mortgages, trying to stave off creditors, trying to get in bigger crops, that they didn’t seem to have much time for other matters. In the late 90's the Alliance and the Populist party “blew up,” or rather, “faded@ away.” The politicians said: “The farmers haven't any business in politics,” and pointed -to the Populist party to prove it. They repeated it so often that farmers began to accept it as a fact. But 10 years ago the subject of a state owned elevator became a live one again. The American Society of Equity had built up an active organization in North Dakota and began to show the _Tarmers how the grain gamblers-were robbing them. John M, Anderson, Theodore G. Nelson of Dunn Center and others, dug up the old Alliance plank for state owned terminal ele- vators and showed how ‘necessary , it was that the farmers pay some atten- tion to handling their grain, instead of merely growing it. The farmers went down to the legis- lature. They succeeded in getting the legislature, in 1909, to pass a resolu- tion to submit a constitutional amend- ment to allow the state of North Da- kota to. build a terminal elevator. in either Minnesota or ‘Wisconsin, PEOPLE ADOPT THE AMENDMENT Under the North' Dakota constitu- tion, two successive legislatures must vote in favor of a constitutional amendment before it can be submitted to the people. So after the 1909 legis- It wasn’t - ~