The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, January 7, 1918, Page 10

o B Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan Leagué;éveri"Week % A A P AT A Entered as second-class matter .September 8 St. Paul, Minnesota, under the Act of March 3, 1879 4 " OLIVER S. MORRIS, EDITOR . ' Advertising rates on application. Subscription, one year, in advance, 8'2.50; six months, $1.50. Communications should be addressed to the Nonpartisan Leader, Box 575, St Paul, Minn. O MEMBER OF AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS THE S. C. BECKWITH SPECIAL AGENCY, Advertising Representatives, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City. & Quack, fraudulent and irresponsiblé firms are not knowingly advertised, and we will take it as a favor if any readers will advise us promptl{ should they . have occasion to doubt or question the reliability of any firm which patronizes our advertising columns. IN OUR NEW DRESS, - a little shorter, the type is larger and easier to read, and there is better mechanical work throughout. The illustrations are plainer. The reason for this is that at our new location, St. Paul, we are publishing the Leader on big, modern magazine presses.” Hitherto the work has been done on a newspaper press. ' 3 It may be this issue of your paper has reached you late. If 50, forgive us. The move of the mechanical department and national edi- torial department from Fargo to St. Paul occurred during two weeks in each of which was a holiday—Christmas and New Years. Thus two days were lost, and then it was a mighty task to move a great national publication like the Leader from one city to another without missing an issue. We know that when the Leader is unavoidably late there is disappointment throughout our big family of 150,000 sub- seribers and over half a million readers. It will take a week or 80 more fo get things running smoothly at the new location, but from : YOUR Leader this week is in a brand new dress. The pages are . then on your paper will arrive on time, if not earlier than before. - The importance and extent of the great political and economie movement of the American farmers warranted a better magazine in physical appearance than the Leader was able to give in its old plant. "The change will in no way alter the management or editorial policy- of the Leader. The paper will simply be published in better dress, and at a point where it can be distributed more readily and quickly to the 150,000 subseribers in 13 states. _ : 4 Through a typographical error, the -Leader’s St. Paul postoffice address ‘was announced in’last week’s papér erroneously. The correct address is: Nonpartisan Leader, P. 0. Box-575, St. Paul, Minn. _ THE RURAL CREDIT EAW the Leader opposed its passage-—opposed it'because we wanted ¥ to see a better law passed, and we felt that the law as framed was inadequate. The Leader made a hard fight for a law that could : W HEN the government rural credit act.was pending in congress, - stand on its own legs, without making it necessary for the proposed “fz'i"go\{"ernment rural: credit system to work: through existing finaneial : .machinery,. But our fight was unsuccessful. - When the law was passed in its present form we wanted to see it successful, so far as it could be suecessful with the limitations placed in it by interests hostile.to real, “effective government rural credits. ; o . The big moneyed interests, including the farm mortgage companies, are opposed to government rural credits on principle. They were mf)s,fly pleased with the law as passed. They were sure it wouldn’t e work.. They thought they had t—hei act fixed up in congress 80 it would be ,diffit_:ult or impossible for the new law to be really successful m - any wide sense. petE e e ; ‘But these interests were partially fooled, at least, \Ufiaerfia;ble» management, the government land banks, of which there are 12 estab- : e of lished under the rural credit law, have had an astonishing. degre PAG: TORIAL SECTI success; Nearly 100,000 farmers already have oxrg\;ifiize‘d co-ofiei‘ixfivé ; 1915, at the postoffice at _ associations to get loans under the new plan, and a large number of : these have been taken care of. The law does not provide for short- - time-loans on personal credit or chattels, the great need of the farmer, but it threatens to.take over practically allsthe farm land mortgage- “business of the nation, giving farmers money at 5 and 5% per cent, where they formerly paid 8 and 10 per cent or more. R : Nevertheless, some of the ‘wéak points in the law, pointed out by the Leader before the act passed, are now recognized by the federal land bank management, and congress has been asked to pass new legislation to correct the law. One of these weaknesses is the failure of the law to provide machinery for the federal land banks: to dispose of their own bonds, without dependence on the monopolized privately owned and managed financial system of the country. The result has been that the money power of the United States has refused to handle the land bank bonds, crippling the land banks and threatening their existence at a time, above all others, when they are most needed. THE FIGHT ON THE LAND BANKS LSEWHERE in this issue the Leader publishes an official state- ment of E. G. Quamme, president of the St. Paul federal land bank, one of the 12 district land banks established under the government rural credit system. Also, this issue contains an account of the fight being made on the federal land banks by the big moneyed interests, the financial monopo]ists of the conntry. Mr. Quamme tells in a striking way the success the government land banks have had to date, and explains their need of new legisla- tion. The land banks issue loans to farmers at rates away under the . rates of private money lenders. ¢ The land banks get this money by the sale of bonds. The bonds, under the present law and under con- ditions existing in the financial world, must be floated through the great privately owned bond buying and selling syndicates of the coun- try. <" These interests at first took up the land bank bonds. They sold “some $30,000,000 worth of them and were amply repaid by the pre- mium the. bonds brought as a gilt-edged investment. But now they have shut off the land banks. They will no longer handle the bonds. Unless congress acts, and acts in the way pointed out by the land bank management, farmers who to date have applied for $100,000,000 in loans . ; are going to be disappointed. Most of themt’ will be ruined. Not only = that; other thousands of farmers will apply for land bank loans in the future, and these, too, will be left out in the colc\—to be foreclosed or put back in the grip of the usurious money lenders, The refusal of the big financial syndicates to renew their contract to sell the government land bank bonds follows a nation-wide attack on the government rural credit plan by the farm ‘nlxort’gage dealei's, who have a powerful association that maintains a lobby and spends huge sums for publicity and to influence legislation. . This association is said by people who were present to have appropriated $25,000 at a convention last summer to fight the government rural credit’ plan, They are now laying their wires to oppose the-amendments to the law wanted by the farm land bank management. Will congress listen to ' - this association of private money lenders, who have long held the _farmer in their grip and squeezed usury out of him, or will it listen to o the land ban® management which is administering the rural credit law for the people? v 2 e Iyt ¥ 5% [ bt L] v £ &