The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, January 14, 1918, Page 10

AP R i i # i { i FXTETEATASY e R RS wannns i minded ‘and educated men and women of the coun; try do not take charge of politics, the selfish, ignorant, and vicious will. Certainly that which Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Webster, Clay, and’ thousands of others of our most eminent men have taken part'in, can not be belittling to us. Why should the farmer seek representation-in legislative halls? For the country’s good and for his own. He comes nearer being a disinterested and level-headed legislator than any other class of citizen. He has not had that proportion of representation which his numbers, interests, and importance justify. Notwithstanding the farm products of Colorado exceed in value, in large measure, those of any other industry, the farmer has never had, since the admission of Colorado into the union, a single senator or representative in the congress at Washington. ONLY LAWYERS ELECTED TO REPRESENT FARMERS As a matter of fact, each class has striven to obtain legislation as favorable as possible to its interests. Whether justifiable or not, it is in a measure a grab game. What are the prospects of the farmer in the coming congress as to getting a square deal upon a revision of the tariff? It may be stated with certainty that if he is fairly treated, it will be because other interests look out for him, and not because he is proportionately represented there to ask, and demand, if neces- sary, his rights. Rest assured that every other large interest will be represented there by either . members on the inside or lobbyists on the outside. The farmers are not well enough organized even to petition effectively. The great agricultural state of Texas has hut one farmer as against a representation of sixteen lawyers, The farmers have not a single repre- sentation in congress from the states of Oklahoma, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Washington and South Da- kota. Most of these agricultural states are rep- resented by delegations composed wholly of law- yers. Organization and an intelligent interest in poli- tics ‘will enable the farmers, themselves, to grap- ple with another of the serious problems which face them. Many thousands of people are gam- bling in wheat every day, who never in their lives sold, harvested, or owned a bushel. Thousands of people are dealing in cotton fu- tures, few of whom ever planted or even saw a cotton seed or would know what to do with a bale of cotton were it delivered to them. The law of supply and demand has been set aside by the dealers in options. A group of shrewd .and unscrupulous manipu’ators may conspire to- gether and put the price of farm products up or down whether there is a shortage or a surplus in the hands of the farmer. It more often happens that the price is put down just at the time the short-handed farmer has gathered his crop and must market it, and after he has sold, the price is boomed up again. So well are these dealers in options organized that if they desire the price put down tkey can flood the country with dis- " lottery, patches of gentle rains in one place and beautiful sunshine in another, and statements of large re- serves from the old crop; or if they desire the price put up, they can produce a frost in the South in June or an open winter in Canada, and set the boll weevil or some other pestiferous insect at work upon the growing crops on twenty-four hours’ notice. EVIL OF GAMBLING SHOULD BE SUPPRESSED The farmer who is not financially able‘to hold for higher prices should not be met with a ficti- tious depression; neither ought the people who have to buy their daily bread be obliged to pay fictitious inflated prices. The natural law of sup- ply and demand should govern. The law should prohibit a man from selling farm products which he does not own—which, in fact, are not in exist- ence, and from thus lowering the price of farm products which are actually in existence and owned and for sale by the farmer. . : Phantom wheat ought not to stand on a par with actual wheat. The man with a few dollars margin to put up on corn should not be allowed to interfere with the market of the man who has fertilized and plowed the ground, planteq the seed and cultivated and harvested the crop in the heat of summer, and produced it ready for market. Dealing in futures has ruined more men and destroyed more homes, ten-fold, than the Louisiana There are now more than one thousand bucket shops in the United States. - The Sugar Kings and the Beet Peasants How the Influence of the Trusts Spreads All Over the Country, and Something About Big Refining Profits and Small Beet Profits Washington Bureau, West who have risen in revolt against the exactions of the sugar trust, have brought their appeals for justice to' Herbert Hoover, national food administrator. They saw Hoover last month. They showed him that while the sugar trust, with its home in Wall street, is making fabu- lous profits, the farm- ers are paid less for their beets than the cost of raising them, and the price of sugar has gone almost be- yond the reach of the poor. They have been au- thorized by Hoover to select committees in each region, to report to him on the detailed - facts of the cost of rais- _ing beets and the cost of making sugar. When he gets their reports, Hoover will act. They are impressed with Hoover’s sincerity, and they believe they are at last on the way to get some justice for and consumer. ~ These are the first results of the beet growers’ “kick,” as told by Albert Dakan of Longmont, Colo., secretary of the Interstate Farmers’ asso- ciation and speaker for the National Nonpartisan league, who was one of the Colorado delegates to the conferences with Hoover and his subordinates here. He gave a sketch of the hold of the sugar octopus on the western farmers—direct and indi- | rect—as follows: ‘“Beginning about 1900, the beet sugar business of the United States was taken over by the Ameri- can Sugar Refining company, the H. O. Havemeyer interests. Thelr control was absolute by 1906. When investigations began, for the purpose of get- ting data to start a dissolution suit against the sugar trust, it dispesed of its beet sugar corpora- tion holdings, down to one-third of the stock of those subsidiaries. Charles B, Warren, the presi- producer _ Here is part of the crowd and arfew of the automobiles they rode in to a bi held at Danube, Minn., when several hundred Minnesotans the League in one of his patriotic addresses. dent, general counsel and general manager of the Michigan Sugar company, testified to this during the lobby investigation in 1913. He said that the trust owned only 33 per cent of the stock of the subsidiary . company of which he was the head, whereas the trust had formerly held 46 per cent of the stock. Counsel had advised that it would not be in violation of the anti-trust law for the . trust to hold one-third of the stock of-a subsidiary. Beginning about 1909 this policy was adopted. It applied in the case not only of the Michigan Sugar “company but the Great Western Sugar company, the Utah-Idaho Sugar company and the California group. . : INFLUENCE OF TRUST FELT EVERYWHERE ‘“While there was,'a change 'in the paper oivner; PAGETEN m to Hear Townley : ; i e S A S S s St P00 Nonpartisan Leader 3 EET growers in | They Swar ’ B all parts of the ; 7 | g Nonpartisan Iéague meeting gathered to hear President A. C. Townley of - the Havemeyer school. ship, and the record title to stock in these cor- . porations, there was no change in the person- nel of the groups of men - in the offices of the various companies. Earl D. Babst, presi- dent of the American Sugar Refining com- pany, testified before the senate committee on manufactures last week that his company had only an investment interest and was neith- er directly nor indi- rectly interested in the management or control of the various beet sug- ar producing compa- nies. Yet the men who passed through the blood and iron train- ing which H. O. Have- meyer and former President Thomas of the trust imposed upon their pupils in business methods—the men who were sifted out and found hard enough to yield to no sentiment - that would interfere with getting the larg- est possible profits— these same men are to- day managing the beet sugar companies. “The farmers in all these qiflerent beet-growing districts see absolutely no difference in the attitude of the managers now, under the Babst regime, and the attitude of the factory managers under the Havemeyer rule. Mr. Petricken, president of the Great Western Sugar company, which covers Colorado, Wyoming, Mon-: tana and Nebraska, is a graduate ‘cum .laude’ of Charles B. Warren is the - same Warren, with the same attitude toward the farmers’ end of the business, under Babst, as he was during his Havemeyer training. : “The managers of the various beet 'sugar_'ta&, % tories in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and Nebras-~ ' ka, under the Great Western Sugar company, are ‘keen, diplomatic men, of lohg connection and . proven loyalty to the Havemeyer regime: Their duties seem ‘to include the management of com- munity affairs in each town ‘having a' sugar fac- S (Continued on page 23)