The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, February 11, 1918, Page 22

ADVERTISEMENTS Dear Tellow League Members: I'm just a plain farmer and not much of a hand at letter writing but I've got something to say to you that I want you to get—so here goes. ¢ i I've been farming in North Dakota 20 years—growing wheat. Have had the usual hard work and the same experience as the rest of the N. D. farmers. Have struggled along in debt—been forced to sell my. wheat at whatever they offered me, been docked, underweighed, robbed coming and going, just like the rest of you. I voted for the terminal elevator bill whenever I got a chance, feeling sure it would give us a new deal. Then I went with the bunch down to Bismarck to see why the men we had elected didn’t do what we had elected them to do. Believe me I was sore when they told us to “go home and slop the hogs.” Townley didn’t have to argue with me much when he sprung the League proposition on me. to be one of the original $6 suckers. I boosted all I could—helped the organizer in our township—advertised the meetings. And I tell you I am proud of the record of the League in North Dakota. But, as I read the Leader every week I saw what a fight we were up against—not oniy in North Dakota but in all the other states. I saw too, that if we North Dakota farmers were to get any real relief we would have to work together with the farmers of the other states. these problems and we’ll all have to stand together to get rid of the big robbers. Then I began to feel that I ought to do more to help. Here are my boys growing up—they have no place to go to pioneer like I did. If they are to have a chance I saw that it was up to me to get into this fight and help win it now. Here was Townley—he was a plain farmer just like me, and he had worked out this League plan and showed us that it would work. It looked to me like it was up to the rest of us to pitch in and help him. Then I wondered what I could do. I thought it over and came to the conclusion’ that organization was the thing we needed. If we could have every farmer in the League with us, the rest would be easy. Then I won- dered if I could help with the organizing. I knew what we wanted, and if I just had a little help getting it all together and had a little boost in how to go about it, I felt that I could go to farmers like myself and get them into the League. But I didn’t know whether they would really want an old ‘hayseed like myself, so I held back. Then one day I saw in the Leader that organizers were wanted and that the League had a plan to give men like me just the information they needed. I wrote in to Headquarters, and to make a long story short, I took the training course and started to work. I’ve been working down in Nebraska for about six weeks now and I want " to tell you I’m doing fine and sure enjoy it. The farmers down here are just the same sort of Hiram Rubes as us North Dakota farmers. They are up against the same sort of a game and they are ready for the League. Thanks to the training course, I am ready for all their questions and ob- jections and I know how to tell them what the League means. I am en- rolling members right along and it sure makes me feel good. I know I am right on the firing line in the biggest fight for the farmers of the U. S. that was ever put up. I didn’t, expect to make any money out of the work and wouldn’t have felt bad if it had cost me some money this winter, for I figured I'd put in the winter at it and then go home for the spring work. But I'm making a good living out of it and I like the work so well that I figure on going home for a couple of weeks and getting the boys started on the seeding and then let them handle the farm while I go on organizing. We are going to have a hot campaign next year, and I am going to do all in my power to help put it over. : Now this is why I have written all this for the Leader. I know you don’t care ahout what I am doing particularly. But I’ve seen enough of this proposition tc care a lot about what you are doing. I know that you ought to be doing just what I am doing. I know that you can do it just as well as I can, and I want you to see that this is your fight and mine. It’s up to us to win it. We can if we can get enough farmers into the League to carry the elections. We can do that, you and me and all the rest of us if we will get into the game and fight. Townley and the rest at the National office have done their part, and “will keep on. But they can’t win without us. They need us. I'm going to- stay with them until the game is won. The boys can hold the farm down for a year. They may make mistakes and may not do things just as I would or maybe make as much of a crop. But my fight will help get more. for what they do raise. work for the League.to help out. Anyway I am convinced from my ex- perience that it is the only way—and I want you to get into the fight too. Arrange your affairs so that you can help put this organizing job across. I know that it will be the best work you ever did for yourself and the family. Write to the National Headquarters about doing this organization work. We can use more men here in Nebraska, and they tell me they need men in the other states, Towa, Kansas, South Dakota, Colorado, Montana, and all the rest of them. Come on! What an old Hiram Rube like me can do, -the rest of you can do. ; Yours for the hide of Big Business, ; JOHN HANSON. Read Mr. Hanson’s letter. It hits the ‘nail on the head better than anything we could say. Then send us the enclosed coupon and we will tell you what to do to get into the game like he did. WL NATIONAL NONPARTISAN LEAGUE GILFILLAN BLOCK, ST. PAUL, MINN. ' Educational Department. Send me particulars of organization work and the tflfining course, AN OPEN LETTER-READ IT! I.joined right then and was proud’ There’s a lot to . And besides I can make enough out of my . | the time. Business Men Welcome League Repudiate Thief River Falls Commercial Club Officials for Turning Farmers Out in a Blizzard Thief River Falls, Minn. — \DITOR Nonpartisan Leader: I have long been a silent reader of the Leader, the best paper printed, and only paper I read from cover to cover. In every issue I find items of educating news long wanted by the farmers. I note with great interest the pro- gress of the League throughout the country, and no wonder. The intrench- ed Big Business interests are getting nervous because they are fast losing pheir strangle-hold, so they need to in- terfere with every meeting they possi- bly can. By the way, that is what took place here today, and to say that there was a crowd of disgusted farmers in Thief River Falls today is putting it mildly. Here is the reason: Sometime ago I agreed to be instru- mental in securing a hall and do the advertising for a League speaker here, and had everything arranged and ad- vertised the meeting to be held in the Commercial club rooms at Thief River Falls, January 16 at 2 p. m.—all said and ‘written in plain English. But to my surprise I found that the last two days before the meeting the Commercial club secretary had MIS- UDERSTOOD me and circulated the story -that I had changed the date and the meeting would not be held un- til next month. This was nipped in the bud and in spite of a bad storm, January 16 found us in large numbers, all talking N. P. league and rejoicing in the opportunity of getting a chance to hear the League speaker, Mr. Durocher. At 1:30, together with the speaker, we went to the hall I had equipped with chairs hired from one of- the furniture dealers. I had to get these chairs because the chairs that belong- ed to the hall had on that very morn- ing through this alleged MISUNDER- STANDING been let out to accom- modate a banquet that was not to be given until the following night. When they saw that the inconveni- ences they had caused were not going to bring the desired result, the presi- dent of the club flatly refused to let us use the hall: You see I had person- ally been ‘dealing with the secretary. But a bunch of determined farmers are not always so easily pushed aside. We happen to have a cou t house in our county and in that the Commercial club members were not the whole show, so we marched for the court house and in spite of the opposition of some short-sighted business men and a biting blizzard, enjoyed a most ex- cellent meeting, attended by some 200 farmers who unanimously agreed that the facts laid before us by the speaker were built on bed rock foundation, and to make it a point to see that when next election rolls around we are go- ing to elect men that will represent US and not BIG BUSINESS. Yours for true democracy, THOMAS H. BJERKE. P. S. Since writing the above I hear the business men of our city called a special meeting and that at that meet- ing the action of yesterday was bitter- ly denounced, and stated that they would assure the farmers no such ac- tion would occur in future, and that League meetings would be welcome. I wish you would put this in a note at the bottom of my letter as I think itls only fair to give them their just dues. T. H. B. Must Farmers Swallow Insults P Farmer of Nebraska Answers. Foul Charges of Profiteer Press and “Blood-Sucking Pirates” Wahoo, Neb. DITOR Nonpartisan Leader: Having just read an editorial in the Lincoln Star of*January 10 knocking the Nonpartisan league, I wish to ask if there is any- thing at all in the reports about it being pro-German? If there is I'd leave it pretty. quick. I belong to the League and will belong to it as long as it remains loyal to good old U. S. A. Our coun- try papers here at Wahoo are con- tinually throwing slurs at the farm- ers because they belong to the League and the same with our state papers. I am foreign born myself, but I am an American now and al- ways will be. : : I am a poor renter, having started farming for myself in 1917, and am deeply in debt, but I have given ev- erything in my power to successfully carry on our war. I have near and dear ones now in training to help Uncle Sam drive Prussianism from the face of the earth. I have a wife and small baby depending on my sup- port or I would myself now be ready to enter the trenches and give my life for my government. I say America first, last, and all My continual efforts will be for our cause. It’s hard for a .farmer to see before him every.day in the year. Dirty newspapers owned and controlled mostly by money pow- er are continually throwing slurs at the farmer when he is working al- ‘most night and day and still is hardly ‘able to own a home of his own in a lifetime. The farming communities are showing their patriotism by many times :oversubscribing their quota of | the different funds (see Saunders |-county reports).. ‘The population of Saunders county is almost altogether farmers. "Why are these ‘“‘councils of defense’’ in the different communities always composed of lawyers and doctors, etec., who are always, it seems, antagonis- tic towards the farmers, working hand over fist to keep the farmer down? Is there no justice for the farmer? Is he forced to take insult “upon insult without a murmur? Any- one who wants to be honest and just, knows the farmers as a whole stand solidly behind our president. We are all, as farmers, determined to back our president and government until. we are declared victors in this war, but must we bow down to the blood- sucking pirates, the war profiteers of this country? Every farmer should stop his sub- scription to all these dirty sheets that are always knocking the farmers. The sentiments for the ‘League are grow- ing. One of my neighbors told me the other day that he would gladly join, but the organizer has not yet stopped at his place. All we farmers want ‘is half-way decent treatment and beg to be ex-. cused from slurs and slander from a . certain class of people, whose patriot- ism amounts to nothing but big-head- edness, wind and big words—people who do practically nothing but ques- tion the farmers’ patriotism to stir up trouble. ALFRED N. ANDERSON: A BIG. ORDER Editor Nonpartisan Leader: Print 1,000,000 copies of the Nonpar- = = tisan Leader for January 21, contain- - ing the F. H. Carpenter dope. = = Ord, Neb, .