The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, March 4, 1918, Page 6

something. They learned that a number of leading old-line Republican peliticians had been summoned to Washington and had been given a separate hear- g by Roosevelt. i ¥ . What happened at this conference was told to the writer by one of the men in Washington at the time, “You can’t use it,” he said, “because Roosevelt probably will repudiate it and call you a liar if you print it, and for personal reasons my name can’t be used. But it happened just the same.” But the story, as this man told it, is so good that it pretty nearly has to u be used, even if Roosevelt does repu- diate it. This man said: “We went to the White House and were ushered into a private room. We were seated facing a big doorway with curtains over it. We waited and waited, everybody looking at the door- way and wondering if the Colonel had forgotten us. “Finally, after 15 or 20 minutes, two negro servants.came. One pulled back the curtain on one side and the other pulled back the curtain on the other side and the Colonel came through, prancing like a prize horse at a county fair and showing every tooth in his head. ) “ ‘Dee-lighted,” he said. ‘I've called you gentlemen because I wanted to talk with you a little while about this new constitution. By the way, where in h—— is it? “Everybody laughed. The story had been going around that the Democratic chairman of the convention had ‘been carrying it around in his hip pocket, to prevent any enemy from getting hold of it. “We talked quite awhile and finally .| "the understanding was reached that portion of the herd of 4,000 hogs owned by farm near Chickasaw, Oklahoma. we were to go back to Oklahoma and oppose the 2 new constitution. He gave us the impression that if it was adopted by the convention over our oppo- sition that he would disapprove it.” T. R. SENT HIS MAN FRIDAY TO FIGHT CONSTITUTION Now this is simply one man’s story and can not be confirmed by documentary evidence. The meet- ing was a private one and care was taken that no Hogs are coming to be one of the big crops of the South. This picture shows a R. A. Lyle being fed at his stock real representative of the people was there, Roose- velt, with some degree of safety, may be able ‘to repudiate this story. It is printed for what 'it is worth. y But what happened immediately afterward there is no denying. The Republicans went back .to Okla- homa and the Republican vote was cast against the constitution. The Democrats made some trifling changes in that document, to meet the technical ob- jections that had been made by Bonaparte, Roose- velt’s attorney general, and it was then approved by practically a straight party vote. Tl Another thing that happened can be told without fear of successful con- tradiction. While Roosevelt, in his in- terview with the convention commit- tee, in failing to reply to the letter asking what changes he would sug- gest, and in all his public utterances, carefully side-stepped any reference to the Oklahoma constitution, and finally was forced to give his approval to that document because there were no legal grounds for rejecting it, he sent his secretary of war, William Howard Taft, to Oklahoma City to make a campaign speech advising (e people of Oklahoma to vote down their constitution. e WHAT TAFT SAID AND HOW THEY LIKED IT & This was in August, 1907. At this time Taft was the closest political friend of Roosevelt and had been se- lected by Roosevelt as the next presi- dent of the United States. Governor Frantz of Oklahoma, a former Rough Rider himself and a TRoosevelt .ap- pointee, gave this. fact away when .he (Continued on page 20)° 'Montana Equity Indorses the League § that has been the scene of the Clark-Daly and Heinze-Amalgamated fights is waking up to find that it is in for the greatest political battle in its history—a battle that promises to de- liver it from the interests that have preyed upon it'unmolested for years. /3 The state conventions of the Co-operators’ con- gress and of the Montana union of the American Society of Equity, just completed in Montana, have served to open the eyes of all loyal citizens of ! ‘Montana to the-fact that the farmers are organized /| and united, ready to march down the road.to victory ; next November. It has served to open the eyes of ¢ the servants of the Copper trust, also, and the | Butte Miner, owned by Senator W. A.” Clark, has- { resumed its program of abuse of the farmers and i| Hes about their leaders, served daily under red ink !! headlines. ¢ : : ! . The announcement of the calling of the Co-opera- | tors congress, to meet at Great Falls during the :, same week as the Montana Equity convention, started proceedings. Governor Lynn.J. Frazier of North Dakota and President A. C. Townley of the National Nonpartisan league were invited to attend this conference and deliver addresses.. Before the calling of the Co-operators’ conference || Montana farmers had been petitioning Governor i 8. V. Stewart of Montana, unsuccessfully, to call a special session of the legislature to provide a means :{ by which farmers could get sufficient money to i/ “buy seed to plant big crops. Montana farmers, es- i{ pecially in the dry farming sections, suffered even ?_E more. severely than North Dakota farmers from ii drouth last yar. Thousands of farmers were burned il out and were unable to harvest abushel of grain | from their acres, planted at the highest cost in the i1 history of *farming to help the government win ! the war. ; : HOW MONTANA FARMERS CAME TO GET RELIEF In North Dakota, under similar circumstances, THINGS are happening in Montana. The state IR S S > 2t f b | H § 1 3 1 =i edy. He had called a session of the farmer legis- AR TN the farmers to buy seed. This special session had. already been called and was. busy making the neces- - the farmer governor had proceeded to a simple rem- lature to remedy the laws and make it possible for: Free Speech Condemned sary laws when Governor Frazier was invited to Montana. 3 : ; Governor Stewart of Montana, a shrewd politi- cian, was quick to size up the situation. He saw that it would never do, when the farmers of Mon- tana were- petitioning unsuccessfully for relief, to have North Dakota’s governor come to the state and tell Montana farmers how the situation had been worked out in North Dakota. So, after weeks of hesitation, Governor Stewart followed the lead of the ‘governor of North Dakota and just before the sessions of the Equity and Co-operators’ con- gress were due to be held, he called a special ses- sion of the Montana legislature. Whatever relief Montana farmers get from the + special session of the legislature is due primar- ily to the fact that the farmers of North Dakota had control of their own state government. In addition to calling upon the Montana legisla- ture to enact a seed bonding law like North Da- - kota’s, Governor Stewart proposed a number of - other new laws. Among these were to be new laws defining treasonable and stditious utterances and - defining “sabotage, criminal syndicalism and indus- trial and political anarchy.” . FARMERS AND LABOR' FAVOR FREE SPEECH The - Equity convention .considered carefully the program' that the governor had mapped out. It in- dorsed enthusiastically the plan to enact a seed bonding law that would work and also proposals to extend the vote to:soldiers and to create morator- iums for all men in the United States army, actions already- taken by the North Dakota-farmer legisla-’ ture. ; ; § But the Equity farmers would not stand for Gov- ernor Stewart’s ‘proposals for other laws.” There are plenty of laws already to punish sedition and treason,in the belief of the Equity farmers. They. . : feared that the new laws the governor asked would be misused. to stop free speech and peaceable as- semblage, as the pliblic safety commission law is misused-in Minnesota, and they feared that the “po- litical and industrial anarchy” law was merely. an at- - tempt- to further persecute the “working ‘men: of Montana, who:already have been persecuted to the ~limit by the Copper trust. - i e Frazier and Townley Given Great Ovations; Plan to Throttle So the Equity adopted a resolution disapproving and protesting against these proposals which they feared might be used to bar free speech and to in- terfere with labor and farmers’. organizations and + said: e THESE ARE THE REAL ) > . “INDUSTRIAL ANARCHISTS” “We do not concede the wisdom of the recommen- dation although we do concede the existence of a vast amount of ‘criminal syndicalism’ and ‘industrial anarchy’ of nation wide importance and from which the rights of the people suffer invasion and which tend to paralyze production in both state and nation, as witnessed in the activities and operations of the Flour, Milling and Grain Gambling trust, the Pack- " ing trust, the Sugar trust, the Usury trust, the Po- litical trust and some dozens of others, but we be- lieve that even they should not be deprived of their rights to be tried before the courts in the manner ° provided under the federal constitution.” This resolution was adopted by unanimous vote. But the Bquity farmers did not stap with discussing the proposals of Governor Stewart for new laws. They went on record, by unanimous vote, for es- tablishment of a primary grain market in Montana for Montana wheat. The Montana farmers are' tired of having the freight to Minneapolis and Chicago taken from the price paid them for the wheat.” Much of this wheat is actually milled in Montana and the flour is sold back to the farmers at the Minneapolis price, plus the freight from Minneapolis to Montana. It has further been proved that Montana wheat can be shipped by freight to Portland, Ore., and thence by ship to Liverpool, for & cost much lower than .the: cost- of shipment by rail to the Great Lakes and thence by ship to Liverpool. FOR LEAGUE PROGRAM RIGHT DOWN THE LINE. Further indorsement. of Nonpartisan league prin- - ey ciples was voted in the following resolutions: “We indorse the government’s action on railways .and further recommend the pPermanent supervision and final owfiership. R % : “We insist on the sbeedy enactient of a fair.,: feasible hail insurance ‘Wworkable herd law, a fair,