The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, March 11, 1918, Page 21

LIRS fl}r)J _ Bridgeport, Kansas DITOR Nonpartisan Leader: I ° am sending you a clipping from the Salina Union. The League will certainly run up against some big obstacles in this state. Many papers are knocking the movement, as they see the farmers seem to have a good thing this time. My advice is stick to the Nonpartisan league. EDWIN BECKMAN. The clipping from the Salina (Kan- sas) Union sent in by Mr. Beckman quoted a traveling man by the name of Zimmerman, who claimed to know. about the League in North Dakota and told an audience that it is made up entirely of “class hatred” and “capital- ized discontent.” -He said that Town- ley is in alliance with the Bolsheviki of Russia, that he organized the League to get control of “the $60,000,- 000 school fund of North Dakota,” that is “built on free love and has a hate for all religion.” A few facts would have helped to make this go down with intelligent people. To show how absurd such wild statements are, for instance, there is no $60,000,000 school fund in North Dakota. The school fund is approxi- mately $13,000,000, and when all the school land of North Dakota is sold ‘and paid for, which at the present rate would be about 50 years from now, the school fund would amount to $48,000,- 000. Moreover, Mr. Townley and the League have never had any connection The Substance of Democracy A Meeting In the Open and One Inside, and Something About the “Difference” BY CARL BECK AGE earners, the humble and the lowly of the communuity, assembled in Rice park, St. Paul, Minnesota, on Decem- ber 2, to protest in the open against the oppressive measures of a state commission in its protection of the transit public utilities which had de- nied organization among its employes and forced them from a public service that they had performed efficiently. Sovereign citizens assembled in the open park were “rabble.” ; Wage earners and farmers, the sam - humble and lowly of the community, assembled in St. Paul’s largest hotel on February 6, 1918, to celebrate the dismissal of the court cases charging their speakers at Rice park with inci- ting to riot. The celebration was an expression of righteous indignation over the attempt to misuse governmental machinery to harass, intimidate and discourage the open forum of the common people. The common people, assembled in the hotel where the Chamber of Com- merce dines, were not rabble, they were citizens. In the shell of the respectable hotel the substance of democracy was pro- tected. The press did not ridicule and misquote, the state government did not order the sheriff to stop the meeting or deport the banqueters. What a blasphemy on democracy that open forums make people “rabble” and that the habitat .of the rich and mighty . make people “citizens”. = One might might rightly ask, who 1is it that creates class distinctions? And, in the name of humanity, what is democracy? What is democracy after all but the opportunity to struggle for human bet- terment? Democracy is not a fixed state of affairs. Democracy is not even a special set of principles. We stumble onto new principles and dis- card the old. The opportunity to im- prove .on what we have, to organize Zimmerman “Exposes” The League Big Business Puppet Tells Kansas Farmers It’s a “Free Love” | Organization and Hates All Religion : with the school fund, which is handled - under a compact between the United States and North Dakota entered into when North Dakota was admitted in 1889. To say that the League is built on “free love” and “religious hatred” is to bring up two subjects that no League audience has ever heard of before. Of course Zimmerman knows this is not true. The League program is not re- motely connected with any thing re- ligious but is wholly political and economic. - It -is made up of Catholics and Lutherans and Protestants, and no one ever heard any religious matter discussed at a League meeting or in the League’s literature or publications. Of course, all Zimmerman’s charges are so ridiculous that it would be a waste of time to refer to them except that they illustrate very clearly the panic that has seized special privilege defenders and the depths of infamy and falsehood to which enemies of the farmers will resort to break up a farm- ers’ organization — for instance the statement that Townley is in league with the Bolsheviki! If anything that Zimmerman said was true, the League officers 'would have been in jail long ago—in fact, if-these things were true, there would be no League, as no organ- ization such as Zimmerman describes could secure nearly every farmer. in one state as members and, in spreading to other states, meet with the same success.—THE EDITOR. for that improvement, to overthrow the present rule by ballot or to defend freedom by bullets, if necessary, is democracy. Democracy is dynamic, not. static. Institutions - that want things to stay as they are, are the shell. Ideas, spirit, principles, self-ex- pression, that demand improvement, are the substance. The shell and the substance are counterparts of democratic struggle. There are shell-democrats and sub- stance-democrats.. There are surface- democrats and fundamental-democrats. There are democrats of necessity, who turn around and seek control for their selfish purposes, and there are demo- crats by conviction, the salt of the earth, the men and women who are bringing a new order into the world. DOESN'T FEAR TEIGEN'S LEAGUE Niagara, N. D. Editor, Nonpartisan Leader: 1 read in the last issue of the Leader an account of the new. fangled N. P.sleague started by one Teigen, from somewhere over in the western part of the.state. 1 think there is no reason for unrest on the nart of League members. This Teigen operation was slated on December 13 and had only 13 votes in its favor. Looks kind of dubious. Minnesota also had a Teigen in the Farmers’ alliance days, and when he could not land a nomination for state office with the Alliance, he started a gold brick stock selling scheme. This Teigen in North Dakota will only throw a gold brick at the original League, but he won’t make a hit. The gang press, the Grand Forks Herald in particular, gave elaborate space in its columns for the Teigen “‘league.” Your write-up of the old Farmers’ alliance is surely interesting to many of us old Alliance members, but I think you should give Minnesota and Kansas the right of way before Wis- consin, = - AR - - : C. J. SUNDAHL. PAGE TWENTY-ONE _ : WHEAT-OATS-BARLEY Speed up—grow more Grain. A famine-stricken world awaits every bushel you can produce and is willing to pay well for it. Start right—plant for quality as well as for quan- tity; it costs no more to grow top-price Grain than No. 3 and 4 grades. 5 (e Yqur success is assured with “FARMER BRAND” SEEDS They are grown here in the North, from pedigreed seed, on clean soil. They are bred for greater hardi- ness and productiveness, to withstand drought, rust, blight, lodging, etc. : Plump, bright seed, together with these qualities, will produce quality crops that will bring top prices. 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