The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, March 11, 1918, Page 4

| b B 0O TNonpartisan Teader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League—Every Week Entered as second-class matter September 3, 1915, at the postoffice at St. Paul, Minnesota, under the Act of March 3, 1879. : F OLIVER S. MORRIS, EDITOR Advertising rates on application. Subscription, one year, in advance, $2.50; six months, $1.60. Communications should be addressed to the Nonpartisan Leader, Box 675, St. Paul, Minn. MEMBER OF AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS THE 8. C. BECKWITH SPECIAL AGENCY, Advertising Representatives, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City. Quack, fraudulent and irresponsible firms are not knowingly advertised, and we will take it as a favor if any readers will advise us promptly should they have occasion to doubt or question the reliability of any firm which patronizes our advertising columns. G@ 14 AN UNFORTUNATE AGITATION MOST interesting situation has arisen in Iowa, about which A the Leader will have something important to say in an early issue. A group of agitators in Iowa are using what they call the ‘‘Greater Iowa association.’” The association consists, ae- cording to its publicity matter, of ‘‘merchants, farmers, bankers, manu- facturers, livestock breeders, doctors and lawyers,”” but we doubt if any real farmers belong to it. This association is now engaged in an unscrupulous, sensational cam- paign to line up the bankers and business interests of Iowa against the farmers, in an endeavor to precipitate in Iowa a bitter class struggle which can do nothing but harm to the state and all its citi- zens, and to the nation, which in this crisis needs the co-operation of all citizens. The Greater Iowa association has sent to every banker in Iowa a letter and a number of pamph- lets which the Leader will repro- duce in an early issue, so that the citizens of Iowa can understand this dastardly attempt to set neighbor against neighbpr in Iowa and stir up a hatred and prejudice which, if successful, will do more damage to the state in a short time than a half century of co-operation and boosting of sensible citizens can rectify. These ill-advised Iowa agitators are attempting to get every.busi- ness man and banker in the state to join an association whose frank and openly announced intention is to prevent the farmers of Iowa from -organizing. At present a desperate effort is being made to get the bankers to go into the association. A number of Iowa bankers who want to see city and.country co-operate in ‘that state and who resent "this attempt to set the business interests against the farmers, have written the Leader about the matter. Among other things, bankers are told by these unserupulous agi- tators that the farmers of Iowa intend to fight the banks; that, in or- ganizing, the farmers intend to drive business men from the state. The financial support and influence of the bankers and business men is asked to ‘‘drive out’’ and ‘‘crush’’ the farmers’ organization. The literature sent out is filled with lies and misrepresentations about the great movement of the organized farmers in the United States. North Dakota, Minnesota and other states where the organized farmers are restoring the government to the people and correcting the monstrous abuses of the existing political and economic system, are held up to - contempt and ridicule. The Leader hopes that this unfortunate effort in Iowa to bring about a class war will be headed off by the influence of the sane and conservative business men of Iowa. Needless to say that the organized farmers do not fear the Greater Iowa association, because no organiza- tion with a destructive policy and no-constructive program for the - betterment of political and economic conditions can make much head- way. If the Iowa agitation continues; the organized farmers know how to meet it. They have met the same thing in other states and in the end the spirit of co-operation between town and country, business men and farmers, has prevailed. : The organized farmers have a constructive program of reforms. . They know how to obtain a fair and open discussion of that program by the publie, and they will proceed to get a public hearing in Towa and a fair discussion, regardless of the sensational effort of the Greater Towa association to line up and prejudice the business interests against them. : : : X R e B T e R e R G e S g PAGE FOUR ; ; _POOR NELSON MORRIS ELSON MORRIS, chairman of the board of directors of Morris N & Co., one of the ‘‘big five’’ packers, is a young man under 30. He inherited, through no merit of his own, but simply by an accident of birth, a fortune of many, many millions and control of one of the big units of the United States packing trust. The great basic food manufacturing industry which young Nelson Morris in- herited has control over the lives, happiness and fortunes of thousands of workers. It has the power, with similar big units allied with it, to fix prices and control the con- ditions under which millions of producers of livestock and con- sumers of meat products fair well or ill, Young Nelson Morris is prob- ably ‘‘a good fellow.”” We smile at one of his peculiarities. He never wears a hat. He was ac- customed to go hatless at college in conformity with a fad which college boys once affected, and he. never got over the habit, We do not know how many automobiles young Morris owns, how many valets he employs or what ,other luxuries his inherited wealth and power entitles him to. But re- cently he testified at a government hearing as to packing house wages in the United States. Among other things he said $20 a year was enough for a family of three for clothes! He ventured the opinion that two pairs of shoes were enough per year for a man! Twice a year to the movies was enough theatrical entertainment per year for a packing house worker, he said. Let’s not blame young Nelson Morris. In demoecratic America, where, ’tis said, every young man has an equal chance, he has inherited riches and power like the feudal barons and kings of old. Let’s not blame him, either, for wanting to confine his workers to $20 a year for clothes for a family of three, with twice to the movies each year thrown in. Let’s not blame him. He enjoys autos, grand opera, a sum- mer home at the seaside and perhaps. a steam yacht. But he would confine the working people of America to less than a bare living. _ Let’s not blame him for all that. Nelson Morris, like his workers in his big packing houses, is the victim of a bad system—a, system which makes a private monopoly, run for private profit, out of a food in- dustry necessary to sustain the lives of the people; a system which permits the accumulation of vast private wealth by one man or family, and allows it to be handed down, generation after generation, increas- ing with each new possessor, until we have laid the basis in America for a moneyed aristocracy for the few, and an industrial slavery for the many. BUT LET’S CHANGE THE SYSTEM. TWO KINDS OF ‘“PREPAREDNESS”’ Q. DVOCATES of ‘‘preparedness’’ for war in this country are now actively promoting a propaganda whose object is to establish in the United States, after the war, a system of universal, com- pulsory military training. Their views range all the way from the mild Swiss system of universal training of youth for soldiers, to the purely and frankly militaristic German idea of a big standing army of conscripts in peace, and every man an armed, trained soldier—the system which, having seized Ger- many, propagated the German - idea of world conquest that the world is now bleeding to stamp " out. py 151 . The United States ought to con- sider very carefully before com- mitting itself to any military pol- icy for the future. With the ex- ample of Gérmany and this war before us, we ought to be very careful, Military systems are of all sorts and degrees. If those who, during the war are advocating a . training system in this country . after the war, persist in trying to -have this question decided at once, before other and more pressing P public business is attended to, the Leader may express itd ideas rather fully and forcefully on the subject In t]g)le mear:ltnlme, iyve offer thef following suggestion : j reparedness for war is of two kinds, MILITARY and EC At the present time the United States has no problem abogNg(;%iIz% men to fight. It has got the men. It has the facilities for training them. conscription system or universal