The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, March 18, 1918, Page 6

Birdseye view of Denver, capital and largest city of Colorado, nestled among the Rocky mountains, a mile above sea level. N 1776 the settlers in 13 colonies along the Atlantic coast de- clared their independence of Great Britain and a new nation was born. One hundred years later the nation had spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific and hardy adventurers had climbed i the backbone of the continent, ithe Rocky mountains, had made settlements and founded cities a mile and in some cases close to ifwo miles @above the sea. T ey had come by the ‘thousands to the top of the world, in such numbers that in 1876, the year in which the United States ‘celebrated its one hundredth birthday, there were ‘enough inhabitants in the territory of Colorado, perched on the crest of the Rockies, to entitle it to statehood. It was admitted and christened the Centennial state. . . Colorado proved a marvel of riches. It has bil- lions upon billions of tons of coal of all kinds, an- © ‘thracite, bituminous and lignite, and in close proximity in Wyoming is iron ore—a combination that will make any section great industrially. It ‘has vast silver mines and valuable deposits of a dozen other metals. It has fertile valleys, watered by the melting snow of the Rockies, that will grow swheat—not the 8 or 10 or 12 bushels that the /middle western farmer expects, but 30, 40, 50, ‘as high in-many cases as 70 bushels to the acre. It is land that will produce on the average, accord- ing to beet sugar manufacturers’ own admissions, ‘nearly $300 worth of sugar to the acre. FEW CONTROL WEALTH - IN STATE OF COLORADO Colorado is one of the richest states in the {Union. According to many Colorado residents, it has greater per capita wealth than any other state and .if its total wealth were to be divided equally among its 1,000,000 inhabitants, every man, woman and child would have property to the value of many thousands of dollars. ) ¢ But the average Colorado citizen does not look like a plutocrat. The average run of farmers idon’t appear to be much better off than the farm- { 2rs of any other state; the laboring men may get somewhat more money than the average of work- 2rs_throughout the “United States, but they are +iaeld up for more, too, for everything they have 50 buy. The fact is that the claim of great per capita wealth is misleading because the average citizen 2as not that wealth. A few men, an unusually ' 5mall number, have the billions upon billions of ' ‘Colorado’s wealth: within their grasp. ' { Take the coal and iron. Who is the largest owner? The Colorado Fuel & Iron company, the | orivate property of John D. Rockefeller. When ! :he mine workmen organized to ask for fair wages . and decent and safe working conditions they were ‘ put down with an iron hand. After the fighting : and bloodshed was all over John D. Rockefeller Jr. ;i s00k enough time off from teaching his New i ¥ork Bible class to come out to Colorado, accom- ] i [ sanied by a staff of newspaper men. John Junior i told the men they couldn’t have their own union, but he would give them a nice new one, managed by himself, and he even condescended to eat one meal with them and to shake hands with two or three of the “rough miners.” Then, after pictures had been taken, he went back to New York. Take the wheat. Eighty per cent of it is “handled,” wheat and flour, by strings of elevators and mills owned by J. K. Mullen, a Denver multi- millionaire, and his associates. Most of the wheat has been milled right in Colorado in Mullen’s mills and sold back to the farmers and working- men, but wheat prices paid. to the farmers for years have been' approximately the Kansas City price, minus the 15 cent freight charge to Kansas City, minus another 15 cents “penalty” against Colorado wheat on the plea that its quality was * lower than middle western whezt. FARMERS ALSO SKINNED ON THER SUGAR BEETS But the flour prices have generally been the Kansas City flour price PLUS the freight from ‘Kansas City to Colorado, in spite of the fact that most of the wheat was milled right in Colorado. Not all of the wheat was milled in Colorado. The farmers have found out that some of the IColorado wheat has been shipped across the line into Kansas, milled there and shipped back to Colorado as “Kansas hard wheat flour” to get away from the idea, studiously spread by the Mullen wheat buyers, that the Colorado wheat is not much good for flour. As a matter of fact the government tests, makes the Colorado wheat difference in actual milling value, according to government tests, worth ‘only 2 and 8 cents to the bushel less than the harder, drier 'middle western wheat, far less a difference than the penalty as- sessed against it. &2 This is the story of Colorado in the historical series of the states where the farmers are organizing. There are still several states to be reported in this big Leader series, which has been running several mronths. Colorado is _an example of a trust-ridden state. The people have found that the big in- terests are in politics—that they have been able to get their men-into the food administration and the Colorado state council of defense, which bodies are - taking important steps affecting pro- ducers during the war. Why should not the common people organize, they say, and throw special privilege out of politics? The people of Colorado: are awake and they are going to restore the government of the state : to: the people. : . PAGE SIX *" ~ because they were And take the sugar beets. The Great Western Sugar company controls the Colorado field abso- lutely. It is offering this year $9 per ton for beets containing 16 per cent of sugar. The Great . Western agents claim this is the average sugar content and that the average yield is 12 tons to the acre. But take the’ sugar company’s own figures. Twelve tons of 16 per cent beets contains 3840 pounds of sugar of which 90 per cent, or 3456 pounds, can be extracted. At $7.93 per 100 pounds, the present price to Denver jobbers, this is worth $274 and $30 more for the value of by- g;ggucts, pulp and syrup, makes the total value The cost of raising beets is approximately $94 per acre. The sugar manufacturer has a smaller investment than the combined investment of the beet growers supplying his factory, a smaller working period, but giving him the benefit of every doubt a $94 cost of manufacture for each acre of beets and an additional $16 for cost of shipping, would make his total cost $110. This would make the combined cost of raising the beets and manufacturing the sugar $204 an acre and would leave $100 an acre as the average net profit for each acre of Colorado beet land. Land earn- ing $100 an acre net profit a year to the farmer would be worth $1000 an acre, as high a price as the land of Denmark or Holland, the most valu-- able agricultural land in the world. BEET GROWERS TURNING FROM BEETS TO WHEAT But as a matter of fact the price that the farmer is offered for 12 tons of 16 per cent beets at $9 per ton is only $108. Most of the farmers say that 12 tons to the acre is a shade above the average yield, and that a 16 per cent beet is a shade above the.average quality. Bot) of these factors operate to cut down the $108 a little. And the cost of raising beets is going up this year above the $94 mark. Contract labor alone . has advanced from $22 to $30 per acre. So in- stead of a profit of $100 per acre the farmer sees, at the best, only a dollar or two on the right side of the ledger, with a good chance of loss staring : !fim in the face, and thousands of beet growers, In consequence,.are putting in wheat instead. These interests—the Colorado Fuel & Iron com- pany, the Mullen grain and milling trust and the Great Western Sugar company, with the wusual help from the railroads, the bankers and the pack- ers, HAVE BECOME THE MASTERS OF COLO- RADO. They not only hold its billions of "wealth, they a159 hqld the government of the state to pro- tect their hold upon the billions they now have, and to get their hold upon other billions. = . Popular revolts started in Colorado long ago. Its: hxs_tory is the story of one revolt after another. Laboring men started the fight. They thought at first, perhaps, that their fight was only with ' the mine owners. But they learned soon that the government' of the state, controlled by the mine owners, also was against them. ' They, learned it met, time after time. by rifles i