The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, March 25, 1918, Page 7

ular vote, an elective supreme court holding office for a definite term with similar subordinate courts, direct legislation by the people through the ini- tiative and referendum, and such broad extensions of popular rights as shall set the people absolutely free to govern themselves in their own way and to conduct. in their national or local capacity such industries as may be withdrawn by monopoly from individual competition and such other enterprises as may meet the public approval as properly sub- ject to popular conduct.” : Part of these demands have since been realized. " United States senators are now elected by popular . _vote everywhere in the United States, the seven- teenth amendment making this binding having been recently passed by the required number of . states. - The initiative and referendum has spread ~to most states, and in other less definite ways " (largely through public opinion no doubt) there have come about “broad extensions of ‘popular rights.” Some of them re- " main to be fulfilled, and part of those "that remain have been so vital that they have been renewed in definite form by the present farmers’ move- ment, and are now spreading through- out the United States with the speed of the wind. : Towa’s part in bringing about the election of: United States senators by - the people is conspicuous in that long struggle and is another proof of the fact that “Gibraltars” sometimes have eruptions. Forty years ago it was considered almost disloyal to talk, "about letting the people choose their senators. . The people themselves didn’t think they had sense enough ~ to do it. They only had sense enough- “to elect legislators and then leave it ‘to these legislators to select the most powerful representative of the people in all the government. But revolutionary as it was, the _senate of the state of Iowa in 1872 passed a resolution demanding the .popular election of United States senators, and this was many times “repeated before the Iowa senatorial primary nomination law of 1907 was enacted. From standard data on this question it seems that Iowa was the _very first state that proposed this ac- tion, and its development had an im- portant part in the politics of the state during subsequent - senatorial fights. “WHEN ALL EYES WERE TURNED TOWARDS IOWA -~ A “enatorial trust” was alleged to exist during the ’80s and it was -this “trust” that was charged with keeping Allison for 35 years in power and bringing the late Senator Dolliver . into prominence. Whatever the merits -of the contention regarding Dolliver, -his later history was free from any :guch contention and he worked shoul- - der to shoulder with Senator Albert _-B. Cummins, who was the first senatorial candi- .date to attempt taking his campaign directly to ° ‘the people. Out of these fights grew the demand which resulted in 1906 in calling in- Des Moines the convention that' the Populists proposed but dared not quite approve in 1894. ‘ -In December of that year 82 delegates met-and they included such progressives as Stubbs of Kansas, Strode -of Nebraska, former Governor ‘William Larabee of Iowa, and Governor .(now Sen- “ator) Cummins, who delivered an address. After: two days of deliberation by delegates. from the 16 - states the convention summed up its demand in a memorial to congress calling for a national _-constitutional . convention, . and out of this Des ~iMoines gathering—the only one ‘of its kind—fol- lowed. the next year Iowa’s pioneer statute allow-' . senatorial candidates- ing the people to nominate An Towa farmer shows you his corn. Of Towa’s 35,50 are under cultivation and the main crop is corn. at popular primaries, but still allowing the legis- lature ta elect them. v Too often these political movements have been regarded as just “politics,” and their significance lost sight of. Some people think that the welfare of the public has no relation to “politics” and that by just leaving this “unspeakable” thing to the few men who are -perfectly willing to handle it, the people can go ongetting rich, building homes, saving money and becoming successful.- Maybe they could if the business interests were also will- -ing to leave “politics” to politicians, but Iowa’s history is an illustration of the fact that Big Busi- ness, while telling the mass of the people not to take their affairs into politics, didn’t take its own advice. Big Business began to dominate the af- fairs of Iowa in a big way immediately after the Civil war, and it was the consciousness of this that gave rise to the several farmers’ movements that swept the state and that had a prominent part in its political destiny. = : First came the Grange. That order was founded in 1868 in ‘Washington, D. C. by a Minnesota to many states in ‘the next 10 years. By 1871 it had reached Towa, and in Iowa it found one of its most cordial welcomes. ‘Over 100,000 Iowa farmers belonged to it in the decade of -the- *70s, -and through it and the various subordinate Granges there were established innumerable co-operative stores, selling agencies for farmers’ products, and finally,’ factories’ for the manufacture of farm machinery. This feature of the movement reached '~its ‘greatest height 'in ‘the state of Iowa, and in 1876 ‘everything looked rosy for farmers to control ' at least their economic life. It had not occurred - to. them yet that they must link this up with po- Bh o mAgE EEVENT 0o - The fight of the farmers for justice and democracy in Iowa today is as interesting as the fight in Minnesota. Read- ers of the Leader in all states will read with astonishment of the organized and well-financed plan in Towa to pre- vent the farmers from organizing. The accompanying article tells what has happened in Iowa in the past. A sub- sequent article will tell what is going on now. The Greater Iowa association, an organization of business men, bankers and politicians, backed by the press and the war profiteers, has issued an ultimatum to the farmers of Iowa. It is: “You shall not organize!” This association is trying to line up the business interests in a class war on the farmers. This story will be important. Watch for it. 0,000 acres, 33,000,000 ‘ -farmer, Oliver H. Kelley ‘of Itasca, and it spread’ litical action. But they had been carried away by their enthusiasm. Some of the threshing machines . were delivered too late to harvest the 1875 crop. Business competitors were working against them in ‘every conceivable way, and with the tottering “of the first of such business enterprises the whole system collapsed. FAILURE OF FIRST ATTEMPT STIMULATED NEW ACTION No wonder. It was the farmers' first attempt at liberation. But they did not quit. They never went back to the sleepy contentment of the past. In 1881, the Farmers’ alliance (the “Northern” alliance) was formed in Illinois and in two years it was making rapid headway in Iowa. Also in company with it there were growing up the many small “independent” parties in many Northwestern states that were spelling trouble for the politicians, and which later sent Weaver to con- gress, and gave him over 1,000,000 votes for president of the United States in 1892. So intimately were the political aspects of the farmers’ movement in Iowa, as represented by the independent parties, mingled with the Grange and the coming of the Alliance that it is hard to separate them. The reason -is - that farmers were beginning to see that they could not secure freedom from Big Busi- ness domination by merely forming local associations to cut out an inter- loping middleman now and then, and were trying to use their economic or- ganizations as political weapons. In 1874 they dominated the Iowa legislature and passed one of the most famous railroad laws ever passed in the United States. It was an attempt to regulate freight rates and head off the outrageous discrimi- nation that had been practiced upon them. They found that rates were so arranged that consumers were 500 miles than 200 miles and this railroad rate law aimed to correct the abuse. Iowa’s advanced position in railroad regulation led to the fa- supreme court in 1876 by which it was declared that all railroads hence- forth were to be considered as high- ways and as such to be subject to the control of states and government. THE BARBED WIRE TRUST AND THE FARMERS’ FIGHT _ .. This was revolutionary and of the utmost significance, for out ‘of the “Granger cases,” as they are called, in which Iowa was one of the leading " the more rapid spread of state rail- road commissions. But this was only one of the abuses against which ‘thé organized farmers of Iowa had to struggle. One of the most galling was the barbed wire " syndicate, which in 1880 bought up all the patents _ for barbed wire manufacture. These patents on the different methods for twisting the barbs into the strands of fence wire were most important, but the manufacture of such wire was very -simple. It was so simple that there were many small com- panies turning out barbed wire in many parts of . Jowa and also in other states. But when this - syndicate had got all the patents bought wup, it ordered 'all manufacturers to shut down their plants or else take out a license for which they ' had ' to pay a high royalty. - Most of the managers did"so, fearing lawsuits and financial ‘ruin. The syndicate “doubled” the price -of ‘barbed wire and raked /in the “profits, while westerri agriculture paid the bill. o0 cie : o ~ The farmers of Iowa, to meet this new enemy, B Pase 2 ® mous decision of the United States - states, came the power of the inter- ' : state commerce commission, all sub- sequent railroad rate regulation ‘and paying more to have goods hauled. i