The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, April 22, 1918, Page 5

) 4 i fidain i £l ¢ o e 1 | ] «3‘ { LS. WL H i b s oy & ¥ e { e e e e et et e ettt The Charles Wolf Packing company, Topeka, Kan., where the farmers’ cattle and hogs are turned into finished products on which they reap no profit. raised $91,000,000 worth of cattle and' $31,000,000 worth of hogs in 1917, but hands of a few millionaires, instead of back into the pockets of the producers. an influential figure in the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railway, and the Santa Fe has been a big po- litical ‘factor in Kansas’ history for half a century. One time, many years later, after the organized farmers had, with their ballots, seized the govern- ment of their state and sent seven representatives to congress, one of those representatives uttered a saying that will live in the Sunflower state as long as the fight between farmers and special interests lasts. Standing on the steps of the capitol in To- peka, and looking across the square to the Santa Fe building, Jerry Simpson leveled an accusing finger at the structure and said: CRY OF “DISLOYALTY” RAISED AGAINST KANSAS FARMERS “The purpose of the People’s party is to move the government of Kansas from there—over here.” For long years the government of Kansas had paid homage to the Santa Fe railroad, and until railroads are eliminated from politics the Santa Fe will no doubt continue to labor and lobby for a place of power in the statehouse. When Jerry Simpson thus described the party of the farmers and its purpose in one short, telling sentence, the .Santa ' Fe was not housed in the elegant building from which it now radiates its influence. But.its new building stands on the same ground, across the square from the statehouse, and rears its head 10 stories high, a marble and terra cotta palace, as though struggling to overtop the dome of the capitol. The turning point in Kansas’ affairs came in that eventful year, when the Cowley county Republican farmers overthrew the business men’s faction of their party, organized themselves and started the new political move- ment. It was that year that the two big Alliances joined hands in. Kansas and took on the secret features of the “southern” Alliance. It was also that year that all the farmers of the na- tion were summoned to the great con- ference in- St. Louis ‘and sent forth . their platform, which they afterward largely wrought into law, the platform which was finally wrested from them by their political ene- mies. That year they laid plans for a state-wide movement, and in the campaign of 1890 at Hill City, Kan., the state convention of the Farmers’ aliiance, behind locked dpors, named a candidate for congress. “What a howl there was,” said Mary L. Diggs, . afterward. “The Constitution and all other things _patriotic and polite had been flouted.” The farmers had met in secret! Horriblé thought! It made no difference to their enemies that these secret meetings were sessions of alodge as sacred to its members as Masonry, nor that its sessions were always opened with prayer. It had been an effective meeting, with no outside politicians able to'get inside to befog the members with oratory or . fling ready-made issues at them to turn their minds from their own problems. That was all that was needed for politicians to denounce it. It was much the.same as Nonpartisan league conventions, where : otly members are admitted, and only candidates. of all the people are indorsed. But it started the™ howl of ‘“disloyalty,” and throughout that cam- paign and the great presidential campaign of 1892 “disloyalty” .was a trump card played by their po- litical foes. oA S ~ © 'The Alliance was at once dubbed by its opponent;s, : ‘2 “hatchery of treason.” The newspapers of the ' ~of North Dakota”). state called the members “anarchists” and traitors.” When Kansas forged to the front of the great farm- ers’ movement and began to send her speakers— men and women too—abroad through other states, the papers outside the state that were serving the old political interests called them “Kansas lice.” When in 1892 these farmers, now organized in many states, were sending their presidential can- didate, James B. Weaver of Iowa, on his presi- dential campaign, the whole movement was char- acterized by the enemy press and speakers as “se- ditious” and the speeches of the day reeked with foreboding ‘as to what would become of the nation if the farmers should win. They lost—but their enemies had to adopt their program to keep the farmers from winning later and the politicians have been winning ever since by pretending to enact the laws for which they then called the farmers “traitors,” such as initiative and referendum, elec- tion of United States senators by the people, fed- eral loans to farmers on farmer security—and a long string of other progressive principles. HOW POLITICIANS FOUGHT THIRTY YEARS AGO ; Doesn’t that sound like the distant echoes of the opposition to the Nonpartisan league today? And - what basis do you suppose these political enemies Why used to classify the farmers as “traitors.” You can’t understand what is happening today in connection with the present great farmers’ movement unless you know what happened 30 years ago when a similar movement swept a score of states and forced many of the biggest reforms put into law during recent years. History repeats itself, it is said. It has repeated itself in the kind of opposition put up against the farmers today. You can not understand the parallel with- out reading the story. The old farmers’ movement made mis- takes, but its mistakes were not in the enemies it made. present movement can avoid the old mistakes. Read +. the story, which starts on page 3, this issue. they had chosen L. L. Polk of Georgia as the head of their organization. Polk had been a Confederate colonel and was a power in the South. He rose to prominence as president of the Farmers’ alli- ance, and, as the leader of the farmers, he was’ vilified throughout the length and breadth of the land by the “patriots”—just as President Townley of the Nonpartisan league is vilified today by the “patriots.”. They said Polk had been a Confederate colonel—they say Townley was once a Socialist— blood-curdling accusations, are they not? One eloquent orator in a debate with one of the farmer women of Kansas, wound up his speech by czlling “attention to the gloomy fact that one of the planks of the farmer platform (of the People’s party) called for pensions to all old soldiers “hon- orably discharged.” Then by adroit wording he at- tempted to make it appear that the farmers had rut that plank into their platform for the special rurpose of providing a pension for ex-Colonel Polk, a “rebel” and head of the Farmers’ alliance (just as enemies of the Nonpartisan league have been saying that the League was really organized to “give President Townley control of the school fund The! speaker cautioned them against having anything to do with former “rebels.” An old “hayseed” who had listened to the elo- - quent speech and its “patriotic” ending spoke up from the back of the audience and said: . -. . PAGE FIVE Kansas for want of state-owned packing houses the biggest profit on this went into the “Oh, come off! Rebs ain’t ‘honorably discharged soldiers’—they’re prisoners of war on parole. Any fool might a-knowed that.” There was a roar oi laughter at the expense of the “patriot” and then his woman antagonist arose and, smiling sweetly at him, named over one by one more than a dozen prominent Republican poli- ticians, every one of whom had once been a “rebel” —but who had no terrors for this “patriot” because they were not leading the farmers’ movement. PLAYING BOTH ENDS g AGAINST THE MIDDLE . Colonel Polk woula have become the People’s party nominee for vice president but for his un- timely death shortly before the national nominat- ing convention at Omaha. It would have cemented the North and South to have this Confederate veteran running on the same ticket with General Weaver, the Union veteran of the North. It would lave demonstrated to the people the value of non- partisanism and how dead were the issues of the Civil war. But Colonel Polk’s death made that impossible and gave into the hands of the farmers’ enemies the ‘opportunity to play on “rebel” preju- dice against Weaver in the South, and on Union prejudice against this “rebel organization” in the North, and thus bring defeat. Throighout the South General Weaver was mobbed by infuriated former “rebels,” his carriage made a target for stones and rotten vegetables, while his wife, who accompanied him, often streamed with the drippings of rotten eggs, which even the chivalry of the South would noi forego when once its old- party prejudices were aroused. And “throughout the North the politicians of both ola parties were waving the bloody shirt and calling for defeat of this farmers’ movement because its now dead president had been a “rebel” and-because it had sprung up and had The - How like the present it all sounds! Mobs and prejudice, not because the organization is “disloyal,” for in both cases it was wholly loyal from top to bbttom, but because it was (and is) a powerful organization of farmers aiming to overthrow the old political and economic regime and let honesty control government, and natural laws instead of .entrenched monopoly control in- dustry. \ . The enemies of the organized farmers back in those days even hatched a huge plot to make it appear that the farmers were anarchists. This happened shortly after some railway strike riots when .people were inflamed against violence. The Vincent brothers, who were publishing “The Non- conformist,” a farmers’ paper, at Winfield, Kan., were the intended victims of the plot.: A bomb was sent to Winfield addressed to a well-known farmer radical. The man was away and the expressman took the bomb to his own house for safekeeping, supposing it a valuable package. It blew up in the expressman’s home, horribly mangling his’ wife ond child. Instantly the Republicans (the Demo- cratic. party was insignificant in Kansas) hopped on the farmers with their newspapers and speak- ers, and sent broadcast wild newspaper stories of ~ how this farmers’ movenient was one-and the same thing as the “anarchists.” (How much that sounds like the present charges that the Nonpartisan league is one and . tle same thing as - the : ~.(Continued on page 23) 3 o5 AR S TR 7 " its greatest membership in the South.