The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, May 20, 1918, Page 12

g [} 13 T R e Attt s much larger planting this spring. More than - this, the government is now making pians to release the men in training camps who would be especially useful in the harvest field at that time. Thus it has cut into its army preparations to a cer- tain extent because of the importance of the food supply. Yet in comparison with the importance of the army such steps as furnish- ing free transportation’ to farm labor and lower prices on agricultural machinery appear triv- TICKETS i FREIGHT A sign in a St. Paul railroad office which shows how Canada insures getting farm help. The distance is 458 miles, and the regular fare is $12.31. ial and congress should act without delay to make these things possible. It is well to know that the International Har- vester Corporation of New Jersey, for instance, has had the following profits according to its own state- ment: L1914 onvitSediaominiogeioise $ 7,463,231 L9ID:-5iavtarsistoietaions v e 8,576,435 1916 ................ 10,682,159 917" (aisdmstradinters b . 14,009,693 The, oil trust is also overcharging consumers, among them the farmers, and is making more prof- its now in spite of the war taxes than were made in 1917. Forty-seven cents of every dollar of sales of the Texas Oil company, for instance, was net profit. By cutting out the enormous profits now being wrung from the farmer on farm machinery and other necessary supplies, the government can.aid greatly in substituting machinery for the missing labor. Big Business Would Mobilize Farms The Leather Chair Plutocrats and the Financial Editors Forget All About the Weather and the Need for Cheap Loans BY W. G. ROYLANCE E Wall Street Journal, com- menting upon the fact that, of the 3,100,000,000 bushels of corn produced last year, 1,900,- 000,000 was unfit for sale, ex- presses the opinion that the government should apply to food production a policy similar to that which has been applied to finance, transportation and the production of munitions. “We have the land,” says the Journal, “it is not too late to get the labor. Why not pool all issues and co-ordinate .them intelligently, and avoid the corn crop catastrophe of 1917, and what was but little short of failure with many other products, through one central administration?” This is a fair example of the advice handed out by the press, both to the government and to the farmers, since the war began. Everybody knows just how to produce all the food necessary—except the man on the land. In most cases the farmer freely admits that he has some doubt about it. He will concede that if weather conditions j are favorable; if money enough to finance farm operations is available, at rates within the reach of the farmer; if labor enough to plant and harvest the crpps can be found; if the railroads ¢cn move the crop after he has produced it; if our marketing or- - ganizations can handle it; and if there be returned to the farmer a proportion of the selling price of farm products sufficient to pay his expenses and fair wages for the work he puts in; if all these things can be done, then there is good-assurance of a crop sufficient to meet the needs of the nation and the allies in. 1918. NEED MONEY FOR MOBILIZATION Let us see what has been done: 1. A price has been fixed on wheat that is fairly satisfactory to the great body of wheat growers throughout the country. g . 2. Some of the states, notably North Dakota, Ohio and Montana, have made fairly good provision for financing the farmers during the coming season. 3. Some states, as Michigan and Ohio, are providing tractors for plow- ing on a large scale. 4. Government control of the rail- roads gives promise of more prompt and efficient movement of crops next fall. ~ In what respects have we failed? In the first place there was the most . pressing need for further financial provision to the farms. - In several im- portant wheat states the money for carrying on the season’s operations was short of the farmers’ needs by about $65,000,000. Representative Baer’s bill providing an emergency loan to the farmers is buried in the United States senate. We blundered at the beginning of our food ' campaign. Money was the a e A % e it st e first necessity. Money in plenty, and at rates with- in the farmers’ reach. Money with which to buy seed, and feed for farm animals; to pay for repairs to-farm equipment; and to pay labor. Suppose enough laborers be found and sent out to the farm- ers—how is a farmer who lost a half or the whole of his crop, as was the case in large areas in Kan- sas, Nebraska, Texas, Colorado, Montana and North Dakota, and who has not been able to borrow money this spring, to pay the wages of these laborers? CAN WE HAVE A WEATHER CONTROLLER? We may very well ask how it is proposed, by co- ordination, so to arrange the weather next fall, that the corn will not be frozen before maturity, or how to determine conditions so that the winter wheat already sown will come through safely and produce a large yield, avoiding the repetition of the tre- mendous losses last year in Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado. These high-sounding proposals are as absurd “MY JOB IS TO KEEP MY HEAD” wood, nothing can beat them. PAGE TWELVE S R TR A TS e R —Drawn expressly for the Leader by W. C. Morris When you hear some silk-hatted, soft-handed gangster having a fit over the' farmers organizing, you don’t get excited, do"you? Men who have lost their tempers are easy to whip. As long as the farmers keep cool and go on sawing from other points of view. “We have the land.” How did the financial journal arrive at that con- clusion? United States census reports show that we have millions of acres of land not in cultivation. Hence, it follows that we have the land. Doubtless that is the way it looks to the great financial expert; but the farmer knows better. The greater part of the millions of acres of land not in cultivation is not available to the farmer, even if he were able to use it. It is held by railroads, banks, trust companies and others who never have been directly interested in the production of food, and who in acquiring the land had not the least in- tention of using it. Instead, they acquired it so that, after the surrounding country had developed, they might sell it to food producers at enormously advanced prices. All that land is eliminated as a present factor in food production. How completely outside all our calculations this land is was well illustrated during the food drive last year, when railway officials mobilized their office forces, plowed up their station lawns and planted them to vegetables, while the companies owned along their lines millions of acres of the best wheat land. Appar- ently it never occurred to them to consider that as a factor in food pro- duction. ; MUST PLAN FOR YEARS AHEAD It does not seem to have occurred to.the Wall street editor—and in this he is not unlike the majority of those who are so ready to advise the farm- ers—that there is such a thing as a necessity for before-hand preparation of the soil. Treatment of soil for growing crops is a science. It takes soil to produce crops, and land is not necessarily soil. It takes more than elbow grease to produce crops. In fact, it requires more brains than muscle, and everybody who has tried it can testify that it takes plenty of muscle. - : Nothing" can be expected from the co-ordination insofar as 1918 pro- duction is concerned. Co-ordination should look to 1919, and 1920, and for 10' years, 20 years or 100 years in the future. WHAT WE HAVE NOW IS AN EMERGENCY, A DANGER- the season is over, develop into a na- tional menace, if not a menace to the future of- the entire world. To say that the world is threatened with imminent starvation is not put- ting it too strongly. Because of a lack of forehandedness a year ago— two years ago—ten years ago, we find ourselves now almost absolutely limit- ed with regard to 1918 production, by - conditions which : ‘s impossible to change. There is - certain acreage A part of that will be eliminated be- cause ‘the farmers have not money enough to buy seed, and feed for their (Continued on page 20) TSR OUS CONDITION, which may, before’ that may be made ready for planting. - A %% . .m_..i’,. +