The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, May 27, 1918, Page 10

e S e o built and seats arranged for the big crowd, fully 2,600 people, farmers and their wives, from this and other communities. The country is rather thickly settled, a good farm on each 80 or 160 acres, and there are no towns of any size in the county. Minnesota is a state of closely settled farms and very small towns. The candidate indors- ed by the League for the legislature made a few remarks. He is a Nor- wegian farmer, evidently a man in highest esteem in the county. Mr. Johnson then gave a strong speech from a sturdy and experienced - man. He is a successful farmer and a most use- ful member of the sen- ate, which, by the way, has but 11 farmers out of a membership of 67, though the state is al- most entirely agricul- tural. Mr. Townley, national president, spoke for an hour and a half, was list- ened to most closely by the big crowd and ap- plauded as he drove home the points that the farm- ers are fighting for. The sheriff was on the plat- form, and neither he nor anybody found any seditious or disloyal words. These two meetings, with fully 3,000 of the farm population of the communities present, held in two widely separated communities, with Ger- man and Secandinavian blood predominating, and with the speakers not only organizers of the Nonpartisan league, but the president himself, gave me a pretty clear idea as to whether or not Judge McGee and his supporters are cor- rect in the wanton con- demnation of the farmers of Minnesota as se- ditious traitors. THE RECORD OF PATRIOTS I went to the records of the states in which the League is strongest, to see if they are aiding in winning the war. This, too, after I had seen tens of thousands of acres of winter wheat, the biggest acreage ever sown in Minnesota, and farmers working throughout the long northern days more hours than ever before, and with less help than ever before. This is true also of the Dakotas and every one of those northern wheat states. But what have they done in the Liberty loan issues, these men publicly accused of not only be- ing slackers but of being even helpers of Germany? North Dakota is completely in the hands of the League, so far as state officers go, and the lower house and a great part of the upper house, and. has been for two years. It will remain so, for no man can be found to run against the League can- didates who is admitted by the opposition to the League to stand a ghost of a show. In the third Liberty loan, North Dakota, with an allotment of $6,500,000, oversubsctibed its quota the first day of the drive, and by the end of the period had practically doubled its quota. Many of the counties went as high as 250 or 300 per cent. This also in the face of the fact that last year North Dakota had a disastrous drouth, the year before rust in her wheat and was in such condition in great part as the drouth-stricken parts of Texas. The ninth federal reserve district, which includes the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana and parts of Wis- consin and Michigan, all agricultural territory, and the stronghold League states, though last to start the last Liberty loan, was the first to oversubscribe. No: basis, therefore, am I able to find for the accusations of disloyalty made by these state of- ficials, and the petty charges in the local courts in z:m:»:N.:Wz'wr.-:rn:;rmmW.Warm-r-um-.-wmu—:uz—mW&?flmfifi:fi‘;F‘::‘a".:i;—l‘fEfiXfM??W}&?fl%mé%m{%m%wfl" s No industry has pleased Uncle Sam so much as has agriculture. down on their job, coal operators have slacked and the railroad c Wilson had to take them over, from the common people. e i e 8 e e A i 1 A A KT RSN o> — D TAT s VU A QN D PO et Ao, i T BIGGEST WHept CROP —Drawn expressly for the Leader by W. C. Morris While airplane manufacturers have fallen orporations broken down so that President the farmer has plugged away. With favorable rains, the farms of America will feed the allied world. Minnesota. I am compelled to conclude that the reasons must be the same as those in Texas. But let us take up the evidence from another source. Long since the federal department of justice made a full investigation of the aims, prin- ciples, policies and methods of the League, with full authority to take any action necessary if it is. in any way a menace to our successful prosecution of the war. } Hundreds of complaints have been filed against the organizers of the League during the last few months in various parts of Minnesota, and in some other states. These before federal authorities, too, but with the evidence and the facts at hand, and the federal authorities certainly have investigated thoroughly, not a single prosecution has been made, and the only case brought up led to a speedy dis- missal by the federal prosecuting attorney. If any one of the many publications of the League were disloyal .or dangerous it is fair to presume that the postmaster general would have excluded them from the mails. THE MAN TOWNLEY A great movement of reform must always spring Its expression must, therefore, be through some man of the common people. - In this movement of farmers the leader is a farmer, just an ordinary North Dakota grower of wheat and flax, two staple crops. Until four years ago he was wrestling with the marketing and credit systems and bucking the weather, try- ing to make a living on his farm. The combination . of the three, a dry year, broke him. ' Nor is it the first time this combination has taken ‘every dollar .a_hardworking farmer had. Townley set to work to see that the number who should thus suffer in the future should be lessened. The weather- could not b: overcome, but the farmers themselves;, when in the majority 'in a PAGE TEN S x //; e A % f HERE YARE UNCLE sam! To HELP wiN great state, and organ- ized so that their inter- ests ‘are protected and they. are not exploited, could go far toward remedying marketing and credit matters. - With these in good shape the farmer is perfectly will- -~ ing to-take his chances “an with the elements. ANy A plain, unassuming, O 2 :* really modest man, seek- gl ing nothing for himself,. apparently:- without any sort of “personal ambi- tion, political or financial, save a comfortable liv- ing for himself and his . family, something every man wants and every man who works intelli- gently is entitled to, yet with every opportunity these last two or three years for political and financial preferment, he has the unbounded con- fidence of the people of his own state and of dozens of other states today. I rather think that this characteristic of the man explains much of the hostility to him on the part of those who hate him so cordially. They are never able to under- stand, and not under- standing to forgive a man for being unselfish’ in his work because their only measure of things is personal ambition or fortune. ; THE METHOD IS SCIENTIFIC But the farmers and laborers of the cities do understand and appreci- ate and follow such a man. Indeed, the war, with all its attendant sacrifice and suffering, is taking us all out of our- selves and making us see that the greater things of life are not merely meat and raiment but the things of the spirit. Mr. Townley has no delusions about the method whereby the ends sought must be attained. The - farmers must organize, not secretly, for there is nothing 'of which they need be ashamed. They must act through the dominant political party, for the formation of another party would quickly land them upon the rocks of discord; they must be in- dependent of any interests save their own in finan- cial matters connected with their organization and campaigns; they: must concern themselves with state executive and judicial and state and national legislative officers, for these are the ones who have to do with the matters that determine the pros- perity of the farmers. Personal preferences for minor offices must not be allowed to come in. So the organization was built along these lines, captured North Dakota, with what results we have shown, and is now rapidly extending to a dozen other states, among them Texas. =~ A The movement, with its primary platform a bet- ter system'of grading and marketing wheat, nat- urally ran counter to the.interests of the big grain exchanges, the boards of trade at ‘Minneapolis and other points where the prices and grades of grain ‘had been fixed and the farmer had nothing to do but accept what was given him. Such move- ments may always expect opposition. In Texas it must expect the opposition of the cotton interests who have so long preyed upon the cotton grower, and along with the cotton interests the time mer- chant and the usurious banker, whose name, we are sorry to say, is legion. ne A BIBLICAL ; INSTANCE : . In Minnesota this opposition had a ready friend in the person of the governor, for he was selected and elected by the big business interests of the ; state. It is natural that he should be expected to repay the interests that elected him when called \ ' b} -~ i N T - ] ~ > 3 | | cm-’»&';, 1 i N R VR Y > J;r;cggmgwrnw i G R ‘