The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, July 15, 1918, Page 15

" through the common schools, but also - Reading the 0 LETTER that ever appeared in the Nonpartisan Leader has: arous- ed as much com- ment a3s has a communication from Percy Sloane of Cleveland, Ohio, whxch was printed in the issue of June 10, page 14. This letter was at once an insult and a warning to every dem- ocratically minded man and woman. It -was printed as received,-because it unconsciously gave away so com- pletely the point of view of the re- actionaries. Some of the answers to this letter are printed herewith. If any one missed reading the original commu- nication, its nature will be made plain by the discussion of our - readers. Here is-what J. K. Golden of Coal Harbor, N. D., wrote: “How many farmers read in our Nonpartisan Leader a little hot air written by a Percy Sloane? You would think by his talk that he owned the world and all that’s in it. But he doesn’t—there are millions of people that never heard of Mr. Sloane. FOOLISH TO ADMIT HIS VIEWS “He says: ‘We, the upper class.’ By that I would judge he must feel his oats. Why shouldn’t he? We raised the oats and know them to be No. 1 good feed. He says also: ‘We have the press, and the money.’ Here's another of his statements: ‘My children have not only gone college, and then have been placed " under specialists so that their minds toeracy! s answer “‘and a college man, with just as much education and may be so sharpened that we may be sable to maintain our aristocracy.’ - “Think that over, ye tillers of the soil. Aris- Thank God we hayseeds are not living for aristocracy, but democracy, that pure, clean democracy that’s ours if we stick, and we’ll stick! He says also that the average member of the League did not pass the eighth grade. That'is partly true, due to the fact that 90 per cent of the children of laborers and farmers are forced to work from 6 o’clock in the morning till 9 o’clock at night-to educate and sharpen the minds of the aristocrats. “He says also: ‘We (the.aristocrats) are going to launch a red-hot (he meant hot air) tariff cam- paign again this year, and this, I feel sure, will: be all the politics your farmer friends will need. Furthermore,” he says, ‘you are the men with the hoe and we are the people with the intellect and brains.. We rule the world, and ever will.” We may not know as much as Mr. Sloane’s family, but we do know that the highér one is up, the harder he falls.. And if the correspondent had the brains the Lord gave an opossum, he would never make such statements to thé public. He must be a high society man and couldn’t ‘bend his neck to look down upon one of us- poor sodbusters for fear of disgracing his aristocracy.” THE LEAGUE WILL TEACH HIM BETTER "A South Dakotan, Hugh Mears, was the first to r. Sloane’s insults, Mr. Mears is a farmer a lot more fine democracy than Sloane and his whole family put together. ~Here is the letter of Mr.: Mears:. 5 S ; “Mr. Percy L. Sloane, : “Cleveland, Ohio. -~ = ~ “You are somewhat more bold than the average' ¢ scum of the upper class, or more lgnorant——-l don’t know which. But nevertheless, I will give you _credxt for expressmg your attitude toward the In ThlS Battle You Are Either With for their own protection. “Baneroft, S. D. ot Didn’t Have to Work - If, as Mr. Sloane intimated in his letter, some young men and women attend- ing colleges and universities are doing so with the purpose of learning to exploit the farmers and the working class and enjoy special privileges, it is all ‘the stronger argument that the real supporters of the nation who sweat and toil and acquire skill in the useful labor of the world, should be organized prise of producing the world’s bread. commonwealth.. Your letter has a tone of a very ~ feeble. mind. Why, you haven’t the least idea of what the National (get that) Nonpartisan league is or what its aims are. You speak as if we were a bunch of school children and were trying to do something entirely too big, that only great and professional. men. knew about and could do; and you feel that we are so ignorant and brainless that we can not learn, and that we don’t know right from wrong. You also speak of us as the strong- backed, weak-minded sort; and business, of course, we are not supposed to have any or know anything all;out it; and farming, there is no business to that life. “But just wait; we will show there is business in our life. We are just to work and nigger. for you and the rest of you big business heads that are so smart and intelligent. By the way, this is about the first time I ever read where big business ~.came right out and told us fellows just how it . looked at things. You write like some fellow that has just inherited a big lump of gold and was about ready to buy up the east side of the United States and start a kingdom of your own. In all your schoolmg and being among such choice socxety it *-is a wonder you did not learn that a man is a man, and one man has as much right as another. “I do not claim to be highly educated, although I did put-in four years at college, in which time 1 - learned-something -of ‘human nature as-well as re-"- spect for mankind:* So when some self-pronounced learned being with -such a super-intellect writes " out here and insults us fellows because we are farmers, why we can not: help but answer the haughtiness. . Let me add that we are hoping your, highly educated children will show ‘more broad- -mindedness than their father. X e « “HUGH MEARS.” THUS SPEAK THE - WOMEN OF THE LEAGUE . Letters from two Oklahoma farmwives who were thoroughly aroused by the sllghtmg -references to . W1th the N¢ onpartlsan League. The university graduate with all his degrees is no ‘more worthy an object than the driver of this mule team; and many an edu- “cated middleman and politician is doing less for his community than the sun- burned young fellow whose feet dangle into this plcture, and who herds these 32 animals across the sweltering fields in the great enter- ct to Percy Sloane What Farm Men and Women Write of a Man Who Claimed He Was Wiser “Than Common Folk Because He democracy made by Mr. Sloane, came in the same mail. Here they are: “Seiling, Okla. “Editor Nonpartisan Leader: “We are sending our boys overseas to fight down the very autocracy so insolently ' expressed by Mr. Sloane. Every patriotic mother should protest against such principles. We people of the hoe are not so blind as Mr. Sloane evidently thinks we are. We, whom he calls ignorant workers, are trying to support the government in this great struggle for democracy, and have no patience with such dis- loyalty, and Mr. Sloane ought to be put where he would be of some use instead of insulting the mothers whose sons are fighting his battle, too. I am expressing the spirit of the people of this vicinity. “MRS. A. BURCHETT.” “Seiling, Okla. “Editor Nonpartisan Leader: “In your issue of June 10, Percy Sloane favors us ‘workers with a let- ter which in my estimation is a di- rect insult to our president, our sol- dier boys and us mothers. Surely I am not mistaken in the object of America’s participation in this world war—democracy. I, a mother whose precious only son will enlist imme- diately when harvest is over, denounce such bigotry and accuse Mr. Sloane of opposing our war aims. I suggest in the names of our president and our boys that the wealth Mr. Sloane has acquired by his ‘sharpened mind’ be confiscated to carry on our war and that he be conscripted as a soldier of the furrows and taught that highly commendable art, how to use the hoe. Intensely ‘sharpened’ as I grant his mind may be, I believe he will admit it wasn’t so sharp but that it couldn’t be sharpened a little sharper. “Mothers of America! While we are sending our heart’s blood to win democracy over there, let us not build up an autoeracy here. Democracy’s champion is the Nonpartisan league. “MRS. G. E. E. BECK.” SHE SAYS HE IS LAUGHABLE Another woman, a North Dakotan, laid aside her work long enough to reply. She wrote: “Coal Harbor, N. D. “Editor Nonpartisan Leader: “I read with delight the letter written by Percy Sloane of Cleveland, Ohio, and suggest that any- thing so humorous as Mr. Sloane’s letter be in- serted in its proper place, on the funny page. It was neither insults nor sympathy, Mr. Editor, but just plain twaddle, and afforded the readers of our paper a great deal of amusement. “So Percy thinks we do not- realize the size of the undertaking, eh? Wait till the votes are counted after the November election and we will have accomplished one of the things we set out to do in North Dakota, having government by the many instead of by the few. And what we did in North Dakota can be done in every state m the Union. “Rather a hot slam Percy handed the bankers and professors. . ‘They are only tools of the upper class,’: according.-to- Percy. Nevertheless, we haye ‘d few honest bankers and professors, a few people who are working for the benefit of the People in the rural. communities, men like N. -C. Macdonald, our state superintendent of public instruction, forv instance; “Is ‘Percy an aristocra’t, or. only a hanger-on? “Even washerwomen work into the wee small hours of ‘the night to send their sons through col- lege, not that I think Percy would bend his back over a washtub to help educate his echildren, but he might run around to the back doors and collect the fee after his wife did the washing. “MRS FRED HESSELGRAVE" the Prof1teers or ——meoln (‘Ieb) Herald. | | g