The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, August 5, 1918, Page 10

" What Kind of Town Do Farmers lee BY A. B. GILBERT —HE old days when the town bossed the surrounding country are gone. Nothing is more certain than that. Some towns- people may look upon what is passed as the golden age, but it is passed none the less. And post mortem attempts to pre- serve old methods only hinder those readjustments needed to enable farmer and town business man and professional man to work together satisfactorily in the new order. Among the causes of the new order of things two are of special importance: the automobile and the organizing of the farmers. The first, by giving the farmer a new and far better means of trans- portation, has made him independent of any town. In the old days small trading centers sprang up five to eight miles apart because the farmer with only a slow team and poor roads could travel only two to four miles to a market. He was dependent on the town within this radius. Now 15 to 20 miles is a short distance for the farmer, and towns 40 to 100 miles away are frequently visited by the farmer and his family. Probably half of our very small rural towns will have to disappear in time. Many of them are fast disappearing now because the old reason for their existence (the farmer’s need for a market he could reach with a horse) has passed away, What does this mean? will choose what towns are to grow and what towns are to fall out, and that they will choose those . towns in which the business men serve them best. ' THE TOWN THE . FARMERS WILL CHOOSE Such being the case, it is all important for the . business men and others in the small town to . study carefully the kind of a town the farmers | want. They can not expect the farmers to come i in and tell them as a rule what is wrong with ! their town; rather when the town is not right, i there will be the silent protest of farmers slip- ! ping over to the next town for trade and of the 7 mail order goods going through the freight and ¢ express offices. . for a few months, the farmer develops a habit of . going to the other town and sending away for ' some of his goods and he is lost to the first town | forever. If the silent protest is continued What kind of a town does the farmer want? | First of all, he wants a friendly town. Not the ' kind of friendliness which is limited to saying “hello” and inquiring about the stock, but.a gen- uine friendliness which would be expressed in standing with the farmer rather than against him in his fight against the great special interests. He wants a town of attractive buildings and streets and with facilities that will enable him to do all his business there quickly and pleasantly. places of good, wholesome recreation, because he " and his family go to the town as much- for recrea- tion as for trade. He wants gemune retail service with as good a combination of price and quality as he can find anywhere else. He wants a well- : balanced retail town in which there are good stores . in- all lines so that he can buy all he needs there; thus a good dry goods store helps the hardware - and grocery stores. -All' together the retailers Nothing less than that the farmers. He wants Merchants Who Are Both Friendly and Efficient Are the First Requisite — Must Have Good Streets and Wholesome Recreation: should be able to furnish efficiently the complete farm needs. The farmer would like to see the retailer doing something constructive to get goods to the con- sumer more cheaply rather than simply being con- tent to pass on the outrageous prices levied by the middlemen above him in the marketing system. Among retailers there should be more of the spirit expressed by E. A. Filene, head of a great depart- ment store in Boston, Mass. He is a pioneer in new methods. Testifying before a congressional committee recently, he said: “I am constantly afraid I shall die disgraced. We are dealing in a business where the average thing doubles in price frqm the producer to the consumer, and this is disgraceful. That is the disgrace I had in mind; the average thing we handle doubles in price. Of course, when that is really understood, it is going to be remedied; and IF WE IN THE RETAIL DISTRIBUTION BUSINESS DO NOT REMEDY IT, WE WILL BE ELIMINATED, AND THE DISTRIBUTION WILL COME FROM THE PRO- DUCER DIRECT TO THE CONSUMER with the aid of the parcel post or something of that kind.” That the retailer himself may not be making a big profit, does not excuse him from doing things. He must, with other retailers, work out methods of getting goods to the consumer more efficiently by getting lower prices for himself and larger turn- overs of his stoek, or, as Mr. Filene says, “We will be eliminated.” LETTING BIG BUSINESS e T USE THE TOWN The worst possible blunder the small town can make is to allow itself to be used by big business in the fight to keep the farmer-in subjection. In such cases big business uses the town as a handy club, and when the town begins to feel the effect of the silent protest of the farmers, big business does nothing to help it. Big business has no use for a broken stick. The shopkeepers standing at their doors see the farmers go through to the next town and soon grow hungry trading among themselves; the black- smiths, barbers, movies, professional men, go to the next town where the farmers are tradmg, and the real estate owmers find their deeds coming very near to bemg' “seraps of paper.” Moreover, if all the towns in a certain section were to follow a few subsidized leaders in the fight against the farmers, the farmers can build their own town. It has been done, and what has been done can be duplicated. The farmers have the automobile and they are or- ganized in the Northwest. Many small towns of North Dakota, for instance, have for years allowed themselves to be used against the farmer by the grain combine and other special interests which the farmers were trying to ° fight. Their papers lied about what the farmers were trying to do and the farmers’ leaders; when the farmers got co-operative elevators started, the small-town bankers and others tried to wreck them; the leaders of the small towns maneuvered to get men to the legislature and in state office hostile to the farmers’ program and to- protect every means of dirty, contemptible exploitation of the farmer. This fight for big business, begun long before the Nonpartisan league entered the field and continued with special bitterness thereafter, has given the farmers there a distrust of the town business men which probably can never be removed. THE DISLOYALTY CAMOUFLAGE The farmers now have their co-operatlve ele- vators, their co-operative creameries, their co-oper- "atlve livestock associations, and they and the work- ing people‘&,have ‘captured the state government there, They hVe done all this in spite of the bitter ‘opposition’ of the towns and”yet they did nothing that was ‘anything but beneficial to the bulk of the business men of the towns. The co-operative ele- vator brought in even more general business than . the old line elevator; ‘yet the town business men lined up in favor of the grain combine. State hail insurance would have better-protected the loans to the farmers and ngen the farmers more to spendi Main street, Milaca, Minn., on a busy day is lined with vehicles of trading: farmers—not townspeople. Milaca is a bustling little town that has sense enough to treat the farmers white. Fay Cravens, editor of the Milaca Times, is the League candidate for the senate from his county. Perhaps the truth as he presents it in his paper has something to do with the attitude of the merchants. in this column and the one on the left show the cars and wagons of farmers who have come into town to trade. in the town; yet the town business men fought it. And so the story runs through the whole program of the organized farmer’s efforts to better his con- dition—a bitter, stupid opposition which has gained the small business men no support and at the same time alienated the farmers. The attack on the program of the organized farmers and on the leaders of the organized farm- ers under the guise of loyalty has not deceived many farmers, and as the truth of the situation becomes better known, those towns which have, been guilty of it will experience a strong. reaction by the farmers which wiser men would have avoided by merely being decent. Think of the absolute gall and contempt of the farmers shown in most of these cases, especially in Minnesota. The kept ‘press shouts that the farmers’ organization .is -disloyal, the insurance agent with orders direct from Phila- delphia says so, the local politician says so be- cause farmer organization threatens his power, the banker, also with orders from higher up, perhaps agrees with them, the local usurer agrees, the traveling salesmen .scatter as much poison as pos- sible; and these few special interest people can work town business men up to a point where they are willing to deny farmers a hall to meet in, to . insult the speakers whom the farmers wish to hear, and even to do violence to the farmers themselves. IN THE MIDST OF CHANGING CONDITIONS Think of the unwarranted paternalism small-town : business men attempt to assume when they take it upon themselves to decide who are fit persons for farmers to listen to, as if the farmers were a lot of sheep under their special care and as if they had wisdom and patriotism beyond that which farmers possess. Take the noisiest shouter about the disloyalty of the Nonpartisan league, for instance, the county attorney of Martin county, Minn. Many towns foolishly acted on the venomous and baseless re- ports he issued, to interfere with farmers’ meet- ings. President Townley was arrested by his or- ders. The farmers’ taxes in Martin county paid the expense of the county attorney’s activity and the farmers’ $16 had to pay for the defense: of their officers. Now the supreme court of the state “has decided that all the county attorney’s prosecu- ~tion and frothings amount to nothing. _ The towns which listened to ‘this political mountebank must -~expect to feel the just protest of the farmers. At a time when the federal government has about 150,000 detectives and special agents out hunting dlsloyalty and at a time when the state of Min- nesota had many more on the same duty, and all = this force could find’ nothing disloyal i in the" League R meetmo‘s, some small towns fought the farmers. : h The picture