The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, August 12, 1918, Page 2

ADVERTISEMENTS ~ W o \\\ f?\fl"‘\\ Q\ 3 MR SRS flr,{;,...«\\\\ Wby \\\ \ AN \ \\\\ .\\"\\'. W W \‘\‘-\\.{\:\ \ XN S 5\&\\_\3\_\@“% Saves the grain your separator wastes., Eliminates back-lash, lighter running, superior to all stackers. It puts the grain in . the sack, does not waste it in the stack. Demand the Grain Saving Wind Stacker on the separator which you purchase or hire; costs no more than an ordinary wind stacker. Stacker Made by Threshing Machine Manufacturers in the United States and Canada View looking into grain trap near stacker fan; also auger running from beneath trap for return- (XX THE INDIANA MANUFACTURING COMPANY Indianapolis, Indiana, U. S. A. SHIP GRAIN PRO-RATING We Offer all Shippers our Terminal Commission Service at Minneapolis, $t. Paul and Superior, on a f::?opcmflva Pro-rate Dividend Basis. Not Controlied by big Interests. Secure your pro-rate from us. We are successful, be- ing the only Farmers’ Terminal Agency ever having reached a full dividend and co-olPevl;?tive pro-rate basis. 8hip all your cars to dividend on every oar s d. We have a s| and seoure your pro-rate in July, 19 lus—We are experts. th us you are sure of your pro-rate re are no mistakes or uncertainty. Each $1000.00 Tnvested Earned $600.00 Net Crop 191 But we do not ask for your money, we have plenty, and we can make you money—lots of it, by simply giv- ing us all your shipments, for resalts that are sure, safe and satisfactory. Usual advances made on oon- signments. WeJuy the drafts promptly. No draft ever returned for lack of money, Prompt returns always. LIGENSE ‘We have complied with the State Lawa of Minnesota referring AND BONDED toand ting corporations handling Orain on Commission. in straight or mixed cars, Delivered quotations cheerfully furnished. We e FLOUR AND FEED e e Wi d 10 high grade products. Guaranteed and registered to meet all Fed- eral and State Laws. For saving, satisfaction, profit and thrift, this organization offers you its service. GRAIN GROWERS GRAIN CO., Minneapolis. HotSHERMAN ==ST. PAUL MINNz=s FuLL VALUE Courtesy and Comfort have combined to make the New Sherman the most popular Hotel in St. Paul. More one dollar rooms than any other first class hotel in St. Paul. Cafe and Cafeteria. Angus J. Cameron Fourth and Sibley Streets One block from Union Depot and Nonpartisan League Headqua rters. ) D T I R Y ) 1 [ D ) P 5 I I D s i) OUR advertisement ‘in the Nonpartisan Leader reaches near- ly a million readers. | Rates cheertfully submitted. TR E N Mention the Leader When Writing Advertisers More Than One Way to — — p— Your Farm NE way that is proving a winner is through the development of a mail-order business using Leader Classi- fied Ads as prospect pro- ducers. Write a Classified Ad Now for the Next Issue of the Leader $loo to m unsalflybéumndbymmwho Bor Mosth PRI R sl 3 e job an better positions, such as foremen, superintend- ents, managers, ete:: . . & »PO?{I’!‘I!&)NS S| A "dreds ions 0] or Wi m:r:. ehdechmmqm ;fi: mnb the ell trained rred positions“paying up to $145 per pportunity for advancement. ‘Write for Free Book, stating whether you wish to bg a Tractor Salum.:'. Trmm:- Ga- rage 3 Expert Méchanic, ot €0 go into business for yourum LINCOLN AUTO AND TRACTOR SCHOOL ~ *“Tho School That Toaches You to BOSS the Job** 2418 O Street LINCOLN, NEZB. Cut the price of harness leather in: half. - Ship your hides to be tanned. - SOUTH PARK TANNING CO., South "Park, Minm, & - 0 Hunting Big Biz With a Beanshooter BY DATUS C. SMITH T IS announced that the United States Chamber of Commerce plans to send a commission to some of the western states to investigate on the ground, by giving hearings, I sup- pose, whether there be any such thing as big business oppressing the farm- ers, as the farmers of these states very freely and publicly assert. Now this is very nice of them, but I would respectfully suggest to the gentlemen of the United States Chamber of Commerce, and all .other chambers of commerce, that they are going far afield when they go hunting on the prairies for the interests that prey on those prairies. I can assure them in advance that they will get very little big game on such excursion. I would commend to them in their search for this rare bird, “Big Biz,” that the farmers declare eats the heart out of their crops before they reach the consumer—I would commend to them the words of John Muir. He said: “In this business of the naturalist one need only step outside his door to find something of interest.” But if content with tracks of the bird they may find them a plenty in the farming country of the West: mortgages and ever increasing tenant farms. Though the work of the prof- iteer is mostly out of sight and silent 1 as, say, the protective tariff, those in- vestigators who will may see him ac- tually at work among the farmer’s crops. Let them go to the terminal stock yards early any morning. There they will see big business industriously engaged on the 10,000 to 20,000 head of cattle arriving that day. Will they see any ugly competition among the big packers? Oh, no, nothing so rude. Instead they will see the buyers of the “big five” going about and marking the price to be paid for each small pen-of cattle. Later during the day farmers may be- seen all through the yards yearning for buyers, but they are seldom seen. Their work was done early—and the farmer may accept the price his commission man tells him ‘has been “offered” for his stock, or he may ship them on to Chicago, or to Africa, or back home. The one thing certain is that the “offered price” will not- budge. ¥ The western farmer may tell of a the millers take his wheat at a fixed price and deliver him back mill-feeds at an unfixed price, the millers ad- vancing the price of the latter $6 or $8 a ton, when they found last Novem- ber that corn was too soft to ship, and maintaining that advance for months because- of “existing con- tracts,” contracts to do wrong, con- tracts in violation of the agreement with the food administration to sell .mill-feeds. at a profit of 50 cents a ton, thus extracting from the farmers mil- _lions of unjust ‘dollars. 4 He may tell of the millers of the Minneapolis market alone taking $5,000,000 to- $10,000,000 worth of screenings a year from the farmer’s 1 wheat and grinding them into the mill- “feed for the farmer, marking the bags “mill run of screenings,” and paying the farmer nothing for them. When the farmer protests to the United 1 States wheat corporation in'this matter- lish that, “It is up to the farmers of North Dakota to clean their wheat or clean their fields.” This is not only no answer to a cry. for justice, bub is ~moreover dishonest, . since those giv- ‘ing the advice know very well that neither alternative can be taken—that “for. few more things of this sort—of how - the farmer is told in good terse Eng--- the farmer has as a rule no facilities ' A North Dakota Farmer Sees Through the Dodge of the Chambers of Commerce that no country elevator can in the rush season hold back the wheat to be cleaned, and also that the fields can not be cleaned short of five to 10 years of improved agriculture. For the most part the farmer sim- ply knows that things are not well with him. For one thing he is told that farmers would get on if they would live as they used to; “but now they must all ride in automobiles!” This indictment of the farmer be- cause he has an automobile, generally a Ford, appeals so strongly to them that go in limousines that I must say a word to break the shock that is bound to come to these investigators from the United States Chamber of Commerce when they are told ‘that in single counties of western states farm- ers, farmers alone! own 5,000 cars. In the first place they should ask them- selves why the farmer should not participate in some small measure in the advances of civilization. But apart from that consideration, I should like to tell all chamber of commerce men, and all others interested, that nine-tenths of the farmers’ cars are used nine-tenths of the time strictly in the work of the farm for the sim- ple reason that, for the work they do, they are cheaper than horses. As I have suggested, the processes by which profiteers take toll of the American soil have a thousand rami- fications that operate silently and lit- tle seen. The wealth of Iceland was transferred to Denmark by no smooth- er commercial courses ‘than is- the wealth of the :American soil trans- ferred to American cities. If any one doubts the transfer going on in Amer- ica he need only look about him. But I hear some one say the West is a new country and should not expect to have accumulated wealth. . Then look at any farming district in the East and see farm lands worth less than they were 50 years ago, with sub- stantially no wealth remaining there besides the bgre land and the build- ings, the wealth of the large cities of the East increasing a thousand fold in the meantime, . Where the Farmer’s Money Goes The following figures show some of the enormous advances in prices of the things farmers buy, since the war began: Article 1914 price 1917 price Overalls, per pair...$ .99 $1.54 Shoes, per pair..... 2.30 3.70 Rain coats .....7... 4.40 6.80 . Flannel shirts ..... 1.41 2.85 Barbed wire ....... 3.08 5.40 Buggies ...........70.10 94.00 Coali 5 il des S 5.80 8.20 These figures are from a report of the department of agriculture, which represents that, notwithstanding these heavy advances, the farmer gets more ' ° now for what he grows than he did in 1914. But.the report is in some re- spects misleading. . For example, it includes stoves in the list’ of things bought, though a farmer does not buy more than one stove in several years, and omits labor, which he must hire every year. And what is more im- portant _still, the farmer’s ‘earnings were not on a par with the profits in . the big, organized industries, nor even with- the wages of organized laborers, in 1914. The farmer had to be put in ‘a better position than he was in 1914, in order that the nation and its allies ' Livestock must be the permanent rofitable cultivation of