The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, September 16, 1918, Page 6

= : . drunk with-a primary Tlonpartiin Teader Entered as second-class matter September 8, 1915, at th toffice at St. Paul, Minnesota, under the Act of March 8, 1879. S 4 SRS OLIVER 8. MORRIS, Editor - PAUL GREER, Associate Editor B. 0. FOSS, Art Editor Advertising rates on application. Subscription, one year, -in advance, $2.50; six months, $1.50. Please do not make checks, drafts mor money orders payable to indi- Address all letters and make all remittances to. The Nonpartisan - Leader, Box 576, St. Paul, Minn. . * MEMBER OF AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS THE S. C, BECKWITH SPECIAL AGENCY, Advertisi Re tatives, N York, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City. et e g T i Quack, fraudulent and irresponsible firms are not knowingly advertised, and we will take it as a favor if any readers will advise us promptly should they have occasion to doubt or question the reliability of any firm which patronizes our advertising columns. EDITORIALS A REIGN OF TERROR AND ITS AFTERMATH THE expected result of the reign of terror which character- ized the recent primary election in Minnesota is now rap- idly developing. It is a reaction that promises to sweep out . of office the political gang in power, headed by the governor, which permitted it and in whose political interests it was -staged. Law and order is now the chief issue in Minnesota and will remain so until the votes are counted. - The Minnesota big interest press, hitherto silent on the riot- ing and disorder in the state, has been forced into taking a position against mob outrages, in the fear that further disorders will invite federal intervention and at one sweep destroy all the chances of success of Governor Burnquist and his henchmen. The president’s proclamation demanding the enforcement of law and order has had a widespread effect on the people of the state. It is realized that the president had Minnesota particularly in mind-whén he wrote his splendid appeal to the people and governors of states. But one of the chief signs of this reaction against disgraceful and intolerable conditions is the indorsement for governor of Min- nesota of a well-known and substantial citizen who was himself a victim of the Minnesota reign of terror. David Evans of Tracy, leader in Lyon county war work, farmer and hardware merchant, who has been placed in the field against the two old party candi- dates as the candidate for governor of organized labor and organ- ized farmers, had his store painted yellow and inscribed with in- sulting words by midnight cowards during the primary campaign. Mr. Evans is a Democrat in politics and in the primary sup- ported Comstock, the progressive Democratic candidate for the party nomination, who was beaten by Wheaton, the reactionary and Boss Lynch man. However, Mr. Evans attended, as a spec- tator, a Nonpartisan league meeting during the primary. A 40- year residence at Tracy has given him a wide acquaintance among the League farmers of his county, and when he was seen in the audience he was asked and consented to address the meeting.-The next morning he found his store was plastered with yellow paint. At another time during the primary campaign he invited to his farm 4,000 farmers who came to Tracy for a political meeting in the interest of League candidates, but who were driven out of town ‘by Burnquist supporters, who forbade their meeting. The farmers met a few miles from town on Mr. Evans’ farm and he presided at the meeting. As chairman he defied the sheriff and defense coun- cil representatives to stop the meeting, or arrest- any one without % ~warrants. The meeting was held unmolested. Mr. Evans was not only the unanimous choice of the Nonpar- - tisan league convention to oppose Governor Burnquist and the re- actionary Democratic candidate this fall. . He was indorsed by a ~regularly elected delegate convention of organized labor; repre- senting every union in the state federated with the American Fed- Jeration of Labor, and including delegates from all the railroad brotherhoods. His election is assured in November, on a platform including the demands of the organized farmers and the labor unions and containing a plank promising to enforce the law, to. guarantee citizens their right of peaceful assembly and to vigor- ously prosecute mobbists. : Sy With all these signs of an aroused people, Governor Burnquist, victory obtained through suppression of meetings of his opponent and tar and feather parties, slumbers on —but he slumbers over dynamite. - In a statement. the governor recently caused to be issued he admits for the first time that there |has been disorder in Minnesota, but he adds that there have been no killings! His explanation of the reign of terror is that “wide- awake” citizens have had their self-control “challenged” and that ‘mobbings have not been “grave.” This statement, ‘In’itself a veiled incitement to further violencg, has astonished even the governor’ st prejudiced supporters, @ was the | to seal his doom.'_ E HE recent brief request of the Leader that its readers re- port to the editor the names of publications so far debased as to use against the League the ravings of a discredited, self-seeking renegade like Maxwell, who was purchased for a price - to write articles against the organized farmers, after accepting their money as a League speaker, has brought us hundreds of re- plies from all parts of the country. A To the list of newspapers which have published Maxwell’s stuff we can now add the Helena (Mont.) Record. We can also add to the list the Washington Farmer and the Idaho Farmer, two so- called farm papers published at Spokane, Wash., by W. H. Cowles, owner of the Spokesman-Review and Chronicle. / “farm” papers have not used the articles in full, they have quoted freely from them in an effort to damage the League. : Many of our readers mistook our request and sent us the names of all‘papers they saw which favorably mentioned the Maxwell ar-: ticles, whether they published them in full or not. We primarily desired the names of papers which used the stuff in full, as such papers had to pay for it, the articles being copyrighted. However, we are glad to get the list of some hundred or so papers which have merely.favorably mentioned Maxwell. We will index the list % and keep it for reference. ; We got some 20 letters in regard to the use of the articles by the Cowles “farm” papers. Farmers seem to have Mr. Cowles sized: up pretty well. Many mention the fact that he tried to wreck the Washington state Grange through an unprincipled attack on C. B. Kegley, former master, now deceased, and that he “excused” and defended the outrage against the Washington Grange at Walla Walla, where their state convention was kicked out by a mob. -C. B. Foote, proprietor of Cabinet farm, Colburn, Idaho, gives perhaps the best interpretation of Millionaire Cowles and his various publi- cations. He says: ; : : Mr. Cowles is a publisher for the money there is in the business and a personal sentiment is never allowed to conflict with this prin- ciple, either by himself or an employe. ! Mr. Foote explains how Cowles’ advice to the farmers worked out in one case, and while the account is interesting it is too long to quote. Cowles is long on telling the farmers what is best for them, but he never turned a sod or milked a cow in his life. . ORIGIN OF ONE HOAX DISCOVERED 3 HE origin of the newspaper hoax to the effect that the Non- partisan league is for state ownership of farms is revealed. : The Mississippi Valley Lumberman, a big business trade Journal, at the end of a long tirade against the organized farmers says: “If the worst comes to worst, we will give the League farm- ers a dose of their own socialism. We will force -state ownership or . control of farms on them.” This is from the August 16 issue of the Lumberman, published at Minneapolis. The farmers’ enemies and not the farmers’ League want state ownership of farms, and so they thought it would be clever to make it appear that the League wants it, knowing that unless the League does want it there:is no chance to put it over on the rubes. - . UNION LABOR AND BOUCK’S ARREST : Wash., have demanded the removal of Clarence L. Reames, assistant United States attorney general assigned to work on the Pacific coast, following the arrest, through Mr. Reames’ ac- tivities, of William Bouck, master of the Washington state Grange. Organized labor in Seattle is in a position to force the point. The shipbuilding activities there have taken on gigantic proportions and the industry is solidly organized. - The union men of -Seattie publish a daily newspaper and in few other cities do the working- men have as wide an influence. o : s The complaint of the workingmen is that Prosecutor Réaines, THE central labor council and other labor bodies of Seattle, to make a record, has sought to convict of disloyalty progressive men whose only offense has been to differ with the big interestson = economic questions growing out of the war, and has sought to pun- ish severely “ignorant workmen who let their mouths" slip -occa- sionally” and who “need education on America’s war aims rather.» than long terms in the penitentiary.” If supported by the facts, the charges against Reames éfidfild jghc be pushed. This is not the time for fanatical and overzealous prosecutors to create uneasiness and lack of confidence in: the gov- ernment on the part of the working people by prosecutions which are really persecutions. Sedition laws are two-edged. ' Their only Justification is to catch spies and stamp out real German propa- - ganda, and prevent actual interference with military ‘operations or: industrial work necessary to win the war. When they are usedito . ‘persecute farmers or workingmen or discredit. progressive men or measures for rg)olitical reasons they have a dangerous effect—the effect of destroying confidence in the government. - HIS week’s cover will interest both our old and new su scribers. Some 15,000 or 16,000 of our present subscri A received the first issue of the Nonpartisan Leader three Thy I immedia . ; cel"fi that . OUR READERS ACTIVE While Cowles’ . HAVE ANOTHER BIRTHDAY