The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, November 4, 1918, Page 6

Tonpartisin Teader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League—Every Week Entered as second-class matter September 3, 1915, at the postoffice at St. Paul, Minnesota, under the Act of March 8, 1879. - ) OLIVER 8. MORRIS, Editor A. ‘B. GILBERT, Associate Editor B. 0. FO8S, Art Editor Advertising rates on application. Subscription, one year, in_ advance, $2.50; six months, $1.50. Please do not make checks, drafts nor money orders payable to indi- viduals. Address all letters and wmake all remittances to The Nonpartisan Leader, Box 576, St. Paul, Minn, ’ MEMBER OF AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS THE S. C. BECKWITH SPECIAL AGENCY, Advertising Representatives, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City. Quack, fraudulent and irresponsible firms are not i{nowingly advertised, and we will it as a favor if any readers will advise us promptly should they have occasion to or question the reliability of any firm which patronizes our advertising columns. o - “THE COMPANY’S” GAME IN BUTTE 4 l VHE miners of Butte charge openly and without reserve that take doubt the Anaconda company, in its game of discrediting unions and breaking up organizations of miners, employs spies to worm into the unions and to advise violent courses. They say that is a regular department of activity of the company. In the issue of October 21 we printed a letter in which B. K. Wheeler, at that time federal district attoimey in Butte, charged the Butte general manager of the company with doing that very thing. “One of these paid agents of the Anaconda Copper Mining company addressed the miners in open meeting on September 22 at Hebgen park and he made the most violent speech at the meet- ing; this paid agent urged at this massmeeting that the men stand by the I. W. W. and not go back to work. * * * » This is an extract from Mr. Wheeler’s letter to Dan Kelly, the copper company pooh-bah in Butte. - Mr. Wheeler’s insolence has since been rebuked and he has resigned as federal attorney. You can’t tell the truth about the company in Butte and hold your job. . At the instance of a federal mediator the miners of Butte, who went out on a strike called by someone as yet unknown, have gone back to work. And the company has been up to .its old tricks again. The Butte Daily Bulletin, the one newspaper in the Mon- tana metropolis which dares to fight the company, prints the fol- lowing warning: ; STRIKE TALK IS BUNK! Once again, on the streets, in the saloons, in the different places where the miners congregate, the question is being asked: “What - about the strike?” No one seems to know where the rumor comes from, nor does any one know of any effort being made to call a -strike. The miners are awaiting the decision of the war labor board, but rumor says that tomorrow there is to be a walkout. k T Where do these rumors start and what is the object in trying to get men to leave their employment in the mines? X ; 3 .Neither the Industrial Workers of the World nor the Independent Metal Mine Workers’ union have any knowledge of the source of these rumors. Neither union has taken any action in the matter, neither union is in favor of a strike at this time. It is the same old game that the Bulletin has exposed before. : Every company steol is busily engaged in spreading the rumor of a strike, and for what purpose? ; 3 To further disorganize the miners, to disgust them with all forms of organization. Also the miners have made.out a ‘strong ‘case be- fore the war labor board, the matter is in their hands and a strike before the decision is réndered would prejudice the miners’ cause. If the little game works again no doubt we shall hear the union miners again denounced as traitors and another appeal made by “patriotic” newspapers to have conscription of labor in the Butte mines. ; e : : _ “NEAR TREACHERY” AND A NEAR TRAITOR : ; HE colonel has bieen pretty busy lately meeting ‘“the boys from Duluth,” gpeaking at “patriotic” celebrations “engi- neered by the Republicans,” and in megaphoning “data’” about the Nonpartisan league handed to him by the political agent of a corporation. g ' g o e g One would think thét these activities, besides the mental strain of indorsing for governor in Minnesota a man whose: administration stinks to high heaven, would be about enough to keep him busy. " But he is a man of jndomitable voice and busy tongue. He has - found in the interim fug—'t seek to undermine the confidence of,the-:-people of th her time to attack the government and to ie nation in the man whom all the western allies look to as their spokesman, the president of the United States. el In the New York Times of October 14 he refers to President Wilson’s statement of American purposes in the war as “much worse than any of the things of secret diplomacy, becaus;g it be- comes dangerously near to being treacherous diplomacy. The colonel, in other words, “becomes dangerously near” to calling President Wilson a traitor, an act which in the case of any ordinary I. W. W. would merit his being sent to Leavenworth, at least for the duration of the war. ; 2 1 Regarding the democratic aims which President Wilson has outlined, those aims which have accomplished a reorganization and consolidation of the morale of our allies, which was a necessary part of their military unification; those aims which have heal_'tened the American people to put all their strength into this war in the faith and determination that it shall be the last of wars, this perennial demagogue is quoted as follows in the Times: Moreover, I most earnestly hope that the senate of the United States and all other persons competent to speak for the American people, will emphatically repudiate the so-called 14 points and the various similar utterances of the president. These 14 points are couched in such vague language that many of them may mean any- - thing or nothing and have a merely rhetorical value, while others are absolutely mischievous. ) This merely makes plainer the fact that the colonel is not in this war for the same reasons and purposes as the rest of us are in it. The ideal of a war for democracy is to him merely a rhetorical expression. : Nor does he take any stock in the thought that this is to be made our last war. He is already talking universal military train- ing as a measure of “preparedness” for our next war. He is against any steps likely to guard against war. He does not believe in dis- carding armies and navies nor even in reducing armaments after this war is won. He doesn’t want any league of nations except as a feeble camouflage, an international debating society - where na- tional windbags like himself can be sent to talk their heads. off. A less notorious and conspicuous foe of democracy—one who couldn’t do as much as Roosevelt to interfere with the successful prosecution of the war—could and probably would have been muzzled long ago. : leadelf and their SEEKING THE CULPRITS : FTER every great tragedy wild rumors float about as to who was responsible. Stories of a mysterious group of incen- - diaries get about. It needs only a whisper to direct sus- picion against an innocent man and to put-him in danger of his life. Cool heads are needed to prevent grave injustice. But if any human being is to blame, by deliberation or by carelessness, the people want to know and they have a right to know. Such . rumors circulated in Minnesota after the great forest fire tragedy. The contribution to Jjustice of the big dailies in.St. Paul and Minneapolis was to print under big headlines stories of “spies” and of a “tall man, a short man and a fat man’> who went about in a “high-powered automobile” scattering flaming brands. But they ran true to their real form when they boldly announced that “I. W. W. are suspected of having set the fires out of revenge for the sentencing of 100 of their number for sedition at Chicago.” If any fiend deliberately set any of these fires with the intent to cause destruction of life and property surely he ought to be vis- 7/ s aLL suoés.’ L2 ON ited with dire and swift punishment, and if there is any suspicion of such a deed against any man surely it ought to be investigated. Agents of the United States department of justice took mnote of the rumors printed in the Twin Cities papers. After a day’s work it was officially announced that one batch ‘of rumors, those dealing with fires in the vicinity of Duluth, were without any foundation. . The result of their further investigations has not been announced. But in the meantime some concrete evidence, possibly not as blood-curdling as the “spy” stories, but fully as interesting, has been given out. It is a letter written.by a state forest ranger at Moose Lake, in the heart of the devastated region, to the state forester. - It was written on October 2, 10 days before the fires wreaked their first great destruction of life and property. -In that: letter the forest ranger called the attention of the state forester to the fact that fire after fire was being set by the'engines of the’ Soo railroad, that the railroad had failed to co-operate with him to put out the fires, although repeatedly asked to do so, and that a number of menacing fires were burning at that time. He im- plored the state public safety commission to do something to stop these fires from being set. Here is an extract from his letter as - given out by the state forester: ' One ‘thing that discourages me ot is the m thatthe o ‘can get to them ‘than: I line is setting fires a_great/deal faster attitude 8 to be confined to ‘a mere L their