The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, November 18, 1918, Page 11

a ’knowledge of the real conditions. With this knowl- " edge the common people are in a position to g0 “ahead to mgke America what it ought to be— ruled of, for and by the people. Many of them are disillusioned, but they are the better defenders of democracy for it. The 'specially vicious fight on the League farm- _ers began as soon as it became apparent that the League had a chance to win. The gang in North Dakota first tried to laugh the “rube” movement to death. That failed.. Then they fried locking halls and: other similar annoyances in addition to the usual kept press lying and general old-gang methods which are considered more or less proper political methods. Bankers, retailers and others brought pressure on the individual farmers. But the enemies of the farmers did not realize fully what was going on until the farmers had won the election and gotten the law-enforcing power in their own hands. The special privilege interests have not made this mistake in the other states. The great con- ference:at St. Paul in September, 1917, gave them their first big warning, for that conference showed that organized labor and organized farmers were’ substantially in accord. They were forming an al- . liance which made victory for them certain ‘unless the special interests could separate them again. From that moment the vicious, un-American fight on the League began in earnest. The interests “discovered” that the honest farmers making up the League movement were disloyal, one of those discoveries without any proof like Doctor Cook’s discovery of the North pole- a few years ago. Every so-called proof was demolished by the League as fast as it came up, but the other side had the big papers and they reached people out- side the farmers’ publicity. The lies got over the country while the truth was getting its boots on. HUNTING COVER FOR VIOLENCE The disloyalty lies were needed, however, for more than directly turning people away from the League. The old gang had planned to prevent the League gospel from spreading by stopping meet- ings and there had to be a plausible reason. With the hue and cry of disloyalty the state officials could interpret their violation of the constitution as “watchful” patriotism. They had planned to arrest League lecturers and organizers to scare them off into othér work and to exhaust the League end. Special p Judging by the way the old gang has ° fought the farmers in their campaign for a larger voice in the government, any one would have good reason for asking, “Hasn’t America gotten too much under the control of the special interests to be reformed by the bal- lot?” President Wilson had this dan- ger in mind when he said as long ago as 1912 that it was doubtful if the gov- ernment of the United States could dominate these interests. Justice Louis Brandeis, in the same 1912 campaign, - warned that “The fear of the trusts is the beginning of wisdom.” But the organized farmers are the more deter- mined by the size of the fight, for on it hangs everything that is dear to them as free men—their livelihood, their children’s welfare, their political freedom, the honor of their country. funds with the defense of these false arrests and by making it harder to get the farmers to join. And while this disloyalty barrage fire was going full blast, while meetings were being interfered with, while Mr. Townley, Mr. Gilbert, Mr. Martin and others were being arrested, there was a drum- fire of really painful howls about the League’s .wasting the farmers’ hard-earned $16.. Without efficient management the League could not have stood up under this heavy and unexpected expense. Leader readers are, of course, familiar with the important steps in the reign of violence against the League. The many broken-up meetings, the widespread mob violence centering in Minnesota and spreading out to all the other states where the League was working, the tar and feather parties and the kidnaping of League workers and farmers. They remember how the firchose was turned on cars containing women and children in farmers’ parades in Minnesota; the six League men badly beaten, robbed and then taken over the state line from Gregory county, S. D.; the tar and feather- ing of the state manager and an organizer in Wagh- ington; the well-dressed mobs at Big Timber and . TWO HEARTS THAT BEAT AS ONE Columbus, Mont.; the two League organizers.bru- tally whipped and then treated with salt in the 1 open wounds .in Texas. Probably thousands of . persons, most of them well known to officers of the ' law, participated in these and other outrages of similar or less vicious character, and yet as the Leader readers know not one of them has ever been haled before a court of law to answer for his crime. There could be no better proof that in America we have interests above the law not only in monopoly exactions but for whatever crime they wish to commit. There are men who can not be brought into court as ordinary men are before the political control has passed to the people, and these men have all the power of state office with them to use in any fashion to prevent the control from passing. AN OLD STORY TO ORGANIZED LABOR While this bitter dose of one-sided justice was a new thing to many farmers, it is old on the in- dustrial field. Union labor has been fighting the same kind of a fight for years. America is over- run with industrial spies, gunmen, troublemakers who know no law but the will of the big industrial magnates. Several years ago the president of the Pennsylvania railroad admitted in an official in- vestigation that his road alone spent $800,000 a ’ year for men whose job it was to fight unions. . Women and babies as well as men were shot or burned to death by these fiends at Ludlow, Col. Over a thousand innocent citizens were dragged from their homes and sent out across the desert at Bisbee, Ariz. On the Pacific coast so-called vigilante mobs have frequently made organized workers run the gauntlet between rows of men armed with clubs. Killings, false arrests, mobbing by supposed officers of the law as well as by gun- men, are a part of the organized worker's life in America. The present fight against the farmers is only an adaptation of methods in which the vested interests have long had practice. In the case of the farmers it is a political rather than a so-called industrial battle, because the farmer is his own employer and is exploited through polit- ical control. Such things must go on until a ma- jority learn that it is impossible for a people to live -democratically side by side with special privilege. The organized farmers have also had to fight (Continued on page 14)