The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, January 27, 1919, Page 7

: thls money by providing for the designation of only ONE ““When the plan adopted at Marshalltown is ratified by the farm bureaus . in each county and the federation gets its office force in working order, .the result of all the preliminary work done by the Greater Iowa asso- clfatxon will be offered to the federation for such use as it cam make of it. The name of the new association is the Iowa Farm Bureau fe(geratlon The proposition is very frankly stated by its advo- -cates The new federation is built around the county agents in the various counties, and is an open and shameless attempt to use the public offices of farm agents, which the people are taxed to maintain, for political purposes. A FREE PRESS IN NORTH DAKOTA HE North Dakota farmers’ administration proposes to free the press of the state by a very simple expedient. Three publications in each county of the state are now designated “official county pap=rs” by county commissioners. Other papers ,m each county are designated by the state to publish state reports, and various other official matter _required by law to be published by various political subdivisions is published in papers designated by various officials. The state and its political subdivisions now spend annually about $500,000 to newspapers for publishing the various reports, election announcements, official proceedings, etc., and in ‘addition many thousands of dollars are spent by parties to court actions in publishing probate matters, court orders, etc. The farmers’ legislature .proposes to save over one-third of PAPER in each county as the “official county' paper,” thus causing official matter, now required to be published, to be published in ONE paper in each county instead of THREE. Also, the official county paper so designated will, under the law, receive all the official matter required to be publlshed by cities, the State itself and litigants in the courts. This will enable one paper in each county to exist without out- side advertising support. Such papers will be independent of ad- vertisers and all economic pressure. Having gone this far in our description of the plan, we hear somebody say: ‘“Sure, a plan to give the Nonpartisan league a _pa- per in each county to boost it, and to help perpetuate Nonpartisan league men in office.” But we have yet to tell the CHIEF FEA- TURE of . the plan. The official paper in each county WILL BE DESIGNATED EVERY TWO YEARS BY A VOTE OF THE PEO- PLE OF THE COUNTY. The possibilities of this plan ‘can scarcely ‘be grasped except " by carefully studying the matter. In the first place, the state will be saved from $200,000 to $300,000 a-year in money now spent virtually to subsidize newspapers by giving them official advertis- ing. This patronage was used before the Nonpartisan league got control to help build up the political machine of the party in power. Under the new plan-THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES IN EACH COUNTY WILL DESIGNATE THE OFFICIAL PAPER BY THEIR VOTES. : Being free of economic pressure of advertisers and having to please a majority of the people of the county in order to be se- lected, these official papers will not be run for private political purposes or to pull nuts out of the fire for big interests. The state will exercise no editorial control. They will be a FREE PEOPLE’S PRESS. The party in power will have no control over them. They will need no other revenue than official advertising revenue to sup- port them. To get or keep this state subsidy, these papers will have to PLEASE THE PEOPLE. Thus they will have to have an adequate news and feature service, and above all, they will have to: be right in policy, or they will have little chance of being desig- nated as official papers. The prestige of carrying all the official matter published in their eounty, and their effort to please the people by complete news service and right policy, will build up the - circulation of this free people’s press. These papers will become the biggest and most influential in their counties. —Have the North Dakota farmers solved the problem of a free press in America? " GET THE FACTS—WHY NOT? HATEVER one’s opinions are as to the acts, _policies and principles of the Bolshevist party now in control of the government of Russia, there can be no doubt that what this party is doing is one of the most important developments of the present age. The Bolsheviki will occupy a leading place in future history, no matter whether they are right or wrong, or whether they fail or succeed. The events which have happened and which are happenmg in Russia will loom as large in history as . the French revolutlon, the Napoleomc wars and the recent world‘ . war. No one can gainsay that. ¢ .. Yet, there is a conspiracy to prevent }facts concermng Bussxa : ; 4 gettmg to the people of the Unxted tates ‘ ( - enemies say it is. :gwand logic ought to be enough e s get the facts from history later, but we are to be deprived of them now. That seems to be the general attitude. Students of the Rus- — gian situation are able to get many important facts which the daily papers refuse to publish, but even their mformatlon is limited, due to the military censorship. News concerning Russia, before it reaches the pubhc, must first get through a military censorship which is anxious to discredit the Bolshevists and the Russian soviet republic in the interests of “violent foreign intervention. . Then it must get by our state department and lastly by the blue pencils of editors of newspapers which are feverishly anxious to discredit socialism, and especially the rad1cal socialism of which bolshevism is an expressmn It is possible, by reading the original documents, reports and papers concerning Russia, published by such liberal magazines as the Nation (New York), to get some sort of an idea of what the Bolshevists stand for, and by reading the books of radical sym- pathizers who have visited Russia, to get a friendly report and NEWS CONCERNING THE BOLSHEVIKI. WHEN THE ORIGINAL REPORTS WHEN OUR interpretation of what is going on there. Thus the Bolshevxst side of thé question is at least partially open to students. But the gen- eral public, whose sole source of information is the daily papers, is profoundly ignorant of the conditions existing. One would think, by reading the papers, that murder, assassination, corruption and destruction were the sole program or object of the Bolshevists. There very likely has been much of that. It would be surprising if there were not more of it in connection with a great revolution, the putting down of serious counter revolutions encouraged by out- side military interference, and the working out of an economic pro- gram so ‘sweeping as that being attempted in Russia. But the of- ficial reports and documents indicate something else also. They show a great nation in control of its actual workers to the utter exclusion from power or influence of all other classes—a “dictator- ship of the proletariat,” as the Socialists call it. - Under this control, despite outside attack, Russia is busy con- structing a new society, re-establishing and rebuilding its industrial and farming systems, and establishing an ECONOMIC in place of a POLITICAL government. That is, the system of representative government_as it is known in America, has been abolished. In place of it, Russia has a government in which only those who are organized in trade, farm or professional unions have a voice, and only those who actually WORK AND PRODUCE by hand or bram can belong to a union. This experiment is. highly interesting. It may be all that its If 8o, why not let the facts speak for them- selves? If this form of government and the party that is adminis- tering it is so apparently depraved and outrageous, why the mili- tary and press censorship that is preventing the public from getting the true facts about it, and learning for themselves first hand how impossible and destructlve it is? If bolshevism is right in Russia, it . will prevail there in the end,. despite foreign bayonets and military and press censorships of the facts. If it is wrong, it will perish, and only common sense and log- ical argument are necessary to destroy it. The fact that certain interests are so anxious to prevent a’clear understanding and frank discussion of the Russian question is cited by friends of the Bol- -sheviki as proof that those interests know that bolshevism is well founded in justice and is a logical and correct development from existing social and-economic conditions. However, that inference does not necessarily follow. The interests in question may simply - - be stupid and incapable of understanding how to fight a propaganda which on its own showing is vicious and a negation of all that is - just and humane. At any rate, the Leader is for knowing the facts, and we be- heve that the present effort to show that the Bolshevists are merely THIS BATT murderers and assassins is serving no good purpose. It seems to be born of an unreasonable and in most instances a comic fear that the American people are going hell-bent into red revolution and anarchy on learning the truth about what radical revolutionists are doing in a country they have wrested from the despotism of a czar. So far as we are concerned, we are willing to rely on rea- son and Jogic and the intelligence of the Kmencan people to offset: any dangerous and destructive pmpagan that may be started here. - 'We profess: to have little faith in bayonets, lying, misrepre- sentation, suppression, etc., in combatmg erroneous 1deas ' Facts