The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, March 17, 1919, Page 5

P2 BY E. B. FUSSELL, EORGANIZATION work is go- ing on in North Dakota and more members than ever before are signing up with the Non- partisan league and paying their membership fees. Why it . ds that farmers, with little ready money, will willingly and gladly put up another $16 to pay the expenses of their organization, while ‘they could continue as members of. the Republican or Demo- cratic parties without the payment of any mem- bership fee, is a matter of great concern to.the old-line politicians. i The answer is that the farmers of North Dakota feel that they have gotten back, several times over, the value of their first $16. They feel that they got their $16 worth, sev- = eral times ovef, in one law that the 1917 legis- lature passed. This law was the grain grading and inspection act. Doctor E. F. Ladd, president of the North Dakota Agricultural col- lege, in Bismarck_the other day, estimated that this bill alone, during the ™ one=year of 1918, saved for the farmers of North Dakota the sum of $12,- 500,000. With amendments that are proposed by Doctor Ladd, and which were adopted by the 1919 leg- islature, the savings to North Dakota farmers in 1919 should be at least $6,000,000 greater, meaning a total annual saving to the farmers of nearly $20,000,000 a year, a pretty good start by the League toward sav-. ing the $55,000,000 that Doctor J. H. Worst esti- mated was being stolen each year from North Dakpta farmers, FARMERS’ LAW HAP TEETH Thé grain grading and inspection law, as passed by the legislature in 1917, established a grain inspection department, authorizing the state au- thorities to grade sam- ples of grain offered for sale by farmers and re- “ quiring purchasers of grain to buy it at the grade established by the state. It provided for a complete . licensing sys- tem of grain buyers, the same .plan adopted later by the federal fopd ad- ministration, to keep a " complete check +on the grain industry., Any ele- vator found violating the - law, by._ giving - false weights, refusing to ac- cept state grades, or practicing any other b { of fraud upon the ; groyer, under this law, would be liable to have _ its license revoked. ) x : ;Administration' of the law was placed under” Doctor Ladd, a tried and proved friend of the farm- ers, and Doctor Ladd soon showed that this con- fidence was not misplaced. The law passed by the legislature had teeth in it, and Doctor Ladd was not afraid to use them. The law provided that the licenses of dishonest grain dedlers could be re- -voked. . Such licenses were revoked. - Thousands of changed hands this year was increased on an aver- tests of grain were made for farmers. 'Many times == age of cents‘a bushel because the state was able tests were made after sales of the grain involved = and had the authority fo check up the grades.” ' 2 B 4 ; . i PAGE FiVE . actually had been made. In these cases, when higher grades were established than those at which the grain was sold, gfowers got checks ranging from a few dollars up to $88 to cover the difference in grades on single sales. But the law had much wider effect than that. The grain buyers who were not caught in undergrading or underweighing were not caught because they were more careful in their weighing and grading. The general effect was to give the grower, regardless of whether he had tests made by the state, a higher grade than he could otherwise have received. Doctor Ladd, while he was in Bismarck recently, was asked by a representative of the Leader what effect he thought the bill had. L “North Dakota this last year produced 101,000,- 000 bushels of wheat and approximately 250,000,000 _bushels of all grains,” said Doctor Ladd. “If the should have and as if they should have no share in:the ‘public burde state grading and inspection bill had, by making . buyers more careful, resulted in an average’in- crease of 1 cent a bushel on North Dakota’s grain crop in 1918, it would have meant a saving of $2,500,000 for the farmers of the state. “But you know and I know and everybody ac- quainted with conditions knows that the saving has " ' been much greater than that. My belief is that the price at which the North Dakota grain crop v ¥ X . bushels) was docked for 26 bushels of flax. | THOSE TACKS - 3 soRE ! tT HLRTS EATTY — CAN STAND T (F You CcaN “The fatter the hog the louder he seems to squeal. With profits far surpassing what they received in the days before the war, the profiteers squeal terribly about excess profits taxes. about any other limitation on their profit-taking as if there were no_reasonable limits to what they The story on this page show- ing what the farmer legislature in North Dakota saved the farmers on grain, explains much _of the squealing of the Twin Cities press against the Nonpartisan_league. 1. $12,500,000 Saved From Grain Frauds ol Doctor E. F. Ladd Puts Savings to North Dakota Farmers From 1917 L Laws at This Figure—New Elevator Laws Will Save More Five cents a bushel on 250,000,000 bushels rep- resents a saving of $12,500,000! ¢ That much has been done already. And it is not unnatural that North Dakota farmers think they have gotten their $16 worth several times over from the League and are coming back in greater numbers than ever. But the North Dakota grain grading and inspec- tion law is not perfect yet. Some amendments, that will bring even greater benefits to the. farm- ers, have been provided -by the 1919 legislature. One form of robbery that is still being practiced by grain buyers of North Dakota is the taking of dockage without compensation to the farmer. Com- missioner of Agriculture and Labor John N. Hagan told the writer the other day of one farmer in North Dakota who in one load of wheat (about 125 Flax at that time was selling for $3.20-on the Duluth market. The farmer got not one cent for it. He got about $2 a bushel for 99 bushels of wheat, or $198, whereas if he had been paid for the flax at the market rate, he would have gotten $281.20 for the load. As it was the “elevator man stuck the $83.20, the value of the flax, in his own pocket. 120,000 TONS OF DOCKAGE In western North Da- kota, where rye and wheat ‘are rotated, a heavy volunteer crop of rye can not be prevented. The. United States de- . partment of agriculture urges the farmer to grow rye; the federal grades, established by the United States department of agriculture, penalize the farmer by reducing the grade of his wheat, if he has more than 2 per cent of rye with the other grain. : Besides lowering the grade of the wheat under the federal grades, the grain_buyer pockets the value of the rye. The same = condition exists with barley, wild oats and other grains, of val- ue themselves. During the last year, according to Doctor Ladd, - grain “buyers got 120,000 tons of free dockage from grain bought from North / Dakota farmers. This was manufactured into mill feeds which have been sold back to the farmers, at present prices, at an average rate of ‘$47 per ton, f. o. b. Minneapolis. “And, Doctor Ladd commented, as he gave these figures, “every cent above $27 is.pure graft.” The price fixed for mill feed by the federal food administration ‘was $27. Immediately after the restrictions were taken off by the food administration, the price was jumped $20 in a single day by the millers. At $47 per ton, the value of the dockage on North Dakota grain, that buyers now get for noth- “ing, is nearly $6,000,000 a year. That amount the North Dakota legislature in- tends to save for the North Dakota farmer. The grading’' and inspection act, as amended and re- enacted by the 1919 legislature, provides that dock- age is to be divided into two' classes, that which ' (Continued on page 13) = . s BUT They also squeal N