The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, April 14, 1919, Page 6

. //”//é" '/¢%/Il////Q » m, 4 w, % / P Y Tonpartigin Teader Omcia] Magazine of the National Nonfiartisnn League—Every Week Entered as second-class matter Minnesota, under the Act of March OLIVER S. MORRIS, Editor E. B. Fussell and A. B. Gilbert, Associate Editors 3Sep8te;nber 8, 1915, at the postoffice at St. Paul, , 1879, B. O. Foss, Art Editor Advertising rates on application. Subscription, one vear, 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 make all remittances to The Nonpartisan Leader, Box 575, St. Paul, Minn. > 2 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 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. A 5 TalneeED 21 HART ATTACKS SWEDES E HAD occasion recently to mention in the columns of the Leader Acting Governor Louis F. Hart of the state of Washington. The acting governor was mentioned because of his credulous attitude toward the newspapers. He knew the Nonpartisan league was disloyal, he said, because he had seen it in the papers. Acting Governor Hart has more recently been convinced that a great many other people, besides members of the Nonpartisan & league, are disloyal. In a letter to Frank L. Polk, acting secretary of state, the acting governor brings a blanket accusation against American citizens of Swedish descent. He says the men of Swedish descent showed “a wonderful lack of loyalty” during the war. He adds: It is generally believed by those in authority that representa- tives of the Swedish government urged the Swedes to forfeit their declaration papers that they might evade military service and that it even sought them out for this purpose. “It is generally believed” sounds as if Acting Governor Hart had been reading the newspapers again and believing everything - HORRIBLE ~EUERY BODY'S ofsLovacL 111/ 3 /F THE PRESS WOULD & 52l “ufl BELIEVE 1T, ACTING GOV {g HART- e he read. That is a bad habit for the acting governor to contract. It might get him into trouble some day. Mr. Hart is only an accident in the position of acting governor. He fills the position temporarily because the governor of Washing- ton is too ill to attend to his duties. So the people of Washington are not to be blamed because Mr. Hart rather rattles around in the executive chair. . Acting Governor Hart, however, is said to have ambitions to be a real governor some day. We wonder how many votes he will get from farmers and from citizens of Swedish descent. ; The belief of the Leader is that American citizens of Swedish descent were as loyal and patriotic as any other citizens during the recent war. We have seen hundreds of evidences of their patriotism and none of their disloyalty. We will continue to believe in them until liIr Hart brings more evidence than he has produced to date. 5 DOCTOR JAMES E. BOYLE AGAIN ANY members of the Nonpartisan league, especially those in North Dakota, will remember Doctor James E. Boyle, formerly connected with the North Dakota Agricultural college. While paid by the people of North Dakota to work for better marketing of farm products, Doctor Boyle. flatly took the ground that the present system of the grain exchanges was good enough. He wrote articles to this effect for the Alexander Hamil- ton institute of New York. : : After the United States entered the war and the food adminis- tration was created, it was announced that Doctor Boyle had been retained by the food administration to make an investigation of the grain exchanges. Inasmuch as Doctor Boyle had, before be- ginning this “investigation,” acquitted the grain exchanges of all and sundry charges against them, the Leader took the stand that he would not make a fair investigator. So far as we know, the pro- posed investigation was never made. ' Doctor Boyle resigned from the North Dakota Agricultural P . _ : G Bae e PAGRSIX. O 3 DA AR A et e st oo e i L college, where he had played about to the end of his rope, and went to Cornell. Now he has blossomed out again as a lecturer on the Nonpartisan league and, incidentally, of course, as a special pleader . for the grain exchanges. Correspondents of the Leader in the East have written us of Doctor Boyle’s speeches. Prominent in each is a plea for the poor grain exchanges. In a speech at Rochester, N. Y., Doctor Boyle said: . Old grain men now admit that 20 years ago the f?,rmey did not get a square deal on the wheat market, too wide a margin being taken for the handling of his grain. The grain men.now point out that farmers’ elevators, built very extensively in the past 10 or 15 years, have reduced this wide margin;-that the weighing of grain is now done cd GRAIN EXCHANGE by the state of Minnesota in a fair and accurate manner; that the grades are all federal grades and that the inspection is now all under federal supervision. In short, the grain trade claims, and very rightly i so, that the gross evils in all these lines have been abolished. ; ! Farmers’ elevators undoubtedly have introduced some measure of competition with the line country elevators but in spite of the Equity elevator at St. Paul there does not yet exist an independent terminal elevator system capable of competing with the system of the millers. The biggest complaint that the farmers have is not in the margin of profit, but in the fact that they are compelled to dis- pose of their crop immediately after it is harvested. Weighing of grain may be conducted honestly in many instances in the state of Minnesota, but we seem to remember that the elevator men two years ago put up the strongest kind of a fight to prevent the instal- lation of track scales—and won out. Doctor Boyle’s contention that the adoption of federal grades has ended the evils of the grading system is too laughable to be answered seriously. Doctor Boyle neglects to mention the fact that the grain buyers still take mil- lions of dollars worth of dockage each year, in accordance with old _ “customs of the trade,” that they buy wheat with king head, cockle, etc., extract the foreign matter at a cost of less than a cent a bushel and get, in consequence, a grain one or two grades higher and worth 8 or 10 cents more. In view of these facts Doctor Boyle’s statement that the grain gamblers claim, “and rightly so,” that they have repented of all their sins and are as pure as the driven snow, sounds like poppycock. . THOSE GOVERNMENT-OWNED SHIPS S A result of our war needs we have a great fleet of govern- - A ment-owned merchant vessels. The American flag is now being carried by these ships to ports where it has not been seen since Civil war days. They have brought us through that dif- ficult war period when privately owned shipping absolutely failed. The progressives of the nation, especially the farmers, have looked to these government-owned ships as the means of “breaking the ocean freight combine and boosting rapid reconstruction here and in Europe. Low freights to Europe will mean better prices, for instance, to our grain raisers, and more than this, it might enable them to compete better with the cheaper land and the government- owned marketing and shipping of Australia. We need government- owned ships to prevent the shipping interests of England and other nations from keeping our ships and consequently our goods from many foreign markets, by deals with our private shipowners. " Yet in the face of these needs, so strongly emphasized by our 2 ¢ ?f 2 war experience, out with the proposal to sell all the ships and to take away the Chairman Hurley of the shipping board has come risks of operation for the new private owners by a raid on the - treasury. The movement is more likely to succeed than the return - of the railroads, because the railroads are better understood, but - the ships are scarcely less important. : Mr. Hurley sugarcoats his pill with talk about no profiteering and no exploitation, but these are inevitable with privately owned - ships. The evils he notes and those which destroyed our merchant marine years ago were the evils of private ownership of an im- portant utility. : ; ; i