The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, April 28, 1919, Page 6

7 L2 NonpartiZin 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 S. MORRIS, Editor E. B. Fussell and A. B. Gilbert, Associate Editors - B. O. Foss, Art Editor e s S e s ey e Advertising rates on application.# Subscription, one year, in advance, $2.50; six months, $1.50. Please do not make checks, drafts nor moiey orders payable to indi- viduals. Address all letters and make all remittances to The Nonpartisan Leader, Box 575, St. Paul, Minn. g 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 eur advertising columns. - . PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OSTMASTER GENERAL BURLESON’S administration of P the telegraph and cable lines has been inefficient, say oppo- nents of public ownership. Therefore let’s get back to pri- vate management. Also Mr. McAdoo made mistakes in ‘managing the railroads. That proves public ownership and control are all wrong. : Why not continue this argument to show its absurdity? Mr. Burleson’s mismanagement of the postoffice is well known. There- fore turn the postoffice business over to the express companies. Our last congress was surprisingly inefficient, and a great many mis- takes have been charged to President Wilson. Therefore let us get rid of both of them and ask William Hohenzollern, former em- peror of Germany, to rule us. £ This is not common sense. If Mr. Rockefeller or the Big Five packers should find that their businesses were not being conducted efficiently they would not go out of business. They would dis- charge their managers and put in new ones. So, if the railroad SHALL WE HAVE THIS P . PIUCH OBLIGED WiLL You GOVERN USP | and telegraph and postal businesses under Mr. McAdoo, Mr. Hines and Mr. Burleson are not conducted efficiently, the answer is to get new managers. : As a matter of fact what the United States now has, in the . way of control over the railroads and telegraphs, is a long, long way from being either government ownership or complete control. It is government operation—burdened with the mistakes and waste- ful competition and watered stock and outworn business methods built up by private graft. It would not be surprising if the rail- roads and telegraphs were not efficiently managed. The only thing to be surprised at is that the government was able to get as much real good as it did out of the railroad system of the country. When the government took over operation of the railroads the system had practically broken down.. It threatened to collapse com- pletely. If this collapse had occurred the European war probably would not be over yet—or it might have been over, with Germany the victor. In spite of every handicap—handicaps that would have been avoided under a system of outright government ownership— the railroads were put into such a condition that they were able to give the government fairly efficient war service. The system could not be patched up sufficiently to prevent shippers and the traveling public from suffering somewhat. ' To go back now to the old, wasteful system of private owner- ship is unthinkable. The plan of railroad employes of the United States, under which the men who actually operate the railroads will have something to say about running them, is. a great deal more - worthy of serious consideration than giving this power again to stockholders, most of whom know nothing about railroading, and a group of selfish railroad executives. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS ; ; ONTRARY to numerous reports from Paris that the league of nations plan had fallen through, a new covenant has been ; drafted which meets the approval of the peace delegates. The most important change from the first draft is probably the ~one which specifically protects our Monroe Doctrine and thus meets e § : e . PAGE SIX B B e A A SR o A SN T o S RS R AN SN o R b T oy 7 %, 7”’///”/ vé///// 4 4////4 the argument most frequently raised against the league plan in the United States senate. ‘ : " The league of nations is to be made up at first of the allied powers and a number of neutral states not yet announced. In the future any self-governing state may be admitted on the approval of two-thirds of the members. The right to withdraw, a point on . which great emphasis has been laid by some of our public men, is specifically permitted on two years’ notice. The nations agree to reduce armaments, to submit interqatlonal disputes to the league, and to stand together against aggression. : In the matter of representation, the league appears to still fall much short of the democratic principle which the people had hoped would be followed. Each state is to have not more than' three members and not more than one vote in the assembly. . The exec- utive council is to consist of one representative of each of the five great allied powers and one for each of four other powers selected by the assembly. This arrangement gives representation to gov- .ernments rather than to peoples. - The great thing, however, is that the league has come to pass. New ideals of international relations have been forced on the world. The new league will be as good as the member nations, including our own, want to make it. ~ MR. ROCKEFFLLER AND MR. FARMER OME opponents of the Nonpartisan league argue like this: S The Nonpartisan league stands for public ownership of greaf natural resources. Land is the greatest natural resource. Therefore the Nonpartisan league is against private ownership of farms. The Nonpartisan league is in favor of private ownership of farms BY THE FARMER. The League never has taken a position in favor of government ownership of the farms of the nation. Those who argue that farms are on the same basis as waterpower sites, mines and oil wells either are singularly dense or else deliberately are seeking to deceive. . When the United States started as a nation it owned untold wealth in agricultural land and minerals. It decided on what then seemed a fair system of distributing this wealth to its people. It allowed any man, by meeting certain requirements, to take up a limited amount of ‘agricultural land. It allowed any man, by meet- ing lgcclzlr’cain requirements, to take up a limited amount of mineral wealth. The theory was that the agricultural land would be evenly di- . vided among the farmers (who constituted a majority of the popu- lation then) and that the mineral land would be evenly divided among those who preferred to follow that line of endeavor. So far as the agricultural land theory was concerned it worked out much as was intended. Nearly every one, when there was good public land left, could take up a homestead and as a result the farms of the United States are today held by between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 men. ; But with minerals it was different. A man needed compara- tively little capital to homestead. But to drill a single oil well may cost from $5,000 to $50,000. And there must be 100 or more oil- wells close together to justify building a pipe line or railroad line to handle the product. So capitalists began to send in “dummy” entrymen to file on mineral wealth, buying for a few hundred dol- lars wealth worth thousands-or millions. The man who filed on the mineral claim could not command the money necessary to develop it; he had to act as the cat’s-paw of the barons of oil, timber, cop- per and iron. Gradually each of these resources, worth millions, came into the hands of a small group of men, really exercised control. il Having control of resources worth millions, these men took a second step. That was to raise prices sufficiently to make the total value BILLIONS instead of millions. The excess. “value” created In the case of oil one man