The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, April 28, 1919, Page 9

“ 5 - » Y fi&_qmé‘ 2 .$1-a-year scheme of government. Ccngress Will Get Facts on Houston John M. Baer, Farmers’ Congressman, to Head Commlttee to Learn Why Washington Bureau, Nonpartisan Leader. ONGRESS wants to know why the department of agriculture is not being run in the"interest of the farmer. It is curious as to why Sec- retary Houston, Director Brand of the bureau of markets, and all the circle of Houston-Brand “insiders” in the department are so little concerned with getting rid of the miid- dleman, and so ready to divert every new branch of the department to build still higher the wall of “handling” between the farmer and the consumer of the farmer’s product. For the year ending June 30, 1919, congress has handed over to the department of agriculture $127,- 000,000 to be used for various purposes. Half of it is to go into road making, in co-operation with the states and counties. Another $11,000,000 will be spent in the wartime program of stimulating production of foodstuffs. But there is a regular appropriation for the department’s work that to- tals $27,875,333. The incoming congress would like to know-—and it will proceed to try to find out— why the middlemen and, above all, the speculators get most of the benefit from this huge expense. All the country is familiar with the fact that Secretary Houston, when he came into office six years ago, was a member of the Southern Educa- tion board, an offshoot of the Rockefeller General Education board. The country may have forgotten that at that time the scandal of the benzoate of soda cases had led President Taft to drive from the department of agriculture Doctor Harvey W. Wiley, who had tried to protect the purity of canned foods, and that Gifford Pihchot had been driven from the office of chief of the bureau of for- estry because he stood out against the looters of the public domain. Doctor Alsberg, who took Doc- tor Wiley’s place, was kept in his job by Houston, and is still there. Forester Graves, who succeeded ed Pinchot, is likéwise still there. The Rockefeller influence, which at that time had placed and main-_ tained 400 or 500 “field agent's” and- other agents in the dep;{ ment, is likewise still there. - even the Kenyon resolution of three years ago, which became a part of the regular appropriation act, and which forbade Houston to keep any of this Rockefeller army on the $l-a-year roll, has killed the power of Standard Oil to dictate policy over the depart- ment that is supposed to stand for the farmer. This latter statement is emphasized by the proposal, made formally to congress by Secretary Houston on - January 24, 1919, that the new appro- priation bill should permit the depart- ment of agriculture to go back to the HOUSTON MAKES LITTLE ROCKEFELLER OF HIS OWN But Houston has not stopped with keeping up.the Rockefeller tradition. He has established a little Rockefeller of his own, right in the department. This little dictator to the farmers is Charles J. Brand. Brand is a political protege of “Uncle Joe” Cannon, and comes down from the old Republican days, when he was a chemist in charge of so-called studies -of wood pulp and paper supply. These studies were a polite affair staged by the lumber and paper barons, through a complaisant administration, to quiet the protests of the newspapers at the time against paper prices. When Houston arrived, Brand was waiting for him. He was plausible, aggres- sive, well-advertised among the stand- pat newspaper correspondents, and played both sides of the political street. Houston made him director of markets.’ * Brand ' then' promptly or- ganized a sort of cabinet, which took -is a minimum of insurgency there. What the department of agnculture has done for the farmers is a question that has been puzzling the farmers since David F. Houston took the post as its head. Congress, too, wants to know, and when the next session con- venes there is more than a likelihood that congress will find out. At the head of the agricultural committee, if the seniority rule is maintained, will be the farmers’ own representative, John M. Baer of North Dakota. The Nonpartisan Leader will watch the progress of the inquiry closely, and will keep the farmers informed. The farmer is primarily interested in mar- ket conditions that will insure an adequate return for his products. possession of Houston and has run the department ever since. Scientists in Washington are pretty well agreed that the department of agriculture is “safe.” There Bureau chiefs always stand a chance of being picked up by big corporations at double the salaries they are get- ting from the government. Even while they wait for this recognition from the commercial powers, they. are shown social attentions and club cour- tesies by the agents of the packers, the canners, the wholesale fruit and vegetable dealers, the grain exporters, the flour millers, and so on. Some local wit has said that Houston never had so fine a uni- versity to run as the university over which he now presides; it graduates classes that always get along well, and it has endless funds and a pathetic- ally trustfu] public to support any plan he may suggest!- L I HE KNOWS THE CURE FOR BOTH - —Drawn expressly for the Leader by W. C. Morris. The farmer knows that one extreme in government is as unsafe as the other. He knows that meb spirit is as unreasoning as autocracy is selfish. Cartoonist Morris here points out the cure for both governmental evils—the ballot—and he shows, too, who has been using it with the greatest discretion. Repressxon only fosters the mob will; liberalism defeats it. PAGE NINE ’ LML R St e A R S T e b N T e e e e e S 4 R T A R A . other $113,000 for inspection of shipments. Department of Agriculture Is Run for Profiteers Take the bureat of markets, with its $2,000,000 appropriation for the current year. It is spend- ing $196,000 on reporting the market for perish- able fruits and vegetables. It spends $58,000 on the livestock and meat market reporting, and an- Then there is $113,500 for administering the cotton fu- tures act, $456,580 for administering the grain standards act, $53,540 for the warehouse licensing system, $50,000 for the experimental flour mill and baking laboratory, etc. $2,000,000 FOR BUREAU; $50,000 FOR INVESTIGATION In the bureau of markets appropriation there is included this item: “To make investigation relating to the pro- duction, transportation, storage, preparation, marketing, manufacture and distribution of agricultural food products, including the ex- tent, manner and methods of any manipula- tion of the markets or control of the visible supply of such food products or any of them by any individuals, groups, associations, com- binations or corporations, $48,800.” - That’s wonderful work! Out of $2,000,000 for the bureau of markets, almost $50,000, or one- fortieth, is devoted to investigating the actual facts as to the markets in which the farmers and con- sumers are robbed! How much the farmers have gained from the allotment of this dab of money to one off Houston’s or Brand’s select circle, to catch the Chicago pack- ers, is easily to be discovered from the fact that the department of agriculture has obstructed, con- fused and muddied the path of the investigation - of the packers conducted by the federal trade com- mission from ‘start to finish. It was Houston and Brand who tried to assist Hurley and Hoover in blocking any governmental action to break the packers’ food monopoly. It was Houston and Brand who stood out against public ownership and oper- ation of the stockyards. It was Hous- | ton and .Brand who played into the hands of the grain gamblers with their fantastic set of grain stand- ards. | Read the agricuitural appropriation act and you become fairly dizzy with the mass of detail of “activities” for which the farmers and the industrial wage-workers of this nation are foot- ing the bill. From weather bureau to road building, from leased-wire market reporting to county agent in- struction in seeéd corn selection, there -are hundreds of useful and solid lines of work being carried on. But back of this whole machinery, built. up by the American people through the past 80 years, there are the controlling hands and ingenious brains of Rockefeller’s friend Hous- ton, and “Uncle Joe” Cannon’s boy Brand, turning and twisting all things toward the glorification of business, and toward the removal from the mind of the American farmer the idea that he can put the grain gamblers and the food monopolists and the grafting politicians in the economic ashcan. \IONPARTISANS ALL ’ROUND —~ Carrington, N. D. Editor Nonpartisan Leader: I am 13 years old and in the sev- enth grade. My dad is a Nonparti- san leaguer. He raised a nice bunch of Nonpartisan wheat last season. I have a Nonpartisan pig, and he is a perfect gentleman Every time I feed him, I give him Nonpartlsan barley. When the old gang brmgs about the referendum election, we will mop up the earth with Nonpartisan votes, and I'll bet my Nonpartisan pig that some of the soreheads that, went over to the old gang will wish they were back after the election. GLEN REICHERT.