The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, May 12, 1919, Page 7

' LAWMAKERS AND NEWSPAPERS FTER more tharf a month’s residence in Washington, study- ing the city and the representatives in congress with whom he will be associated for the next two years, Congressman - James H. Sinclair, North Dakota’s newest farmer representative, hag arrived at some very definite conclusions on the nation’s legis- latlvg body and the men in it. 'In an article which appeared in-the last issue of the Nonpartisan Leader he made this statement: A lawmaker can not rise above the news service of his constitu- ency. If we are to have a higher order of legislation, it can only be brought about by the organization of the producers and workers and the establishment and control of their own newspapers. It is a concise and forceful argument for ownership of the press by the people. Privilege has a hundred voices, and each one is con- tinually in the ears of the representatives in congress. Often these lawmakers want to be honest, want to do what the people who elected them to office wish them to do, but they mistake the voice of privilege, shouting through its controlled press, for the voice of their constituents, and vote as those papers want them to vote. The people have no way ; of making themselves heard in Washington. When the congressman puts his ears to the ground, those ears are attuned largely to what the papers of his constitu- ency may say. The inter- ests control the articulate voices of our cities. There is but one solu- tion for the problem. The people must have their own newspapers. They must make themselves heard in Washington if they wish to defeat legislation for the few and.obtain it for the many. The process of absorption of the press by privilege has been so slow that it has been unnoticed. Before advertis- ing grew so great as to overshadow news, editors were free to act with a view only to their readers’ interest. They could say what they thought. But gradually advertising became the main prop of the daily newspaper. It poisoned its blood, tainted its news col- umns, and enslaved its editorial page. “He’s a big advertiser,” has been more often than not the deciding factor on a news story that the public should have had and did not get. - A candidate who is disliked by the interests will have called down upon his head all the vituperation that the bought papers can pour upon him. A legislator in Washington takes the paper’s stand as a criterion of that of the people whom he serves. If he can not get the truth, he will not always know it. The people must not alone choose their own rep- resentatives and assure themselves that the men they elect will follow the dictates of those who sup- ported them, but they must keep them informed, con- stantly and unforgetably, of what the people want, and how they feel in regard to national questions upon which the representative - : will be called to vote. They must organize, so that their desires will be expressed in unison, and those desires must be expressed in a voice that belongs to the people. The interests of the people and of privilege are as divergent as the poles. Jesus said: “A man can not serve two masters.” Nor can a newspaper serve two masters. Its choice lies between the people and privilege. The newspapers, for the most part, have chosen the flesh pots of Egypt. The people, then, must make a stronger bid. W2, Th THE CASE OF MR. BURLESON S. BURLESON now is under fire of newspapers of the A United States as the result of a New York World charge that - it was denied use of the telegraph lines for an article deal- ing with Mr. Burleson. The postmaster general was assailed as an autocrat, which he probably would like to be, and as an incompetent, which he undoubtedly is. But those papers which now assail him ~as seeking to abridge the right of free speech and free press were the loudest in condemnation of all efforts to repeal the “gag” act, or espionage law. It makes a difference whose ox is gored. = T e Three Bi Ps. (By A. K. Mills of Almené, Kan.) There’s a terrible dragon with three cruel heads; The wickedest under the sun. . ‘Now this is no mythical monster to dread, But an “honest to goodness” one. If you'll open your eyes and look where you go, Its trail-of destruction you’ll see. It turns happy homes into sorrow and woe— "Tis the treacherous P. P. P. You ask in surprise what the three letters mean? . I am sure if you try you can guess. Just think for a minute; ’tis plain to be seen— Profiteers, Politicians and Press. The three form the heads of a terrible thing, .- And when they unite in their coil And are sneaking and crawling and ready to sting, God pity the people who toil. X The first head plots misery, sorrow and woe; The second one works out the schemes; The third works for both of the others, you know, By publishing camouflage themes. ~ So the three, when combined, form a dragon of might, | And it stings under blackest intrigue. - But we’ll drag the grim monster out into light By the Farmers’ Nonpartisan league. It can't stand the light, for its deeds are all black, And in that way we’ll kill it, you see. We will organize stronger and keep on the track Of the damnable P. P. P. PAGE SEVEN A ey HOW 'l‘O BEAT BOLSHEVISM THEY assure us that the world is at peace, but as we look at the daily papers and go through the record of revolutions and civil wars abroad, and brigandage, riots and strikes in the. United States, we are sometimes of the mind of the prophet Jere- miah, who exclaimed against those who cry “Peace, peace, when: there is no peace.” If the daily press is to be believed, all of this trouble and strife 4 is traceable directly to the Bolsheviki. Of course there is consider- able difference of opinion as to what the Bolsheviki are. A writer in a popular magazine tells of an American captain in France who addressgd.his men on the Bolshevik menace, telling them, “These Bolsheviki are dangerous. If any one of you sees one of them I want you to grab him and bring him to me right away.” . A couple of days later this captain was visited by one of his privates, who apparently had something tightly clutched in one of his hands. “I've got one of ’em, sir,” he said. “One of what?” asked the captain. “One of them Bolsheviki,” returned the soldier, opening his hand and showing a small insect. “As soon as I seen it T knew it couldn’t be a cootie or a bed bug, and so I brought it to you.” In Russia the Bolsheviki are a political party of working adherents who have seized the government ‘and industry through a revolution, depriving non- workers of votes and prop- erty income. The revolu- tion has been accompanied by many excesses, probably by fully as many as the French revolution. pears to be the style to shevist. ment workers, President Wilson, Senator Lodge and the farmers of the Nonpartisan league by their political opponents. nonsense, it can be said that the ordinary sane person means by bolshev- ism a movement. to over- turn the existing social, economic and political or- der of things by violent means. With a revolution of vio- lence, the farmers of the Nonparti- san league, of course; have no sympathy. Their guiding belief is that the wrongs that undoubtedly exist should be righted with ballots, not with bullets. The farmers will not condone the use of violence and illegal and unconstitutional methods either by Bolsheviki or the oppo- nents of bolshevism. But what is to be done about bolshevism ? In answering this question we .~ can do no better than to quote what is said on the subject by the Methodist Fed- eration for Social Service. In the Leader a few weeks ago we pointed out the advanced attitude taken by the Methodist church of Canada. It appears that the Methodist church of this-country is also taking a frank view of things. In their pub- licity service the Methodists of the United States say: In our country there are loud voices calling for the suppression and destruction of bolshevism. But if every I. W. W. is put in jail and every labor disturber deported and the voice of every social radical silenced, the disease of industrial autocracy and social injustice will only be made worse. * * * The policy of denunciation and suppres- sion is now seen to be very shallow and, indeed, a hollow mockery. The two moulders of public opinion in the United States, the press . and the pulpit, have both given altogether too much time and space to denouncing bolshevism and demanding its suppression and too little time to the causes of bolshevism. This has led many of the exploited masses to think and say that both pulpit and press are plutocratic in- stitutions sold out to predatory interests. THIS CHARGE IS ALL TOO TRUE OF SOME PREACHERS AND SOME PAPERS. The church must live up to the first plank in the social creed of the churches: “Equal right and complete justice for all men in ‘all stations of life.” The advance of democracy is hastening the coming of the kingdom of God. When democracy obtains in industry, bol- shevism will be dead. Nothing else will kill it. : S o AR v AR eI But discarding such In this country it ap—i. call pretty much of any one opposed to you a Bol-: The term has: been applied variously to labor leaders, Socialists, - anarchists, social settle- crime and bloodshed