The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, June 9, 1919, Page 6

| the people, instead of compromising with a hostile congress. 2 ry- '/I”%, % Yt il TNonpariisan Teader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League—Every Week -_-— Entered as second-class matter September 8, 1915, at the postoffice at St. Paul, Minnesota, under the Act of March 3, 1879. OLIVER 8. MORRIS, Editor E. B. Fussell and A. B. Gilbert, Associate Editors B. 0. Foss, Art Editor Advertising rates on application. Subscription, one year, 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. 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 irrcsponsible 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. THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE P RESIDENT WILSON’S message to the new congress will be read by progressives with mixed feelings. There is one sec- tion with which all right-minded men and women can agree. This is when the president deals with the labor question and says: By the question of labor I do not mean * * * how labor is to be obtained. * * * I mean that much greater and more vital question, how are the men and women who do the daily‘labor of the world to obtain progressive improvement in the conditions of their labor, to be made happier and to be served better by the communities and the interests which their labor sustains and advances? How are they to be given their right advantage as citizens and human beings? The president goes on to urge co-operation between capital and labor—but not exactly the form of co-operation that big em- ployers are generally urging. Mr. Wilson shows that he has learned something from his European experiences—the need of giving the producers some voice in management of business—when he says: The object of all reform in this essential matter (laws to secure better co-operation between capital and labor) must be the genuine democratization of industry, based upon a full recognition of the right of those who work, in whatever rank, to participate in some organic way in every decision which affects their welfare or the part they are to play in industry. = The democratization of industry, extending in many cases to giving shop committees of workmen equal rights with stockholders in the management of business, has made great strides in England and other European countries. What Mr. Wilson wants, evidently, is something of the same sort in the United States, to forestall such a condition as that existing in Russia, where the workers run the businesses without consulting the stockholders in the least. The chief criticism of President Wilson’s pronouncement on the labor question is that he is extremely vague as to how the re- form that he suggests is to be carried out. Possibly a definite plan has been formulated by his lieutenants and will be proposed to congress, but this does not appear in his message. This vagueness appears in other parts of the president’s mes- sage. He does not make it clear just what is to be done to encour- age the American merchant marine. Is it a ship subsidy plan that is proposed? On the tax situation the president urges the repeal of the taxes on retail sales and the retention of the inheritance taxes. Very good, so far. But instead of “revision” (downward) of the income and excess profits taxes, as urged in the Wilson mes- sage, it strikes us it would be better to go after the billions of war profits gathered before the United States was drawn into the European conflict, so that our gigantic war debt may be extin- guished at the earliest possible moment. v k We are frankly disappointed that Mr. Wilson is in such a hurry to return railroads, telegraphs and cables to private owner- ship. It looks, at first blush, as if the president thought the job of running these agencies were too big for the government to handle. In this manner the message undoubtedly will be inter- preted by the enemies of public ownership. e Probably President Wilson wrote his message, in these par- ticulars, with the attitude of congress in mind. The majority of the present congress undoubtedly wants all taxes on big business removed immediately and the railroads turned back to unrestricted private ownership. Probably President Wilson realized that it was a choice between revised taxes on excess profits or no taxes at all, and a choice between railroads turned back to the owners with some restrictions to protect the public or the railroads turned back with . no restrictions at all. If the press of the United States, instead of | playing the game of the profiteers and railroad owners, had given some support to the administration, President Wilson might have felt that he could have afforded to stand up for the full rights of SOME EARLY MIDDLEMEN HE first middlemen of the Northwest probably were located at the present site of The Dalles, Ore., on the banks of the Columbia river. At this point the river is narrow and a series of falls exist. As the salmon run up the river each summer to spawn, they are easily taken as they attempt to go over the falls. In the old days an Indian village existed at this point, known as Wish-ram. .It was visited by Lewis and Clarke and by John Jacob Astor’s party, sent to establish the trading post gf Astoria, more than 100 years ago. The explorers found a primitive market place set up. The Indians of Wish-ram caught the salmon as they came over the falls without much trouble, dried their flesh and packed the meat in small bales. The tribes from the mouth of the Columbia, something over 100 miles away, came up to Wish-ram, bringing the fish of the coast, the “wapatoo” or Indian potato, and other roots, berries and goods and trinkets secured from ships that occasionally touched on the coast. The Indians from the Rocky mountain regions also came down to the village of Wish-ram, with horses, bear grass, squammash and other commodities of the in- terior. The Indians of Wish-ram exchanged these goods cross- handed, taking a good-sized profit for their own uses out of each transaction. ; Washington Irving, in his history of the founding of Astoria, says: : : s The Indians of this great fishing mart (Wish-ram) are repre- sented by the earliest explorers as sleeker and fatter, but less hardy "~ and active, than the tribes of the mountains and the prairies, who ' live by hunting, or of the upper parts of the river, where fish is scanty ‘and the inhabitants must eke out their subsistence by digging roots or chasing the deer. ' Indeed, whenever an Indian of the upper ¢country is too lazy to hunt, yet is fond of good living, he repairs to the falls to live there in abundance without labor. “By such worthless dogs as these,” says an honest trader in his Journal, which now lies before us, “by such worthless dogs as these are these moted fishing places peopled, which, like our great cities, may with propriety be called the headquarters of vitiated principles.” The habits of trade and the avidity of gain have their corrupting effects even in the wilderness, as may be instanced in the members of this aboriginal emporium, for the same journalist denounced them as “saucy, impudent rascals, who will steal whenever they can and pillage whenever a weak party falls in their power.” 2 So it seems that in the earliest days of the Northwest the middlemen had a bad reputation. : The Leader would not insist that all middlemen are “worth- less dogs” and “saucy, impudent rascals,” but it is undoubtedly true that the lessons of history, from the earliest times, show that the highest standards of morality are held by those who “eat their bread in the sweat of their brows,” and that whenever any class is permitted to exist and live extravagantly without earning, it be- comes immoral, licentious and a danger to the community, just as were the crooked Indian traders of the village of Wish-ram. NAILING OHIO LIARS : RECENTLY there have come to this office 2 number of Ohio papers announcing that the Nonpartisan league was being ) organized in Ohio. Some of the papers have announced that President A. C. Townley was in Ohio, taking charge of organization work ; others stated that “H. F. Franks of Fargo, secretary to Mr. Townley,” was on hand to do the actual ‘work. . The Nonpartisan league is not being organized in Ohio. There is enough work for the League to do, between now and the 1920 campaign, in the “original thirteen” states in which organizations already have been started. Mr. Townley has not been in Ohio. Mr. Franks, whoever he may be, is not the secretary to Mr. Townley, and has no authority to represent the Nonpartisan league. “We will speak out, we will be heard Though all earth’s systems crack; We will not bate a single word, Nor take a letter back. Let liars fear, let cowards shrink, Let traitors turn away; Whatever we have dared to think, That dare we also say. : We speak the truth, and what care we - For hissing and for scorn, While some faint glimmerings we can see Of Freedom’s coming morn!” —James Russell Lowell.