The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, June 23, 1919, Page 14

e e A AR e ‘ A Comparison of Costs A graphic picture of the high cost of doing business is shown by the rise in a long list of commodity pricesduring the past five strenuous years. By the exercise of unparal- leled economies, telephone rates have been kept almost unchanged. The fact is, the increase in the cost of commodities has resulted in what is equal to a decrease in telephone rates. In . other words: The dollar which was spent for the telephone has bought more than twice as much as the dollar spent for the commodity. The activities of reconstruc- tion which are now upon the nation have put a great burden upon the telep'hon\e. This con- dition has made necéssary an advance in telephone rates. This advance does not ex- ceed an average of-eight per- cent; almost negligible as com- pared with the advances in other lines of industry, yet enough to cover the increase in the cost of operation. Only through adequate rev- enue can there be assured the maintenance of a high stand- ard of telephone service. AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY ’ AND ASSOCIATED COMPANIES ; One System PAYNESVILLE STOCK FARM THE HOME OF GOOD HOLSTEINS Paynesville, Minn. We are offering now a number of richly bred, selected and good specimens of HELLER’S HERCULES DUROC JERSEY BOARS They combine the blood of the Defender, Investor, Cherry King Orion and I am Golden Model Families. . : THE BEST THERE IS IN DUROC JERSEY AND HOLSTEINS. Owned and CONSIGNWOO I e YOUR Farmers . The Equity Co- Operatlve Exchange MINNMESOTA THANSFER ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA And Get the Highest Market Prices. Sacks m( Liberal Advances. Prompt Settlements, Tags Furnished. - Man of Forty Names” Assalls Writes to Farmers Whose Letters Appeared in- Leader and Never Uses Same Signature Twice any effort to change his handwriting ' He has the same flowing style with: ‘his pen that he evidently has thh hls- WRITER of popular fic- tion has created . char- acter which he described as “the mar® with 40 -faces,” But this charac- “ter of fiction is being rapidly overtaken by an itinerant cor- respondent in the Northwest—a man of 40 or so names. That the gentleman is a traveling salesman is -apparent from the sta- tionery He uses. He gets it from the hotels along the route. He also‘'reads the Nonpartisan Leader assiduously, but without intellectual benefit. Most of the persons to whom he writes are correspondents of the Leader, and the man of many names thereupon pens an entirely gratuitous attack on the writer of any Leader letter. He seems also to have some pet correspondents. For instance, Martin 0. Malvin of Saco, Mont., has become to feel slighted and hurt when alet- ter from the gentleman fails to ap- pear. His main interest in'the case is to discover the name at the end of the letter. ."The writer seems to have a fine choice of names. He has as many aliases as.a professional confidence man. Some of these names are re- produced on this page. But while he changes his name,” he doesn’t make tongue. > He has another pecuhanty ‘He gives his correspondent . his exact route. He'll write a letter “in ‘one town and mail it in the next, so that the recipient of a letter could trace the writer’s progress across the map like an inked fly across a sheet of -paper. . The gentleman has been makmg the attacks for a period of more than'a year. After a spell of quietude, he breaks out in an entirely new place, and the Leader becomes deluged wrfll examples of his art. This article is written, not because the Leader fears the writer of names may injure the League, but: for the - purpose of voicing the- pro- test of many of its readers to the attacks of a corre- his own name. The salesman, if he is such, and he very probably: is, be- cause he seems to cover a certain territory and ' write from the certain hotels-in the territory, is only putting ‘in writing what many others of his kind are putting .into spoken word. Traveling sales- e pointed out by Mr. Johnson < in an interview on another page in this issue of ‘the Leader, to spread the propa- ganda of the enemies.of the farnmier. ~Many of ' these salesmen are refusing’to be- come prune-peddlers for the enemies of the farmer, but there are some, like the man of many names, who spend much of the time they should be gathering orders and sending them to the home offices, attacking the League and the farmer movement. And the offices, no matter how: well he does their bidding in the matter of attacking the farmers, will show little hesitancy in cutting him off the payroll when his orders start to drop ofl’ North Dakota Tractor Law Attacked Letters in Implement Magazine Single Out Legislation in Farmer State—Political Ra‘ther Than Business Reasons: HE issue of the Farm Im- plements and Tractors magazine for May 29 contains a series of let- ters from manufacturers on the new North Da- kota law regulatmg tractor sales. This law, ih brief, provides that the ‘purchaser of gas ,or_oil, ‘burning trac- tors, gas or steam engines, harvesting or threshing machinery for his own use shall have a reasonable time after “ delivery for mspechon and testing. ~Nearly all the letter writers are op- : posed to the law, declaring that it will ‘act as a deterrent on sales of farm tractors and gas engines. They evi- dently weigh rather lightly the fact that of 200 or more different types of tractors on the market only a few are really practical for the farmer, and that poor machines kill the market for the better models. = : ! The state of Nebraska has a law |- with'a similar purpose, which puts all the tractor business under strict regu-- | ‘lation. ' Three competent engmeers at the state university are to examine the tractors- and the claims made in the ‘advertising. False assertions will be sufficient to bar the tractor from the state. Permits will be issued for sell- .| ing, and firms using the figurés of the : te - ote the whole - who have invested thousands of -dc Yet the North Dakota law is smgled ‘out for attack in this magazme, which : circulates among dealers-in farm im- plements. The Nebraska law i is mere- ly quoted. - One of the manufacturers, however. - who'dissents from the general opinion, has caught the spirit of the North:Da-- ‘kota law and evidently considers busi- ness rather than politics. His letter reads in part as follows: “This law will have undoubtedly a o disastrous = effect -on - experimental - tractors which are gotten up and gold principally for stock-jobbing proposi-- tions and which all the standard com- panies believe should be eliminated and the selling discouraged in every way possible, not only as a protection to the purchaser but protection against unbusinesslike methods and extremely : unfair competition. . “Where manufacturers who have been on:the market for years and whose goods have become lars in establishing a trade and w _are represented by branch houses see wherein they will be dlsturhed such a law, but on the contrary fited by lt. S ague -spondent‘Who dares. not sign men are _being used, it dis‘