The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, July 21, 1919, Page 7

* Kites to the tail of business men’s organizations, serving the pur- - poses of sinister interests which want to exploit the soldier vote and keep the men lined up for reactionism in politics and economics, it will be because of just such publications as we have mentioned. . .. The Dugout is published monthly by the War Veterans’ Pub- lishing company, 301 Mason Opera House building, Los Angeles; - subscription $2 a year. - : The Soldiers-Sailors-Marines National Weekly News is pub- lished by the New World Publishing company, 626 F street N..W., Washington, D. C.; subscription $1 a year. : Both publications are gotten out entirely by returned oversea men. Congressman Baer, whose work also appears in the Nonparii- san Leader, is drawing cartoons for the Washington publication. Congressman J. H. Sinclair of North Dakota has written “an article for a recent number of the paper, and all the North Dakota delegation in the lower house is supporting the paper’s campaign for extra pay bonuses for the men who served in the .great war. : . The Los Angeles publication was recently persecuted in the newspapers as being intended to stir up trouble among the soldiers and as having ‘“Bolshevik tendencies,” neithér of which charges can be true, if we are to judge by the contents. The.newspaper attack on the Dugout was inspired by big busi- ness politicians who failed to secure the suppression of the publi- cation, which was finally approved by federal authorities. The at- tempt at suppression was on the ground that a cartoon contained in the June issue was seditious. It pictured a soldier being forced by bayonets labeled “Unemployment” toward “Bolshevism,” repre- sented as a sun rising on the other side of a chasm filled with water, into which the soldier was being forced. The caption was: “Don’t Drive Him to Bolshevism”—certainly an argument against bolshe- vism and a plea to suppress it by -fair treatment of returned enlisted men. : : : THE FATTED FEEDERS HE heavy hand of the packing trust again falls with.more I than usual heaviness on the producers of cattle. Last spring there was a great propaganda about the nation-wide shortage of cattle and about the profits to be made by fattening cattle. Farm- ers who made a practice of fattening loaded up heavier than usual; many other farmers entered the field. Government figures would indicate that the farmers bought 96,000 more stockers and feeders from the central markets in the first five months of 1919 than in the same period of 1918. - - Now that fat cattle are largely ready for the market, behold the " “market” breaks badly and many a farmer received less for the primed cattle per hundredweight than he paid for the same cattle before fattening. The packing trust wins again. : There is no way to prevent continued winnings except through government ownership of the railroads and the packing plants, as is the rule in Europe. ; CLEAN AND DIRTY CAMPAIGNING HATEVER the charges have been against the Nonpartisan league and its methods, the organized farmers: have yet even to be accused of dirty campaign work or trickery. The League always has and always will go before the voters with frank argument and discussion, relying on the intelligence of the voters to understand the real issues. Not so the opposition. The U’Q_‘f %\’IN 54 j/ CLBSS BY MV ( SELF. e R N ey 7 BORON, MOACH, AND BNENBS. o conspiracy to fasten disloyalty and pro-Germanism on the League last year, resulting in a reign of terror and judicial persecution in several states, the echo of which is now being heard at the trial of A. C. Townley on the ridiculous charge of discouraging enlistments, is too recent to be forgotten. : Not profiting by the failure of such methods, the Independent Voters’ association in North Dakota resorted to dirty methods just as contemptible and futile during the referendum campaign just ended, in which the voters, by overwhelming majorities, approved seven of the acts of the farmers’ legislature carrying out the in- dustrial program. : \ For instance, official looking but fraudulent documents were gotten up by the thousands and served on farmers in Russo-Ger- man localities in the western part of the state. These fake notices * informed farmers that their land was to be taken away from them by the state under the terms of some of the League industrial bills giving the state the right of eminent domain. : SREY : Governor Frazier has announced that he will investigate some of these methods, which seem clearly to be violations of the corrupt practices act. V. A. representatives or sympathizers guilty should feel the\f'ull rigor of the law, if, as seems to be the fact, . . the North Dakota statute enacted to secure honest elections has been violated. .. - Mt S i S _ PAGE SEVEN - R R, = E € R T A A T 0 O SR B e i 303 43, A8 155 e CHILDREN OF CHANCE ROBABLY every one in the United States who has discussed P the Willard-Dempsey fight has heard the remark about how absurd it is for men to get such great rewards for such little effort. Yet it doesn’t so often occur to us that the evils of our so- ciety, the threat of bolshevism or whatever other name we may have for industrial unrest, arise mainly out of the ‘fact that we have been trying to run society on the same plan. We have been trying to feed, clothe and make happy an immense number of peo- ple on a chance or luck system of distributing great rewards. Mil- lions run in the race; there are far too few prizes to go around; how then can the others be taken care of ? : There is our method of disposing of natural wealth, for in- stance. Minerals go to the person who happens to own the surface above them. Pure chance! Think of ignorant, shiftless Oklahoma Indians receiving millions in oil royalties every year; of lumber com- panies which have bought land for lumber and then discover through the aid of the state geologist that the land has iron or cop- per hidden below; of land companies made immensely rich because they took up land near great sources of water supply. Then there is the great crop of millionaires who get already discovered natural resources for a fraction of their value and make fortunes by charg- ing big tariffs through political power. ; ; . Another group fattens on humanity’s need for the surface of the land. A few happen through pure chance to settle on or buy great tracts near what later becomes an important port, an impor- tant manufacturing center or a trading center, and we allow these owners to extract every penny of what this land is worth to- society. ' Still another group of the fortunate children of chance are those who inherit vast fortunes by accident of birth. The present generation of Goulds, Vanderbilts, Morgans, Rockefellers dominate American industry and suck the financial blood out of it by this means. . Some of these fortunate persons have exhibited strong personal traits. Some may have been able to forecast what society is going to need, but in no case was the actual talent displayed deserving of such big rewards. The result of it all is to leave us as a nation with the greatest debt to special interests because we have the greatest resources. For more than two generations we have been transform- ing the natural gifts of the Creator into public liabilities. We meet these liabilities in the absurd prices of our coal, iron, oil, lumber and other products which the present owners did not create but have expropriated. : INTERNATIONAL AXIOMS RITING on the peace conference in Paris, the correspond- ent of a group of American newspapers states that the / American delegates have become - disillusioned through their attendance at the sessions, and that they have a new in- sight into world politics. He says these men came to Paris expecting to apply liberal principles, and that they will go home admitting frankly that these principles can not be applied to the world in its present condition. He then goes on to give a set of axioms which he asserts have made the deepest impression on the American delegates. These axioms are: 1. No nation will act voluntarily against what it considers its own best interests. 2. In affairs of state, material interests will take precedence over moral interests, although the latter are not negligible. 3. The rights of small or weak nations are only such as large and powerful nations may. accord them. 4. No powerful nation is at present willing to cede the least jot of its full sovereignty. ; 5. ‘Therefore no league of nations with supra-national authority is now possible. : 6. In the present state of civilization, no nation can afford to. * trust its safety to the good will of others, If strong, it must show readiness to defend itself; if weak, it must seek strong protectors. L 7. Changes in the present relations between nations can come only slowly and as a natural growth. These are the very beliefs that launched the world war. They are the beliefs for which we fought Germany. They are the beliefs that America entered the war to crush. The set of axioms forms the code of imperialism that drew the peace treaty, which is little better than the treaty of Vienna, so ° roundly abused in the press when the peace conference met. ' Thus we are brought back to the old theory of statecraft, so ably expounded by ancient Rome, that might makes right. / ) But Rome was frank in declaring that strength of arm and ', the weight of the sword were her sole moral considerations. In these days it has become the fashion to hide in high-sounding phrase the real purpose. Therein lies the chief difference.