The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, September 8, 1919, Page 3

s b a . =) k/ 2y P B - " business meetings. In the interest - of a square deal for the fairmers ) Nonpartidan Teader Official Magazine‘ of the National Nonpartisan League VOL. 9, NO. 10 ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, SEPTEMBER 8, 1919 —————————————————— [ A magazine that dares to print the truth WHOLE NUMBER 207 North Dakota Mill Grinds First Wheat People of Drake Celebrate Opening of State Enterprise—Farmers Are Paid Full Milling Value for Grain Bismarck Bureau, . Nonpartisan Leader. 7] UGUST 20 was a red letter day -Tn the history of the American farmer. There was a celebra- tion at Drake, N. D., which was heard around the world by those who have their ears to the ground for the coming of the New Day. - Hundreds of farmers and business men gath- ered at Drake with state officials to hold a jollifi- cation meeting. That very morning the state had taken over the plant of the. Drake Grain & Milling company, and was grinding the first flour in the first mill operated by and for the benefit of the people in the United States. Farmers in that lo- cality, for the first time in their lives, were being paid full value for their wheat. _‘The meeting took -place in the town hall; there was not room for all those who had come into the little city, de- spite the rush of threshing operations on the prairie farms of the region, and the crowd overflowed out to the sidewalk ‘and was jammed inside the’ hall to the utmost capacity of stand- ing room. It was an event none of the significance of which was lost by those present, as none of the history- making features of the day were over- looked by the farmers throughout North Dakota and the Northwest. For this mill marks the breaking of the bonds of the exploiter, the grafter and the profiteer. It is the beginning of the realization that the people have gone into big business’ own game; it marks the opening of the era of the square deal for the farmer and the city man, the producer and the con- sumer. BUSINESS MEETING OF DIRECTORS, STOCKHOLDERS There was cause for celebration. It was a holiday crowd, but as a festival the sessions at Drake were excellent The people were present with those state officials who have remained true to the farm- ers’ program. It was a business ‘meeting pure and simple; the voters, who are the stockholders, were there to hear from their directors, the state officials, what their program was. There was no oratory;-the profes- sional poelitician had no place on the program; spread-eagle screaming and political bunk were missing. What are your plans? the people asked, and John Hagan, commissioner of agriculture and la- bor; J. A. McGovern, manager of the mill and elevator association, and Doctor John H. Worst, commissioner of immigration, answered them as nearly as they could, without indulging in flights of promise which the nature of the celebration, to the person accustomed to professional politicians, might have made appropriate. But these things were brought out in the course of the discussion: ot 1. That the Drake mill, which is of small ca- pacity, will remain as it is for a few weeks or months. It will become the laboratory wherein the -state will prove its theories are facts; which will upplant rhetoric with accomplishment, and lay the . foundation of experience for the speedy develop- - ‘ment of the huge system of state mi}_ls__and ter- AT ) - mill there. minal elevators which the voters of North Dakota have indorsed. . ; 2. That the state officials who have remained loyal to their pledges to the people, as contrasted to the renegade professional politicians who crept into the-state capitol through hypocritical preten- sions, are not only farmers, but good business men. They intend to proceed on facts; to know from ex- perience what they can do and can not do. 3. One of: the first things—it was being done that very day—was to institute an honest sys- tem of buying wheat for which the farmers of North Dakota have been battling for years; to eliminate the graft that has roused the people to bloodless revolution against the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, the exploiting banker and the milling trust. Wheat was being bought at the Drake mill that day on the basis Above—In front seat, Mr. and Mrs. Peter‘Johnson and little daughter. Johnson is the farmer who organized Drake’s campaign to get the first state In back seats, left to right, A. W. Luehrs, secretary state mill and elevator association; Oscar Johnson, Robert Muir of the board of admin- istration, John Hagan, commissioner of agriculture and labor, and J. A. Mc- Govern, manager of the state mill and elevator association. - The Anamoose Boys’ band, which furnished the music for the celebration. of milling value, and not upon the discrimina- tory grading system designed to fill the pocket of the miller and speculator and ‘plain thief. 4. That ‘from the Drake mill the people for the first time will learn the actual cost of producing breadstuffs from the grain. The farmers will get full value for their wheat—that is the prime pur- pose. But the farmer, the laboring man, the clerk and the capitalist, who have been systematically held up by millers, will be enabled to learn the truth as to what milling costs are. And once the people learn the truth, exploitation can be -elimi- nated.: The lack of data that is accurate and un. colored on the costs of manufacture and distribu- tion is the great cause of the present evils of profi- teering. Big business will be, forced to compete, however tight its combinations may be, with the PAGE THREE 14 ’ people themselves, who keep their own books and can base their judgment of the profiteer on facts, not on poisoned propaganda. 5. That a new era of co-operation, based on mu- tual advantage rather than on the advantage of the town alone, has opened up. The business men of Drake, coming to their senses and realizing that the prosperity of the surrounding country meant their own prosperity, and that its hard times meant hard times for them, have been working with the farmers for the last year. They organized, and the town of Drake carried for the seven referred laws in the referendum campaign by an overwhelm- ing majority. Under the leadership of Peter John- son, a farmer living near the town, they continued their organization and fought tooth and toe nail and succeeded in impressing the industrial com- mission at Bismarck with the natural and trans- portation advantages of Drake as the site of the first state-owned mill. These were the high lights of the history-making day. The Drake mill today has only 125 barrels capacity. It will be supplant- with a plant and elevator of from 750 to 1,000 barrels daily capacity. Other mills will be erected-in other parts of the state also in time for next year's crop. But the important fact is that the industrial commission’s policy will be developed by experience at the Drake mill. Governor Frazier and John Hagan are farmers, but they are sound business men and will not shoot in the dark; a fact which is worthy of the consideration of those chiefs of big business who themselves have been known to make costly mistakes very often through proceeding on guesswork rather than data. GRAIN IS BOUGHT AT ITS MILLING VALUE But there wasn’t any theory about state ownership of mills to the farm- ers who were so fortunate as to live in the neighborhood of Drake that day. Speculation on benefits had ceased and this is why: Grain was being bought at its milling value. For example, there is that classification which the farmer and the grain dealer know as “mixed grain”; wheat which may contain as much as 10 per cent rye. Despite the fact that it has been proved that wheat with 7 or 8 per cent rye is just as good for milling purposes -as - the top grade wheat, mixed grain sells in Minneapolis for from 60 to 80 cents less than the higher grade to which it is equal in quality. In Drake that day that one-time difference which went to the miller or the spec- ulator, was going into the pocket of the farmer who produced the wheat. And the same thing was true of the other processes of establishing the actual value of the grain as related to the prevailing market price. The farmer was get- ting what belonged to him. Of course, for the present few weeks or months, those farmers living in the immediate neighbor- hood of Drake from necessity will supply the mill with grain. But as soon as the great expansion of the plant takes place the whole ‘northwest sec- tion of the state will obtain the same advantages (Continued on page 14) ed in time to handle next year’s crop- ) L S RSl e S S