The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, September 29, 1919, Page 6

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R R R RS R S T 0 8 i % 2% Z 7 ///// 'é////// G i ~ onpartigsn Teader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League—Every Week Entered as second-class matter September 3, 1915, at the postoffice at St. Paul, Minnesota, under the Act of March 3, 1879. OLIVER S. MORRIS, Editor E. B. Fussell, A. B. Gilbert and C. W. Vonier, Associate Editors. B. 0. Foss, Art-Editor. Advertising rates on application. Subscription, one vear, in advance, §2.50% six months, $1.50. Please do not make checks, drafts nor money orders payz.ible to indi- viduals. Address all_ letters and. make all remittances to The Nonpartisan Leader, Box 575, St. Paul, Minn. R : 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 irresponsible 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 coiumns. PRESIDENT WILSON AND THE LEAGUE HATEVER we, as individuals, may think about President Wilson’s stand on the peace treaty and the covenant for the league of nations, there is one utterance delivered by the chief executive during his recent tour with which all right- thinking Americans can agree. The president was at Helena, capi- tal of Montana. He had been through Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana, the land of the Nonpartisan league farmers. He had been told, of course, by those who had charge of his reception in Minnesota, that the League farmers were unpatriotic “radicals,” bent on destroying the government. He probably had been told, also, the stock,K lie that the Leaguers believed in bolshevism and that 99 per cent of them carried bombs in their overalls pockets. : ; ; But in the meantime President Wilson had a chance to see nearly 15,000 North Dakota farmers at Bismarck. He had talked with Governor Frazier and other men elected to office by the farm- ers to right their wrongs in an orderly, constitutional way. And it is not surprising that the next day saw the president telling what he thought of the methods adopted to right wrongs. So long as things are wrong, Mr. Wilson declared, he does not intend to ask men to stop agitating. He will beg, he said, that they agitate in orderly fashion, will beg that they use orderly methods of coun- sel and, it may be, he said, will urge the slow process of correction - which can be accomplished through political action. This is the process used in North Dakota. Otherwise, said the president, there might be chaos. “But,” he went on, “as long as there'is something to correct, I say Godspeed to the men who are trying to correct it. That is the way to meet radicalism.” ‘ % President Wilson said he had been told the West was pervaded with “what is called radicalism.” But Mr. Wilson had evidently seen something for himself, for he said that what he had found was a widespread conviction that the conditions under which men live and labor are not satisfactory. “No use talking about political democracy unless you also have industrial democracy,” he said. “We have not finished dealing ‘with monopolies. With monopolies there can be no industrial de- mocracy. With the control of the few, of whatever class or kind, there can be no democracy of any sort. The world is finding this out—Ssome portions of it in.blood and terror.” : President Wilson’s declaration of the need for industrial de- mocracy restates what the Nonpartisan league has urged ever since it was organized. The president’s plea for reform through political means_.is a flat indorsement of League methods. The president is right when he says that the existence of industrial autocracy threatens political democracy. ' It is particularly significant that President Wilson’s statement was made in the capital of Montana, where political democracy is bought and sold by the copper barons. e With President Wilson’s statements every League member c¢an be in perfect accord. With him we can say, “Godspeed” to the men who are working to correct present conditions. In the lan- guage affected by the president, may we not also express the present conditions, before it is too late. fervent wish that his statements be converted into deeds, to help® IN THE WORLD'S EYE denominations with 200,000 individual churches, ann6unces M 2 nation-wide survey to learn what is wrong with rfural con- ditions. While the main purpose of the organized farmers is not to protest, but to use their own strength to remedy their wrongs, they THE Interchurch World Movement, representing 76 \Protestant 2 v S Z : " G wr '///// Vé/]lj 7//////// ‘léf///% racted. . L C1 % A NEW TEST OF AMERICANISM Y, A Sy, % N\ NN\ 4 editorials in the controlled press and congressional flubdub. One paper remarks that everybody who opposed going to war with Germany is now opposed to intervention in Mexico. A congressional investigation is called and an officer of the League of Free Nations association is haled before the congressional com- mittee. The committee, it is reported by the Associated Press, by “sharp cross-examination brought out that the association had sent out literature to quiet any demand for intervention by the United States.” This is played up in newspaper headlines as “Propaganda Is Found in U. S.” Horrible, isn’t it, that any Amer- ican should be found urging peace instead of war! The plain inference intended by the congressional committee and the controlled papers is, of.course, that any one who opposes going to war-with Mexico is anti-American. ‘While we are about it why not go a little farther and provide that any one against any kind of a war at any time is anti-American? _ i ; If that shall be the test, then we may take it that our patri- otism as well as our policies must always have the official approval of Wall street, the international bankers, the munition makers, the steel trust and others of the 17,000 new war millionaires and the others who had their millions before the war. The propaganda from the interests with big investments in : r'] ,\HERE is to be a new test of Americanism, it appears fl:om . Mexico who so greatly desire intervention is not investigated, yet it would stand ‘investigation less readily than the League of Free Nations, who, the astute senators found, are opposing intervention by propaganda. ; The Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico is one of these organizations. Its propaganda is spread over the country, on the first pages of the press, But that is never in- vestigated by congress. : : : v The old-line newspapers are throwing their whole strength behind the intervention move. Yet Mexico on the whole is fol- lowing established international precedent in-the matter of treat- ing aliens. The senate, which has just passed the notorious oil- leasing bill, has provided that none of these leases shall be made to aliens except on presidential warrant. Mexico did that, and the oil barons and mineral right grabbers are now urging intervention. It makes a difference who the “aliens” are. - - Now the Mexican government has taken another leaf out of the diplomatic book of other nations and has refused passports to persons who refuse to sign a release of obligations to Mexico. if Eheg are attacked by bandits in places where bandits are known o be. ; ) g There is not one good excuse for war with Mexico except that provided by the interests which will profit by war with Mexico— profits—and it is rather doubtful whether mothers whose sons have just returned from France will consider even that an adequate excuse. R CONVERTING LEGISLATORS EMBERS of -the house of representatives of the Minnesota leglsla.ture, at the regular session last spring, cast only 64 M votes in favor of a tonnage tax on iron ore, to devote to the interest of the state some of the steel trust profits, and thesbilk lost. The same house of representatives, at the special session this fall, cast 101. votes for tonnage tax and the bill passed. Why th;s sudden change? This is the reason: In between the regular session and the special session the legislators got' a chance to hear from the League farmers and the labor men. Some were asked the embarrassing question, “How much did you get for voting against tonnage tax?” They dared not vote “no” again. But are these men really converted? of heart apt to be lasting? Electing men the better way. - Are overnight changes who can be trusted is The press, important as is its of- fice, is’but the servant of human in- - tellect and its ministry is for good or evil, according to the character of those who direct it. The press is a mill that grinds all that it puts into its hopper. Fill the hopper with poisoned grain and it will grind it to . meal, but there is death in the bread. —WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. > are gratefulvfor the attention that their fight has att. it ‘u&.u-m‘_flwm‘&.;g ST ps DS 5 R P e e R P AR S T et

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