The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, October 6, 1919, Page 6

Ly y ‘ll@, % wg %/?///0,‘ ///4?// W VZ- : % VI/%A 7 ? // /I//,% 'V% ¥ 7 % 7 7 % %2%,% Nonpartissn 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 8, 1879. ¢ OLIVER S. MORRIS, Editor E. B. Fussell, A. B. Gilbert and C. W. Vonier, Associate Editors. B. 0. Foss, Art Editor. ey el w s e SON SO SR s P 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 ail 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. : s Quack, fraudulent and irresponsible firms are not knowingiy ddvertised, and we will take it as a favor if'any readers will advize us promptly should they have occasion to doubt or question the reliability of any firm wnich'patrgnizes our advértising coiumns. A LEGISLATURE FLOPS ; HE Minnesota legislature last spring defeated the tonnage I tax bill, advocated by the Nonpartisan league to give the state a larger measure of return for the billions of dollars’ worth of iron ore being stripped from northern Minnesota by the steel trust. Now, six months later, a special session of the legis- lature, just adjourned, has passed the tonnage tax bill. Last spring the lawmakers voted to repeal the direct primary " law, but the repeal bill passed by the house differed in detail from the one passed in the senate, and the houses for lack of time failed to agree on the final form of the bill during the closing hours of the session. The special session, on the other hand, has decisively defeated a primary repeal bill, recommended by the governor, and the present election machinery stands by a positive vote of the lawmakers, instead of being preserved by mere chance, as was the -case last spring. - > What has caused scores of legislators to flop to.the opposite side of these questions in six brief months? Why did Minnesota’s lawmakers think it safe to serve the special interests of the state 5% LEGISLATORS EaR B “and their politicians last April and conclude it was unsafe in Sep- tember? league. a third of the total membership of the houses, were nevertheless indefatigable in their fight for the tonnage tax and to save the pri- mary. The League’s publications were ceaselessly active on these -questions during the six months which intervened between the reg- The answer is the growing power of the Nonpartisan ular session and the special session. The Minnesota League mem- bership, intensely alive to the issues, was busy during this time circulating petitions and writing letters to the lawmakers. Credit for the passage of the tonnage tax bill and preservation of the primary is freely given the organized farmers by the oppo- - sition daily press. THe Duluth Herald published a cartoon show- ing the League .controlling the legislature in the interest of the tonnage tax. The Daily Pioneer Press of St. Paul said that a “sys- tematic and far-reaching campaign against making any changes in the primary law has been conducted by the Nonpartisan league and- organized labor,” and attributed the legislature’s: flop entirely to that campaign. The Daily Minneapolis Journal began its report _ of the defeat of the primary bill by saying that “Nonpartisan " fight has only just begun. league members of the Minnesota house met with unexpected sup- port today in their fight to keep the primary election law as it now stands.” The special interest press and the governor not only know that they have been defeated, but by whom. : Governor Burnquist, beaten on every issue in the: special ses-. sion of the legislature, which in regular session last spring he so ~-_easily controlled, has signed his political death warrant by vetoing the tonnage tax bill. Instead of discouraging League members after their great victory on'the floor of the house and senate, the governor’s action has merely made plainer to them the need for the election next year of a chief executive friendly to League and labor principles, and has strengthened their arms and hardened their morale for the next campaign. x : Six months” agitation has clanged a hostile majority in the legislature to a friendly one, and made more apparent the need for . & governor who will serve the people and not the steel trust. The The League legislators, constituting, it is true, less than - T ; : THOSE FARMER “PROFITEERS” s .' Y O ONE of discernment will accuse the department of agri- N culture, under the present administration of Mr. Houston, with going out of its way to defend the farmer and criticize the middleman. Least of all will any one accuse the financial in- terests of overanxiety on behalf of justice to the producers. So when we run across a big national bank in one of its monthly busi- ness forecasts circulating figures given out by the department .of agriculture proving that farmers are not profiteers, it is pretty conclusive- evidence that those publications which are seeking to hang a charge of profiteering on the farmer are barking up the wrong tree. 3 The department of agriculture finds that farmers are now get- ting an average of 17 per cent more than a year ago and 7 per cent 2o CONSUMER e FARMER. more than two years ago for their principal crops. According to the same authority, the average price of all commodities, of which the farmer is as big a consumer as any class, has increased 23 per cent over a year ago and 16 per cent over two years ago.: In commenting on this situation, the Capital National bank of St. Paul says that “those.who believe that the farmer is getting 200 to 300 per cent increase in the price of his crops over a year or two years ago should particularly note these figures.” And this bank concludes that “the -principal part of the present gain (in the cost of living) seems to be lost somewhere between the producer and the ultimate consumer.” : We respectfully submit these figures of the department of agriculture and this bank’s comment on them to the many amateur sleuths on the daily papers who pretend to be trying to trace H. C. L. *to his lair, and who too often claim to find him in the price the farmer gets for his products. : THE NEW YORK TIMES i count for the supremacy of the organized farmers politically in North Dakota. A sage editorial writer in a recent issue of that paper asserts that the Nonpartisan league carried the state in 1916 “because ‘the wheat crop of that year was rich in what is locally called ‘Feed D, rusted, blighted, thin, shriveled wheat.” This learned critic goes on to say that Mr. Townley told the farmers they were “gulled” and “robbed” on this “Feed D,” and that he as- serted “more and better flour could be made from this wheat than from an equal quantity of Al, or No. 1 northern, or whatever is. prime or best in North Dakota wheat.” The farmers, assumes the mighty brain of the Times editor, were fools enough to believe this, and hence the political victory of the organized farmers in 1916! Now it happens that the so-called “Feed D” wheat played no part in the 1916 campaign. The first exposure of the robbery of the farmers on that year’s crop was made in the fall of the year, months after the sweeping victory of the League at the primaries in June, 1916, which assured the eventual victory in November. The farmers captured the Republican party and, in an overwhelming Republican state, made themselves absolute masters of the politics of the state long before it was known what the 1916 erop would be, and hence long before there was any intimation of “Feed D.” This is probably as near to accuracy as the Times can be ex- pected to get in comment on progressive movements, which it is to the benefit of the interests the Times serves to oppose. . Further- more, neither Mr. Townley, Doctor Ladd of the agricultural college, the Lead‘?r or anybody else ever claimed as good flour could be made of Feed D” as of No. 1. The only claim that was made was that the margin in price enforced by the mills and grain buyers between No. 1 and “Feed D,” on the basis of milling value was out- rageous—that with No. 1 wheat at $1, “Feed D” should. sell. for close to 90 cents, as against 85 to 45 cents per bushel paid in 1916 By the mills and elevator_s. The Times refers contemptuously to a savant of the state agricultural college,” on whose ‘investigations the farmers relied in claiming justice in “Feed D” wheat. Doctor - Ladd’s experiments are no longer, however, the . “ has been claimed concerning low-grade grain. - PAGESIX . . J e e Wi sole basis for what Hi . a- CCORDTNG to the New York Times it is very simple to ac- 8 experiments