The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, October 20, 1919, Page 3

“In the interest of a square deal for the farmers Official Magazine. of the Natlonal Nonpartman League VOL. 9, NO. 16 .ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, OCTOBER 20, 1919 A magazine . - < that dares. to. print the truth T » WHOLE NUMBER 213 . TheBankand GeorgeSchmidtofBeulah North Dakota Farmer, Facing Loss of Farm When Foreclosure Is Threatened Saves Home Wlth Looan From People’s Institution BY E. B. FUSSELL - i EORGE SCHMIDT was born in Russia 41 years-ago. Today he is a loyal American citizen. He Dakota. The - government ‘of much to George Schmidt. It gave him the opportunity to get -a start in life, to acquire a farm, to send his.children to school and to vote for - _the men who should govern the state and country. And so, as ‘a patriotic American citizen, George “ Schmidt is loyal to the United States. And he is .loyal to North Dakota. Why? Read this story of ‘George Schmidt in North Dakota and find out. . . Ten years ago George Schmidt and his wife ~thought they should have a farm home. They had _‘a family already—one girl, a baby in arms, an- “‘other two years old, another of four and a boy ‘of five, - They -had settled near Beulah, Mercer county, -in ‘western North Dakota. The father worked' in ‘the lignite- coal mines. He lived soberly and sen- sibly and saved his money. He thought he would like to try farming. = So he contracted to buy, for $3,355, a 320-acre farm, seven and -a half miles from Beulah. The Schmidt family moved on and while the father _ strung barbed wire fence and broke in his first 100 acres, the mother kept the little home for the ‘Schmidt family, looked after the babies, as more came, and. helped, too, to do her bit of the farm ~work. .For all of them wanted to get the farm paid for and have' the debt . lifted as soon as might be. Good luck helped the Schmidts. There were “‘good crops of wheat and ~while the price was not as high as they might have wished, they man- aged to make each year a_little more than they spent. ~They got some livestock, ' including two cows to provide milk for the babies, and ‘at the; end of each year they paid off more on the pur- “‘chase price of the land. - They improved the farm, ‘too, so that instead of ; " being merely a bare tract of land it became a real “Farm home with ‘a $2,000 cement ‘house ‘and good of obtaining. ham and’ sheds. -Year after year brought yarying - "2 crops, but by saving carefully, always for the .bena “.efit -of the’ little ones; who keption eommg, ‘they finally got the farm all paid for. ' And in the mean-: " time, due to the labor of the Schmidts and the new ulldmg up mcrease, nelghbors, who like themselves were Mercer county, the'land values began ‘“until the farm that cost George Schmidt $3,356 in . 1909 was_easily worth two or three tlmes that 3 much a few years later. BAD YEARS FORCE - MORTGAGING OF FARM ! But George Schmldt ‘found that bad luck can . come to a farmer as easily as good luck. The good. -weather that had helped him make a lwmg and - pay for his farm, took a change. A succession of' d.years came, ‘with light snowfall and no rain ‘months at a time, so that the fields would pro- only a third or a quarter of the normal-crops. rge. Schmidt had to go to the bank and “his prop;rty so th is also a loyal citizen of North ' the United States-has meant = - Above~The mud house in which the Schmidts lived when they first eame to the farm. Upper right—Mrs. Schimidt and her children. Lower right—Mouth of the lignite mine on the Schmidt farm, which the Beulah Mmmg company was desirous *"had to be done. .bad luck couldn’t keep up for- " was no better. It was, if anythmg, worse. The Schmidt family had to keep on living and the only thing to do was to go to the bank for another loan. Schmidt got his first: loan. for 8 : per cent; he had to pay 10 per. cent for his second one. On top of the bad luck with weather came a law- suit over some other property that Schmidt owned at Beulah. It dragged along for months and years, and lawyers and court fees -ate up the money as fast as the Schmidt farm and bank loans could produce it. ~ The - Schmidts, husband and, wife, were hard- working and economical,-so much so that Mrs. Schmidt used to go from their place in town to the farm to help him work. The c}nldren, staymg at the place in town, had to look after each - other. - . One «day the Schmidts came . back from the farm to meet another piece of bad news. One of the lit- tle girls, straying away from home while her father and mother were at the farm, had fallen down the shaft of a coal mine and- was killed. THere was still an- other bad year. Back to the bank ‘again. It took a good - “deal of talkmg this- time to - get another 10 per cent loan, ‘smaller:than_the other; but it ™ George - Schmidt knew the ever. - Some time it was bound to change. It did; it changed for the worse. not pay his faxes or interest on his mortgages. .. There "was " just one ;more chance for George ' Schmidt to keep on farming. That chance was given him because the farmer governor of North Dakota had called a special session of the. farmer legislature ‘to pass-a law .to allow counties to issue bonds ‘and lend ‘money to-drouth-stricken farmers to buy seed. ‘Schmidt got some of the nioney, put in a erop—and got hailed out. Tt was not a com- “plete loss—he saved some of the crop, but the re- -~ turns were pitifully small, : iy Thls was in 1918, In th meantlme there w‘as b © a lot of laws. _came a hail storm. the i Beulah territory and when it had passed every acre. The next year Schmldt did not even raise enough grain to provide him seed for the next year. He could Schmidt hLeard them talked about a good deal. Some said they would be great things for the farmers—the bank law and the home build- ing law and the hail insurance law and so on. . But there were others—mostly bankers and lawyers, who called themselves the “I. V. A.s”—who said ‘the laws were pretty bad. They said the men who passed such laws were as bad as .the Bolsheviki back in Russia, George Schmidt’s native country. -'They said the state would be bankrupted and taxes would be increased 200 or 300 per cent. They said ~hail insurance would cost farmers $1 an acre or more and it would be doubtful whether farmers " who.were hailed out would get any relief. Schmidt heard both sides talked a good deal Probably he heard more of the I. V. ‘A. side than the League gide, for the fact is that hé didn’t take ance. Possibly he figured that ‘hail was like lightning, and wouldn’t strike twice in the same place. haps he figured that he couldn’t spare the money (though as a matter of fact | he did not need to put up | any cash to get the state hail insurance). : CROPS WIPED OUT IN HAIL STORM With the help of the seed bonding law, Schmidt man- - wheat, 30 of oats and 10 of | barley. He owed the coun-: | ty $210 for seed _when he had put the crop in, besides his debts at the bank and four years’ unpaid taxes. many as there should have been, but enough to start kept on working hard, hop- - ing to get encugh from this |: year’s crop to repay Mercer ! lea8t, and probably enough to pay their taxes, unpaid for four years, and some of gages besides. The grain: . kept on growing. It was another dry year; but ‘it looked as -if the §CM1dh""_ thirds crop, at least. pects looked bright, there ' It cut a swath through the of grain on the Schmidt farm lay flat—this time a total loss. His neighbors were hailed out too. Some of’ b them suffered total losses. Those that had kept up their hail insurance got back from the state $7 per acre, nothing like what their crop; would have been worth but enough to pay fo! - seed and labor to put in another crop next _year.. Schmidt found out, afterwards, that h could have gotten this protection from th state for 35 cents an acre, instead of having _to pay $1 or more, as some of the lawyer! bankers had predicted. ‘He found, out -any ‘state- hail insur- ) Or . per- aged to put in 140 acres of | grain in 1919—100 acres of | ! There came rains, not as: |} the wheat and oats and bar- 1 ley. The Schmidt family | county for the seed loan, at | the interest on’ the mort-: | ‘would " get -a Thalf ‘or two- - And then, just as the ; grain was heading and pros- |