The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, November 3, 1919, Page 6

N\ é §\\\\\ AN Y, Yy, é///’/. 2/2‘ ty, . 4 % //////5 '/é////// Yy . e gy, / % Y Nonpartigsn Teader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League—Every Week Entered as -second-class matter September 8, 1915, at the postoffice at St. Paul, Minnesota, under the Act of March 8, 1879. OLIVER 8. MORRIS, Editor : E. B. Fussell, A. B. Gilbert and C. W. Vonier, Associate Editors. B. 0. Foss, Art Editor. Advertising rates on application. Subseription, one vear, in advance, $2.50; six months, $1.50. Please do not make checks, drafts nor money orders payable to indi- viduals. Address all leiters and make all remittances to The Nonpartisan Leader, Box 575, St. Paul, Minn. - . .\lEMBER_OF AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS THE S. C. BECKWITH SPECIAL AGENCY, York, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City. Advertising Representatives, New Q.uack, fraudulent and irresponsible firms are not knowingiy advertised, and we will take it as a favor if any readers will advise us promptly ehould they have occasion to doubt or question the reliability of any firm which patronizes our advertising coiumns. . THE FARGO BANK CASE g T LAST the public knows the full truth about the case of the Scandinavian-American bank of Fargo. The supreme court hearing at Bismarck last week has opened the eyes of thousands of people. The hearing has proved conclusively that the Scandinavian-American is solvent now and was solvent at the time that it was closed; that it had an excess legal reserve under the method of calculation that has been in use uniformly; that the only possible ground for criticism was that a few of its loans were, though well secured, in excess of the legal limit, which is no ground under the law for closing a bank. It was proved also that Bank Examiner O. E. Lofthus, before the ‘wrecking crew stepped in and closed the bank arbitrarily, had ordered the reduc- tion of excess loans and that steps were being taken by the bank to comply with his orders. The laughable thing about the supreme court hearing was the way Assistant Attorney General Albert E. Sheets was un- 1 HAVIE NOTHING- BUT N [ BOO covered in evasion after evasion, quibbling with technicalities at every point and evading the main issues. Sheets, confessing that the bank probably was solvent by this time, still tried to insist that it was insolvent when he closed it. But Sheets had said, in closing the bank, that it was “hopelessly” insolvent, which meant, if it meant_anything at all, that there was no hope for bringing it to a condition of solvency. Yet Sheets was forced to admit that this bank which he had called “hopelessly insolvent” was brought to solvency in the short period of six days by Examiner Lofthus. Sheets and his helpers, who had been illegally in control for the six previous days, had done nothing toward making the bank solvent, ~but had -allowed its assets to be reduced $10,000 by a “loss” of collateral—to put it mildly. " ; Of course the Scandinavian-American never was insolvent, despite Sheets’ ridiculous assertion. _He was-unable to cite to the supreme court a single fact as proof of insolvency and was com- pelled, after being chased from one untenable position to another, to admit that no single item could be shown to indicate insolvency, but hoped that the court would lump altogether the many minor, quibbling, inconsequential points he tried to make, and declare that “taken altogether” they might amount to as much as a single valid .objection to the bank’s business. g But there is no logic in trying to pretend that any number of bad reasons are worth as much as a single good one. A thousand zeroes added together are still zero. The attempted bank wreckers lost their. case the minute they were forced into the open. And no one knows it better than they do. EXPLAINING THEIR ATTITUDE PERHAPS no newspaper outside the immediate League terri- tory has been so virulently opposed to the farmers’ organiza- tion as the Chicago Tribune, self-styled the “world’s great- est newspaper.” Whenever there was a League victory, the Trib- une was the first to belittle it. Whenever one of the League en- em'es made a statement, no matter how absurd or far-fetched, the Tribune echoed and applauded those remarks. . : The Nonpzartisan leaguers are styled ‘“red” by the Tribune. i L " PAGE SIX But wouldn’t it be surprising to find that one of the owners of that same Tribune has uttered sentences that are far more “red” than anything the League has advocated? One of _the Tribune’s owners has done that very thing, according to a quotation from the book of Colonel Joseph Medill Patterson, “Confessions of a Drone,” which have been dug up by the New Majority, Chicago labor paper. In this book, written in 1905, Colonel Patterson said: . Be it remembered that wherever the first' person pronoun is used, it is used to represent the type and not the individual. I have an income between $10,000 and $20,000 a year. I spend all of it. I produce nothing—am doing no work. I (the type) can keep on doing this all my life unless the present social system is changed. My income doesn’t descend upon me like manna from heaven. It can be traced. Some of it comes from the profits of a daily news- ST STACH IT UP] HERES YOUR MONEY, SIR/ paper; some of it comes from Chicago real estate; some from the profits made by the Pennsylvania and other railroads; some from the profits of the United States Steel corporation; some from the profits of the American Tobacco company. I have never been inside a steel mill; and I know about tobacco only as a consumer. Yet the makers and users of steel and tobacco send me their little checks twice a year. I never have to dun them. It takes to support me just about 20 times as much as it takes to support an average WORKINGMAN OR FARMER. And .the funny thing about it is that these WORKINGMEN AND FARMERS work hard all the year round, while I don’t work at all. Not so funny for the WORKINGMEN AND FARMERS as for me, to be sure. Theé work of the working people and nothing else produces wealth, which by some hocus-pocus arrangement is transferred to me, leaving them bare. While they support me in splendid style, what do I do for them? Let the candid upholder of the present order answer, for I am not aware of doing anything for them. J The reason the whole capitalistic class doesn’t give away its money and go to work is because it doesn’t want to. It is quite sat- isfied with its present arrangement of luxury, dominion and idleness. And as long as the working class is satisfied with its present ar- rangement of poverty, obedience and laboriousness, the present ar- rangement will continue. g : . But whenever the working class wants to discontinue the present arrangement, it can do so. It has the great majority. X But, of course, the Tribune has to keep fighting the League, so that the profits from the newspaper may continue to maintain him in luxury and idleness. » SHAW ON AMERICAN WAR MANIACS HE ferocious sentences imposed in the United States on con- Scientious objectors and persons who expressed opinions against the war has attracted the notice of no less a person than Bernard Shaw, Says Mr. Shaw: Yet it was in the United States of America, where nobody slept the worse for war, that the war fever went beyond all sense and reason. In European courts there was vindictive illegality; in Amer- Jean courts there was raving lunacy. It is not for me to chronicle the extravagances of an ally; let some caridid American do that. I can only say that to us sitting in our gardens in England, with the guzs in France making themselves felt by a throb in the air as un- . the eminent British playwright and critic. mistakable as an audible sound, or with tightening hearts studying g (r/@m) (& Zg : ¢ L : h} O ‘ NON-COMBATANT EDITOR @ ¢ HAVING #15 DRILY HATE. the phases of the moon in London in their' bearing on the chances , whether our houses would be standing or ourselves alive next morn- ing, .the newspaper accounts of the sentences American courts were : passing on young girls and old men alike for the expression of opinions v_vhmh were being uttered amid thundering applause before huge audiences in England and the more private records of the methods by which the American war loans were raised, were 80 amazing that they put the guns and the possibilities of a raid clean out of our heads for the moment. * * X ; Not content with these rancorous. abuses of the existing law, the war maniags made a frantic rush to abolish all constitutional guarantees of ‘liberty and well-being. We have pointed out several times the singular fact that the war insanity increased with the distance from the battlefield. The \« -’ i & o > ¥ M Al & T 5 RO« & ¥ L - ~ - !- . L “ - » 4y K « - ol o -