The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, December 1, 1919, Page 4

30,000 and is growing rapidly. The Sun was the only newspaper weapon in the hands of the U. F. O. for their campaign, and did all it could to keep the aims of the new element in provincial politics be- fore the public; but it was a case of firing one shot - to the enemy’s six volleys each week. _ It goes without saying that there must have been a powerful personality behind the movement which has attained such a wonderful success in six years, and attained it by a steady, natural growth. That personality is the secretary of all the lines of U. F. O. dctivity, J. J. Morrison. Mr. Morrison has _always been a practical dreamer. He looks beneath the surface, and has a remarkably analytical mind, which never stops till it has reached the bottom of a question, and when it is a case of wrong condi- tions under which the people are living, he is just beginning when he gets to the bottom. On the platform there are few more_convincing speakers along economic lines. He is no orator, but he holds his farmer audiences closely for hours at a time while discussing the tariff, or taxation, or extravagant roads, or provincial expenditures. He marshals his facts well, and hammers them home with heavy blows of logic. Criticism of the fighting secretary is often heard, but his arguments have never been controverted, because he is speaking of facts as he knows them - from an intimate touch with human activities in the city and on the farm, and he is speaking to men who know them as he does, when they are pointed out. That is where the “vision” comes in—pointing out. It is not long since Ontario wag overwhelmingly agricultural, but in 1917, of a total population of 2,660,453, there were only 1,003,664 people to be found living in the townships. This means that there has been a gradual drift away from the farms to the towns and cities, for our total pop- ulation has steadily increased in the same period. In other words, farming was not profitable, . This was used with telling effect by Secretary Morrisons wherever he went, giving the figures for the county where he happened to be speaking. Dis- cussing the drift to larger centers, he showed it to be an outcome of the lack of rep:esentatlon accord- ed agriculture as an mdustry in the governments of sthe country, resulting in a condition where other industries flourished at the expense of farming. Ontario farmers have not taken a great deal of in- terest in the serious matters of government, but have left control of the old-line parties to the large interests who, as a result, control the government very largely. Combines have flourished brazenly in the province, and the attorney general has never taken action against them. (The attorney general was -one of the gloriously defeated Conservatives. in a proverbially “safe” riding.) Secretary Morrison was nobly assisted by a little (Continued on page 14) North Dakota and the Coal Industry Miners of State Return to Work Without Wage Increase Following Actlon of Governor in Taking Over Lignite Field of State Bismarck Bureau, Nonpartisan Leader. HREE main channels carry the 2| thought of the country today. Shall we have industrial des- potism? How shall the inter- ests of the public as consum- - ers be protected?. Or shall we have . industfial democracy, wherein lies the surest protec- tion of the rights of the peo- ple, not only as producers but as consumers.? Shall we continue to submit to the rule of financial oli- garchs; or shall we adjust the position of the pro- ducer so that he is protected as a consumer, with only a fair instead of unfair apportionment of pow- er and authority? These are the issues. lutions of these problems that we may read which way America is going. The coal strike has presented to the country, even more than the steel strike, a startling, atute-re- minder that every man, every citizen and every representative of the citizens, must adjust himself to an understanding of the fundamentals involved in the present industrial crisis if we are to be head- ed from the rocks of disaster. " The reactlonary newspapers—whlch unfortunate- ly are in the majority in the United States—with characteristic ostrich-like philosophy hides from its eyes the principles of the whole people and persists in laying the blame for the farmer’s and the laborer’s discontent upon - the shoulders of the farmer and the laborer alone. MEN DEMANDED - LIVING WAGE The coal strike was an out- cropping of the vital forces which has always distinguish- ed America, the striving of men for a fair deal. While op- erators were carrying on their unconscionable profiteering, le- galized when the nation was at their mercy in the heat of the war, men were working in the pits in the bowels of the earth for a wage that in no sense was adequate to the cost of living. The war was over. The men decided it was time to bring up wages. An average . wage of $1,229 a year, when government figures themselves say that an industrial family in these days ¢an not be pro- vided with the necessaries of life for less than $2,100 an- nually, no longer satisfied the miners. The result was that a mnation-wide coal strike was called and went into effect. And it went into effect for one reason only—the coal operators dodged the issue and refused .to negotiate with the men. . This fact must be taken into consideration when we read in the -majority of our newspa- pers that the miners ‘are an- It is in the proffered so-* archists and bent only upon forcing the people to suffer in winter cold. Without a doubt, no other kind of a strike, with the exception of a transportation conflict between employer and employed, so vitally could affect that part of the people which we classify as the publlc —in. other words, those people only indirectly in- volved in the battle who would obtain from victory of one of the other nothmg but the opportumty to keep warm. Government, which exists only by the consent of. the governed, faced in America the greatest need for decisive action since our entry into the world war. We are familiar with the attitude of the men in Washington toward profiteering during the war. They did not do anything successfully to curb it. There was much talk, but little action. Even remedial excess profits and high income taxes were passed on to be paid by the people. Fat incomes of the coal barons were jeopardized. The eontinued existence of unions in the steel mills, in the mines and on the railroads, as well as the vast organization of the farmers, all were threat- ening the special privilege of the profiteer. - Wall street determined that the unions must go. Organ- izations of workers must be scattered. The farm- er must give up his idea of joining together for the common good. - That was the secret decree that led to the coal strike. "And it was with the vital force of a real new freedom stirring in the breasts of all Americans— - whether they toil on the farms, or in the workshops or behind the counters in the stores—that the coal miners, deciding it was (sufficiently clear to any Interior of a coal mine. " The demand of the men for a six-hour day and a five-day week, as- sailed in the press as a revolutionary demand, is in reality a demand for more rather than less work. It is'a demand for a worlnng year of 250 days, more days than o the average coal mmer has worked in the lustory of t,he country. _ PAGE FOUR " mind acquainted with the facts that the war with Germany was over, went upon strike. nation-wide movement of a great mass of men. They downed tools and quit. FRAZIER'S ACTION SAVED STATE FROM FREEZING That is, they quit in every state e?xcept North Dakota. And the reason they remained -at work there after being ordered out, was because they knew that they would obtain a fair deal from the state. government headed by Lynn J. Frazier, a man of the people, a statesman with the vision to . assort and classify all these contending forces of American agricultural and industrial life along just and balanced lines. Had it not been for Lynn J. Frazier and the wholehearted support of the staunch American liberty-loving farmers who were at his back:in every township and precinct in the state, North Dakota would be suffering from a fuel famine today that would take a horrible toll of ’life and inflict untold agonies upon an innocent bystanding people because certain autocratic pow- ers refused—to do what? To grant workingmen the gpportunity of negotiating as to the conditions under which they should work! To this little group of employing autocrats, the fate of a people in the earliest and most severe winter which the state has had in its history, meant nothing. They were fight- ing for a principle—the principle of private greed! Now you won't read anything of the foregoing sort in most of the newspapers of the United States. Not‘by any means. But you will read that the coal miners are anarchists, revolutionists and various kinds of preJudlce-breedmg “aliens.” In other words, you’ll read everything but the facts, for the simple reason that the high and mighty gentlemen who control the voice of the press have de- cided that it isn’t good for everybody to know the real facts of the coal strike. So-here are afewitems which help us appraise the issue be- tween democracy and autocra- cy—as between a. government for, by and of the ‘people in North Dakota and under Lymm J. Frazier, and an autocracy of Wall street which is too strongly suggestive to be dodg- ed in other parts of the Unit- ed States: First, North.Dakota miners were called on strike with their fellow workmen throughout the country. Governor Frazier .intervened with the miners’ chiefs and the strike in that state was’ suspended. News- the people that a strike never was ordered in North Dakota. Secondly, the coal miners of the country, 450,000 of them, aré still on strike as this is written. . The coal operators, through the agency of the United States attorney gener- al, had come to bat with a “safe”-judge and obtained an It was a™ ‘papers are now busy telling