The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, January 5, 1920, Page 6

TNonnartidan Teader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League—Every Week Entered at the postoffice, St. Paul, Minn., -as second-class matter. OLIVER S. MORRIS, Editor. Subscription, one yedr, in advance, $2.507: six months, $1.50. rates on classified page; other advertising rates on application. make all remittances to The Nonpartisan Leader, Box 575, St. Paul, Minn. Mem Audit Bureau of Circulations. The S. C. Beckwith Special Agency, advertising repre- sentatives, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City. Classified advertising Address all letters and ber of Irresponsible firms are not knowingly advertised. Readers should advise us promptly if they have occasion to question the reliability of any advertiser. DOES IT MEAN ANYTHING? HE packers spent millions of dollars in advertising and pub- licity, in many cases amounting to newspaper subsidies and bribes, to prove to the public that they were not a monopoly, that prices to the consumer were at the lowest possible level and profits negligible. Think of the tons of good white paper used by the servile editors who dashed nobly to the defense of the packers and attacked with malice and viciousness the federal trade commission, which in various reports gave the facts and figures of packer monopoly and profiteering! Only a month or so ago there was a great “exposure” and “scandal’” in congress concerning the. trade commission. Its trade experts and investigators were “red radicals,” “Socialists” and “Bolshevists,” said Senator Watson. Front pages in every city and hamlet gleefully recorded the “fact,” . and labored editorials solemnly or indignantly pointed the moral. And now the packers submit to a partial dissolution of their monopoly, under pressure of a government anti-trust suit, and the Associated Press announces that meat and other food prices will come down. Thus everybody, including the packers themselves, now admit the truth of the federal trade commission’s charges. The promise. of the packers, “for the good of the public,” to disassociate themselves from the grocery, fruit, grain, fish and other lines, which they have reached out to monopolize along with meat, and to confine themselves strictly to meat packing, is a moral victory for the people, because it is an admission by the packers that a monopoly did exist and that profiteering was the result. It is also a moral victory for the people because it has vindicated the federal trade commission, the Nonpartisan league =V \\1 and other progressive organizations and agencies, which have led the fight to curb the packers. But, with the “dissolution” of the Standard Oil monopoly such recent history, will the public be con- vinced that the attorney general and packers are not doing a little camouflaging—that the same aggregations of capital, controlled by the same inner group, will not continue, under cover, to build up and perfect what is already the world’s most gigantic monopoly ? There is a hope of real permanent good in the recommendation of the government that the farmers take over control of the stockyards, which the packers are to relinquish. But government ownership and operation of the stockyards, to preserve a fair and open public market for livestock, is the real solution. It will be desirable, in the absence of state or federal-owned stockyards, for -farmers’ companies to take them over, but what is to prevent pack- er interests organizing “independent” companies, perhaps actually masking as farmers’ organizations, to run the stockyards? . THE COAL SITUATION NEW turn After the miners had accepted the governmerit’s offer of a 14 per cent increase pending further investigation and had returned to work, the operators announced that they would not agree to the proposal. They had previously indicated that this proposition was acceptable. It is a clear case of bad faith, if not actual breach of contract, on the part of the operators. It remains to be seen whether the government will bring criminal prosecu- tions against the operators, as it did against the miners. President " Wilson, if he had taken over the mines in the first instance, would have been saved a lot of grief. Meanwhile North Dakota, with state operation, continues getting coal. ORGANIZED LABOR’S STAND ONPARTISAN league farmers, who have been so closely co- operating in politics with union labor in Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and other states, will find additional evi- dence in the recent manifesto of the American Federation of Labor conference, proving that in their chief aims farmers and city work- ers are agreed and are making no mistake in uniting politically. The labor conference, for instance, declared that banking and - has been taken in the coal strike situation.. PAGE SIX credit are essentially public functions. One of the first things the organized farmers did, when they got control politically of North Dakota, was to establish a state bank. o The conference demanded a voice for labor in the control of industry, as a remedy for present industrial autocracy. The farm- ers long have demanded a voice in the great business and com- mercial agencies which now handle, market and fix prices on their products without farmers having any say about it. The conference indorsed the Rochdale co-operative movement. The organized farmers are the world’s greatest co-operators. The labor conference demand for two more years of public operation of railroads, pending the working out of an adequate mousm’zi[l , %DEMOCQRCY 2 government ownership plan, is identical with a clause in the recent manifesto of the national committee of the Nonpartisan league. _ Everything farmers have gained in the past and will gain in the future was and will continue to be due to organization and col- lective action, and farmers naturally will be sympathetic with la- bor’s reassertion at this conference of the right to organize and bar- gain collectively. The conference might well have been more defi- nite in outlining plans for obtaining its demands with the aid of political action, not as a third party, perhaps, but in co-operation with farmers in using farmer-labor balance of power to nominate and elect progressive men on the old-party tickets. The confer- ence did, however, say that “all workers, whether of the city or the country, mine or factory, farm or transportation, have a common path to tread and a common goal to win.” : A NEW CANARD HE anti-League press evidently needs new lies badly.. The Milwaukee Journal recently quoted one “Fred J. Rist, former deputy tax commissioner of North Dakota,” as stating that A. C. Townley and William Lemke told him the Nonpartisan league paid half the cost of defending Victor Berger in his recent espionage act trial. Neither Mr. Townley nor Mr. Lemke ever met Rist. The League neither paid half of Berger’s defense costs nor any other portion. League books are open to ‘examination by members as to this and other matters. Rist, we understand, is a political hack employed at various times by Langer, Doyle and other League enemies in North Dakota. Some stories against the League have a tiny bit of truth concealed somewhere; this one is a lie from beginning to end. IT IS TO LAUGH ATUS C. SMITH is one of the most successful North Dakota D farmers. His farm is known throughout the Red River val- ley as a model. He has farmed for 30 years in the state. Mr. Smith is a cultured, educated gentleman. The Leader has ben- efited many times from his advice. Mr. Smith is spending the present winter at Pasadena, Cal., from where he wrote recently to Theodore Roosevelt Jr. regarding the League. I wrote him (says Mr. Smith in a letter to us) calling his at- tention to attacks being made on the Nonpartisan league by some misinformed branches of the American Legion, and suggested that he use his great influence to prevent such unjust charges—that is, charges of sedition—and gave him some proofs of the loyalty of the League and its membership. Mr. Smith, who is old enough to be the papa of the aspiring young statesman of New York, was somewhat startled when he received an answer from young Teddy making the stupid assertion that the League had some connection with “red Socialists, the I. W. W.s, etc.,” and ending with the following gem: I can not but feel, my dear sir, that you represent a class of those who have been hoodwinked by the clever, unscrupulous actions of the leaders of the League: . In sending young Roosevelt’s letter to us Mr. Smith modestly points out that he believes 30 years of farming in North Dakota ) <9 EYOU@;AZLW} YOU HRVE BEEN MIS~ 3 LED ) RN LIONY YEARS o K have given him an understanding of issues and conditions in that state equal, at least, to that of a New York “kid” who has probably never been in the state. We will add that a broad education and a lifetime spent in studying political and economic problems, to- - gether with a devotion to progressive measures and an interest in . public affairs that makes him the model of a good citizen, have- given Mr. Smith qualifications for judging North Dakota conditions as far superior to young T. R.’s as the light of the sun at midday is to the uncertain flickering of a greasy candle. Young Teddy has much to learn concerning the great wide world if he is even to be a poor imitation of his great father.