The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, March 29, 1920, Page 3

In the interest of a square deal for the farmers VOL. 10, NO. 13. WHOLE NUMBER 236 Nonpartidin Tader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan Leaéue—-Every Week MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, MARCH 29, 1920 A magagzine that dares to print the truth $2.60 PER YEAR IN ADVANCE Farm Credits and Marketing in Europe The Condition of The author of this article, a student of _econom_ics of national reputation, has recently been appointed director of statistics and publicity for the Bank of North Dakota. Professor Roylance has spent many years in the study of the farm credits and farm-marketing systems of Europe and America. In this installment he treats of the con- ditions in Europe that made reforms necessary. In the second installment the actual working of the European co-operative system is explained and conclusions are drawn as to how to apply European experience in this country. BY W. G. ROYLANCE ==1T IS the purpose of this paper briefly to set forth the chief features of European systems of farm marketing and farm credit, and to explain those features through an analysis of the conditions under which they have grown, in order to determine what, if any, aid can be derived from the experiences of the old world in the solution of like problems in the United States. J In Europe ‘and in the British Isles, as indeed throughout the civilized world, three principal methods of marketing farm products are found: 1. The competitive system, conducted by indi- viduals or by private corporations for profit, each individual or corporation buying at the lowest prices possible and selling at the highest prices obtainable. 2. The co-operative system, oper- ated by associated producers and consumers, or both, the purpose be- 5 ing to secure the highest possible prices to- producers, the lowest to - consumers, or, if including both pro- ducers and consumers, to get prod- ucts from the producer to the con- sumer at the least possible cost. 3. Public markets, owned by mu- nicipal or state governments, and op- erated in the interests of the people. In Europe, as in this country, vastly the greater part of all farm products are marketed by the first method. As a rule the farmer has no share in the control of the mar- kets. He delivers his products to the mearest dealer or exchanges them with the local shopkeeper for the things he has to buy. He is still, in the great majority of cases, an isolated unit in the economic scheme. Until near the end of the last century the like was true with regard to the farmer’s credit. He either got along without credit or secured it from the local shopkeeper in the shape of a charge account, or from the local money: lender at what- ever usurious rates the latter chose to exact. IN ANCIENT TIMES FARMER WAS SLAVE Earlier in the history of civiliza- tion the condition of the actual pro- ducer of food products was no bet- ter, though there had been times and places where the situation of the owners of the land was incom- parably superior to that of the farm- er-owner of the modern period. In olden times the cultivator was a - slave; in the Middle Ages he was a serf. At the beginning of the modern era, in one country after another, he threw off the yoke of serfdom, only to find himself within a few genera- tions fast bound in the service of a new master, the lord of trade, who controlled his credit and his market, as the feudal lord had controlled the land. Indeed, in may localities, there was no interval be- tween the old and the new servitude. Long after the agricultural serfs had partially emancipated themselves from the absolute control of the lords over their persons, their families and the land they used, they were required to have their grain ground at the lord’s mill and their meal baked in the lord’s oven. They could buy salt and other special ar- ticles only from the lord. The lord dictated what they should plant and when and where they should sell it, and the price they should receive. During the industrial revolutions that ushered in the modern period the peasants, by associating to- gether in the manner of the mediaeval guilds, were sometimes able partly to control the prices of their products and of the things they had to buy. They established, in co-operation with the workingmen and trades people of the towns, public markets usually conducted in conjunction with the annual fairs. But one after another these free markets | FORECAST _FAIR AND WARMER _ | . an farmers whose governments were controlled by special intergs.ts. n ican farmers are righting such conditions by organized political action. PAGE THREE —Drawn expressly fdr the Leader by W. C. Morris. The article on this page tells of the discouraging conditions faced by Europe- Farmers and City Workers in the Nineteenth Century— Birth of the Co-Operative Movement - disappeared and all buying and selling came to be controlled by business and financial interests far removed from the farmer. The same interests obtained control of his credit, of the government which imposed his taxes, of the markets that sup- plied him with clothing and agricultural imple- ments, and finally, in most countries of the old world, of the land out of which he made his living. In other words, he had passed from one slavery to another. MECHANICAL INVENTIONS USHER IN NEW INDUSTRIAL ERA ” Industrial organization in European countries began to assume its modern form towards the end of the eighteenth century. In England the great mechanical inventions of the latter half of the eighteenth century made it possible greatly to speed up and to centralize manufactures, which in- augurated the modern era of rapid transit and communication, and which completed in England the transformation from feudalism to plutocracy. In France the old regime held on to near the end of the century and had to so great an extent made common cause with trade monopoly —the bourgoisie—that the latter nearly perished in the deluge that swept away the former. While the French revolution fell far short of bringing about the industrial eman- cipation of all classes it did prevent that combination of land and trade monopoly that in other European countries, and especially in England and Ireland, has been so destructive to the liberties of the people. As a result the small land-owning farm- ers of France have been the freest, the most prosperous and the happi- est rural population of modern times. Nor have other classes been exploit- ed to the same extent in France as in other countries. Independent business has had a better chance. Food products have reached the city populations with less cost for han- - dling. Big business has indeed thriv- ed along some lines, but it has not to the same extent grown fat upon the labors of the common people. Generally throughout the German- ic' countries, in Italy, in Spain and in Russia, the worst forms of in- dustrial oppression persisted far into the nineteenth century. The attempt- ed revolutionary movements of the first half of the century were as much industrial as political. Cul- minating in the revolutions of 1848, which mostly failed, they left Euro- pean peoples subject to the tyranny of rulers whose pretensions to di- vine right were strongly supported by a landed aristocracy, an arrogant military caste, and the modern great industrial and financial combinations. - This was the power with which the cultivators of the soil in most Euro- pean countries had to contend dur- ing the latter half of the nineteenth century. And they had to carry on their fight for the most part without the aid of the workers in the cities, no less oppressed ‘than they. The Amer-