The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, June 27, 1921, Page 3

IN THE INTEREST OF A SQUARE DEAL FOR THE FARMERS Entered as_second-class matter at the postoffice at Minneapolis, Minn., under the act of March-3, 1879, Publication address, 427 Sixth avenue S., Minneapolis, Minn. Address all remittances to The Nonpartisan Leader, Box 2072, Minneapolis, Minn. ‘ » The & Tonpartisén Jeader A MAGAZINE THAT DARES TO PRINT THE TRUTH One year, $1.50. Classified rates on classifled page; other advertising rates on application. Member Audit Bureau of Circulations. 8. C._ DBeckwith Special Agency, advertising representatives, New York, Chicago, . St. Louis, Kansas City. VOL. 12, NO. 13 MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, JUNE 27, 1921 WHOLE NUMBER 275 One Farmer’s Program for Immediate Relief livestock dropped into the Leader office the other day. His grip was filled with newspaper clippings, pages torn from magazines and numerous other papers. “I have been doing Some reading and thinking,” he said. “I wanted an answer to_the ques- tion; ‘What can be done at once’toward straighténing out our na- tional and international affairs—to improve the conditions at home and abroad that must be improved if business, labor What Do and agriculture are to.have I:elief ? 1 have drawn You Think up a program to be immediately worked out. I ou m ° don’t-»clailm it is original. Every part of it is now Of the Idea? peing adyocated somewhere by somebody, much of it with respectable, conservative backing. I have g FARMER who had been to South St. Paul with a carload of merely selected what I think are the best of the hundreds of reme- - dies that various editors, statesmen and thinking groups have ad- vanced. We, as a people, are doing nothing to better conditions. Here is a program we could start on at once. Something must be done. Let us make a start.” And here is what this farmer had put together as a program for our statesmen to commence on: N INTERNATIONAL—The United States to remit war loans owing it by other countries, on condition that all nations join in an agreement to limit armaments to a basis of POLICE PROTECTION ONLY. In a few years the United States would get its money back by-savings on army and navy and other war preparations, and the us on the way to the ‘normalcy’ that we have a right to expect as a result of the election of President Harding ?” The Leader leaves the question to you. What do YOU think of this plan for immediate action? At least this farmer wants to do SOMETHING, while congress and the Harding administration sit around with hands folded. HE United States railroad labor board has awarded the rail- roads, 104 of which are affected, a reduction of 12 per cent in wages of railway workers, which means a saving of $400,- 000,000 a year in the expenses of the roads, effective July 1. Let’s have AT LEAST a corresponding reduction in freight rates! There must not be any delay or hedging about it either! When the interstate commerce commission granted the outrageous increases in freight rates last year, the first benign effect of the Esch-Cummins act, the big business press apologized for the increase by saying it was necessary to pay the higher wages of railroad workers. The farmer, for instance, was told that the new rates on farm products, prohibitive in many cases as has been proved, were the fault of the railroad brotherhoods, which demanded unreasonably high compensation. If that argument was good then, then the argument is good now that, since wages have been reduced, rates must cor- respondingly come down. It will not be enough for a few lines Ndw fora Reduction in Rates! world would be given assurance that civ- ilization will not be wiped out by man’s insanity in the near future. This policy would also encourage foreign good feeling and trade, which we are in desperate need of to restore good business and agricul- tural conditions. : > : AGRICULTURE — Adoption of the plan of Carl Vrooman, former assistant secretary of agriculture, for spending the $50,000,000 profits of the United States Grain corporation, which functioned for the government duringthe war, in devel- oping foreign markets for agricultural products, including the extending of credit to foreign buyers, ete. ‘Extension of the federal land bank system to cover personal as well as real estate loans and otherwise making the land banks of more general benefit to agriculture. Financial _and other aid by congress to encourage national co-operative crop pools and marketing associations, to be run by the farmers. ’ TAXATION—In lieu of both a sales and excess profits tax, passage of the Keller bills recently introduced in congress, or of bills based on this principle in modified form. = Keller proposes that the federal income tax shall distinguish between earned and un- earned income, taxing the latter higher than the former, so that in- come from labor or brains, including farming, will pay substantially ‘ less than income from rents, notes, stocks, bonds, interest, etec. Keller also proposes a tax of 1 per cent on the value of land held by any one in excess of $10,000 in value, after the value of buildings and improvements, and in the case of farms, cost of clearing, drain- ing and maintaining fertility, has been subtracted. This will tax only the largest farms, exempting over 95 per cent of farmers, but will bring the government a billion dollars a year from - interests. that have in the past not paid a fair share of taxation. A land tax of this kind, it is contended, is the only tax that can not be handed down to consumers. - LABOR—To solve the unemployment problem, which deprives millions of families of money to purchase farm products or things made from raw material produced on the farms, congress should make plans to stimulate building activity: The country is short a million homes, according to recent statistics.- Why should not idle labor be put to work building houses for the houseless, solving two problems at once? > “How do you like that,” said our visitor, “as a starter to en- courage industry and- agriculture, cut down unémployment and get l “STRAWS” ON THE CAMEL’S BACK I PACS K2IT3 to grant reductions in a few rates, which has been done in some cases in the effort to get business which the high rates have barred. The question is one for the inter- state commerce commission to take up at once, and a reduction must be officially ordered, to.cover all lines and all kinds of traffic. If the commission hasn’t power to order the railroads to put into effect economies in operation to supplement the wage réduction, then congress should grant the necessary authority without delay. The rate reduction which the com- mission should order ought to take into consideration the reduction in prices of everything, as well as the wage reduction of railroad workers. LL businesses, including farming, must carry fire insurance. ‘It is a necessity, and it is one of the ne- cessities in connection with which profi- teering has always run rampant. Your fire insurance premiums are nearly twice what they should be. This has ALWAYS been the condition, not only since the war and since profiteering became gen- _eral. Roughly, fire-losses paid by insurance compa- The Graft nies average only half of the amount of premiums in Fire collected by the companies. The half of the pre- Ticuvaace miums that do not go to pay fire losses go to pay ex- _ cessive -commissions, wasteful costs of administra- tion and huge dividends. The latter run up to as high as 200 per cent, according to testimony heard by the legislative investigating committee in New York. This testimony also showed the companies were concealing millions in profits. The rate on farm risks is much too high in proportion to the losses and much too high in comparison with the rates and higher proportional losses on business property, as proved in a recent article in the Leader. = Consider these facts in connection with the report just made of two years’ operation of the North Dakota state fire and tornado insurance. Under the state law all public property, whether of the state or any political subdivision, is insured by the state fund, if the property is within the incorporated limits of a city or village. The state from August 1, 1919, to April 20, 1921, wrote $13,996,297.74 in fire insurance, and $18,805,250.14 in tornado insurance. For~ writing this business and giving this protection the state collécted, on both fire and tornado policies, $178,283.29 in premiums. The state charged THE SAME RATE as the private insurance compa- nies. On the final day of the report there was premium money in the hands of the state covering protection beyond that day amount-