The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, July 25, 1921, Page 5

SPEECH BY S. M. SMITH; DELIVERED IN 1873. S IT any wonder you are poor, and that with each year the whole agricul- tural population of the United States is growing poorer and poorer, while those who handle the products of our labor are growing richer and richer? Take Commodore Vanderbilt, for example, and sup- pose that 20 years ago he was worth $5,000,000, and that today he is worth $65,000,000. Ho_w has -he accumulated $60,000,000 in 20 years? Mark it, he never earned a dollar in his life, and yet he has gotten into his hands $60,000,- 000 in 20 years.* _ I'might stop right here and not say another word on the subject, for here is sufficient proof that there is something wrong in this business, owing to which this man has accumulated so much. How did he do it? Has he rendered an equivalent in the service he has performed for us in transporting our pro- ductions to market, or has he not? That is the question. If he has not, then we have been wronged of just so much money. For everything beyond a fair - ‘and reasonable equivalent for the service rendered is just as _much stolen from us as if he held a pistol at your head and said, “Your money or yourlife,” taking it because you had no pistol and he was the stronger. It is useless to try to dodge this proposition, for it can’t be done. - When a man ‘who has earned nothing by productive industry, but who has simply handled the produets of labor, has accumu- lated that amount in a number of years, it is a proof that something is wrong.. The whole wrong lies in this, that we are getting too little for our products, and those who handle them are getting too much. FARMERS HAVE NO SAY IN PRICE OF THEIR LABOR - Colonel Coleman has shown you what it costs to get a bushel of corn or wheat to market from where he lives in Missouri, and we all know what it costs here, and that we pay three-fourths of the product of our labor to get the other fourth to market. If this is so, who fixes the price upon your labor? What have you to say in regard to its price any more than did the slave of the South in the days of his worst estate? We are in fact in 4 condition of slavery unless we can control the price of our ,pwn labor. If you fix the price of my labor you circumscribe my page. S. M. Smlth part of whose speech in 1873 is reproduced on this From an old cut. bined to fix the price of pork—you know this as well as I. St. Louis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Louisville and Cincinnati came together just as they are going to convene next week at Cincinnati, and fixed the price of our pork for the coming year, just as coolly as ‘the master sold the slave or the products of his labor. Last year they fixed the price upon your pork at $4 a hundred live weight, and they would buy all there is in the West at the same rate. Of course they got it, and if they had fixed the price at $5 they would have had it. I only got $3.25. Probably the high price for freight made the dif- ference in your case. What right had they to do this? Certain people denounce me because I use strong language. Colonel Coleman called these pork men scoundrels, and I be- lieve it’s a good word, for the man who robs me is a scoundrel. They combined to rob us. The scoundrels came together® and fixed their price, and the pork began coming in. The men who were in debt, and whose notes for these reapers and mowers .had matured, sold first, and when they were through the stream stopped. It costs as - much to run a packing house on half time as it does for whole time, and as the pork did not come in they put the price up 40 cents a hundred, and that start- ed the stream again; and the next set of men whose notes for reap- ers and corn planters had ma- tured sent in another lot. When that was worked up the pork packers put up the price another 40 cents, and another lot came along. b 1 admit that there are some rich farmers in our country, but the rich ones are the exception, and the poor ones the rule. That is the difference. But did your rich-men, who do not owe a dollar in the world and who have their farms stocked and paid, stop to think who fixed the price on your pork? Why, the men who owed the first notes for reapers and sold the first lot of hogs fixed the price of yours! The price of your products, be it what it may, is determined by the figures at which those who must sell dispose of theirs. Those who must sell fix the price for those who need not. Is it not then worth while to have a union of all interests to come together and be brothers in fact as in name? We can protect each other, and while we protect our poor neighbor and assist him over a tight place, we are protecting ourselves, because A_ Townley Speech of 48 Years Ago Farmers of 1873 Suffered From the Same Evils as Today——What S. M. » Smith Told Them at a Meeting at Carrollton, IIL The Leader has extracted this speech and these pictures from a remarkable book entitled “History of the Grange Movement, or the Farmers’ War Against Monopolies,” by Edward Wins- low Martin, published in 1873. The speech might well have been made last week by President A. C. Townley of the Nonpartisan league. To make the parallel more striking we may say that the opening part of this speech, omit- ted for lack of space, was a denuncia- tion of the press, which had quoted Mr. Smith falsely as demanding horse whipping, hanging, tar and feathers and other violence against public offi- cers. What he did say was that he fa- vored reform through the ballot box.. He was denounced as an “incendiary,” “rebel” and “seditionist” by the press of those days, just like real farmer leaders are today. if he must sell at 20 cents, that fixes the price upon our corn. Combination will beat combination. It is to your interest to come together in these farm- ers’ clubs, granges, organizations and combinations, for a common purpose, which is the mutual self- protection of the whole people. TAXES INCREASE WITHOUT ANY MORE BENEFITS RESULTING Did you ever stop to think, my friend, that not 2 smgle locomotive nor car can be run over these prairies of ours without the oil manufactured from the hog,*** and with which they grease their wheels? Shut down on your pork for one season, and you dry up every locomotive in the state. They can not run a day without you, ner can people do without pork as an article of food, without lard, or your other products. When you come together and enter into a combination of this sort by your state, county, township or precinct associations, one auxiliary tied to the others all the way up, and when the machinery is perfect, I say you have a combination that is irresistible, for the reason that you hold in your hands the breadstuffs which feed the world, and when you look at your corncribs and granaries and refuse to open them you bring the world to your feet at once because it can not exist one day without you. Increase in taxation, then, is another wrong which we have brought upon - ourselves, and we might as actions and fix me to one plan for my lifetime, without op- portunity for rest or recrea- “tion. How do the monopolists get these prices? Take the plow- men** of this state; all have their annual conventions. They come together and agree that they will have just so much for plows during that year, no matter what we may get for our products; and for the last two years they have asked 100 per cent on the cost of produc- tion. Thus that combination makes a monopoly of the plow business. No matter what agent or manufacturer you buy of you have to pay the Same per cent. There are, my friends, the pork packers, from all' the principal cities in this Union, who- last year met and com- *Vanderbilt’s fortune in 1878, when this speech was made, was a fraction of what the Vanderbilt fortune is now, and almost nothing’ com»ared to other present fortunes. **Farm machinery men. A farmers’ procession old cut. The banne N S A R T T B Ny T i T o e e e w3 well look it squarely in the face and right it. When I went on the farm 17 years ago it took a $10 gold piece to pay the taxes, and now it takes seven and 2 half of them, which is an advance of a little "~ A GRANGERS’ PROCESSION AND MASS MEETING., in the procession read: / protest massmeeting in Illinois in the early “seventies,” “Pay back the rack pay,” votes where they will do the most good,” “Fair work for fair pay,” etc. PAGE FIVE G o * over 700 per cent. But what corresponding benefit have I, in God’s name, for that in- crease of taxes? Is it not time for us to look into it and in- quire of our public servants how it happens that our taxes increase, and what they give us in exchange for them? Did you know that they are multi- plying officers and expenses, and voting away - thousands upon thousands of dollars with a perfect disregard of the in- terest of the taxpayers? I am told that a county not 100 miles from here used to be run for $300 a year and now it (Continued on page 15) *##Railroads don’t use pork grease any more to grease wheels, but in other ways they and every industry are as much dependent on the farmer as 48 years ago. from an “Put your