The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, October 31, 1921, Page 7

month, and many of these are farmers. But we still need more. Don’t forget your post-dated check payment. To carry on the work properly we must have more funds. ; A- new “menace” has raised its head in the “friendly city of Spokane.” It calls itself the In- land Empire By-Products corporation, and it is composed of 600 farmers. The immediate effect of the appearanee of this “invading force” of farmers is that housewives of Spokane are now able to buy milk at 10 cents a quart, whereas, previous to the farmers’ entry, they had to pay 15 cents. Where- fore there is “weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth” among the defending force of big business. The headquarters of the farmers is situated at Second and Washington where one can have the pleasure of meeting A. A. Newberry, the general officer in command.: With pride he pointed to the ° spacious and well equipped plant. “We've only been established ~seven weeks,” he said, “but we are doing remarkably well, and shall do better.” P ; N Working in conjunction, but quite separate from the Inland Empire By-Products™ corporation, is the Dalry Producers’ Distributing agency. Their busi- ness is distributing only, and in seven weeks they have captured 40 per cent of the Spokane trade. The old privately owned and operated distributing agencies are carrying on a campaign in the press and otherwise against this farmers’ venture. ~ MINNESOTA | & BY EDITOR MINNESOTA LEADER -. F. 'A. C. Townley, president of the National Nonpartisan league, goes to jail when the United States supreme court hands down its decision on a petition for a review of the trial in Jackson county, Minn.,, where an anti-League jury convicted him on a charge of “interfering with enlistments,” there will be a parade of farmers to protest against his unjust imprisonment. N The petition has been presented to the United States supreme court, but little hope is entertained that the court will order the case reviewed. Townley was sentenced to serve 90 days in the Jackson county jail. The Minnesota supreme court denied him a new-trial and later refused him per- mission to appeal to the United States supreme court. The filing of the petition asking the nation- al court to review the case followed. McLeod county farmers have initiated the move for a protest parade. It is their plan to have all sections of the state represented. The parade date depends upon the day Townley is ordered to jail. Automobiles from all over Minnesota will meet at a certain point, according to the plans, and escort Townley to the jail. In its resolutions announcing the parade plans the McLeod county Nonpartisan committee says: “It has come to pass in our state that a man who has labored incessantly for the good of the common (Continued on page 13) ‘What’s Wrong With the Farm Bureaus? - A Frank Statement by a Farmer Who Wants to Make the Bureaus of the Utmost Serv1ce to Agriculture—Non- Farmer Control Hit BY A FARM BUREAU MEMBER . The Leader withholds the name of the contributor of this article for obvious reasons. He is an officer of a county Farm Bureau whose good work for the Bureaus would be gpoiled if his identity were known. . OST farmers believe that the local Farm Bureaus and county agents, if they reject the influence and leader- ship of non-farming interests, can serve a useful purpose. Many local Bureaus are doing that. Some of the state Bureau federations, like that in North Dakota, also are doing good. But it is also true, and Farm Bureau members above all should know it, that ~many of the state federations, like those in Min- nesota and Iowa, for instance, and the national féderation, are in the hands of leaders who have betrayed the farmers and who must be got rid of if the Bureau movement, as a whole, 1s to serve agriculture effectively. In my opinion the most vital thing for Bureau members to center upon is the control of the move- ment, from the county Bureau up, by actual farm- ers. None but farmers should be members of the _local Bureaus; none but farmers should be officers or directors of the state and national federations. - But what are the facts? The present officers and directors of the American Farm Bureau federation try to enforce a constitu- tion and bylaws for adoption in all states which says: “Any citizen of the county, or any non-resident owning land in the county, shall have the right to become a member by paying one year’s dues, and thereafter complymg with the consti- tution and bylaws.” -~ This provision or one similar is ac- tually in effect in most states where the Bureaus are organized. What sort of a farmers’ ofganiza- tion can we have if ANYBODY, whether farmer or not, can. join and ° have full membership rights with farmers? Do the bankers let us join their organizations? And think of letting NON-RESIDENTS belong to a county Farm Bureau—non-resident land owners, of course mostly bank- ers or lawyers or businéss men who DO NOT LIVE OR FARM in the county! Such men hold land there either for speculation or to rent to actual working farmers at high rates. Do we want such men in our county Bureaus? I say no. We want only actual, working farmers. OPPOSED AMENDMENT FOR FARMER CONTROL Bureau members in Minnesota, wheye the county Bureaus are created by law and receive an appropriation from taxation, tried to get the legis- lature, at its iast session, to pass an amendment to the law. The suggest- ed amendment provided, first, that no \ \ county could form a Bureauw and get the publlc ap- propriation until a specified number of actual farm- ers had agreed to join; second, when the Bureau was thus formed, nobody but a farmer could be an officer or director. A fine suggestion, you say. Yes, but the leglslature KILLED it, because President Potter of 'the Minnesota state federation and the other leaders of the Minnesota federation, many of them not farmers, opposed it. These leaders want the Bureaus officered and controlled, as far as possible, by non-farming interests. It is Bureau leaders such as these that I mean when I say there must be a housecleaning, It is easy to guess why the present leaders of the Farm Bureau movement are against making it strictly a farmer organization. These leaders, who must be eliminated as soon as the farmers can do it, were foisted on the Bureaus when the movement first started. They were put forward by banking, grain and other big business interests, who intend- ed that the Bureaus should be a camouflage farmer organization, to betray farmers into the hands of “scheming non-farming interests. They-wanted the Bureaus to be an offset to other farmer organiza- tions which\prdposed fundamental agricultural re- forms. Naturally, J.f the farmers gain complete contrel of the organization, these leaders must go, and the bureaus will not “co-operate” with interests hostile to the farmers’ cause. These leadérs therefore, oppose a strictly farmer membership and control. Let me illustrate. The Farm Bureau movement as we now know it, started in Iowa from where Mr. - ~Drawn gxpessly for the Leader by W. C. Morris. PAGE SEVEN- Howard, the present head of the American federa- tion, was “drafted.” Its organization campaign was largely financed by the Greater Iowa association, a bankers’, manufacturers’ and big business men’s organization which was organized specifically to prevent the Nonpartisan league and the Equity from getting a foothold in Iowa, and to keep down the Farmers’ union, which showed signs of becom- ing a fighting farmers’ organization out after fundamental reforms. In Minnesota the state federation was promoted by politicians, bankers and business men who op- posed the Equity and the Nonpartisan league. The Minnesota federation was “put over” by an educa- tional and publicity .campaign conducted by such newspapers as the Minneapolis Journal, whose se- curities are held by the big banking and milling interests of the state~ \ NATIONAL FEDERATION LEADERS ARE VERY “HIGH-PRICED” That the purpose of the Minnesota federation leaders was and is to fight genuine farmer reform in Minnesota, is shown by their recent attempt to use the .federation to fight the Equity Co-Opera- tive exchange, a farmers’ co-operative marketing organization with 20,000 stockholders. The Min- neapolis ‘Chamber of Commerce and its press has been gunning for the Equity for 10 years. Minne- sota Farm Bureau leaders, many of them not farm- ers at all, now refuse even to co-operate with the United States Grain Growers, Inc.,, because the latter. organization proposed ‘to work with, in- READING CROP QUOTATIONS stead of against and at counter pur- poses to, the Equity. But it is no wonder that some of the state federations, like Minnesota’s, pursue this policy in the interest of big business. The movement -is rot- ten at the top and the disease spreads ~We have some pretty high-priced men Bureau federation, the national or- ganization. Mr. Howard, the presi- dent, gets $15,000 a year. Little has been said about this by the interests that pretended to be scandalized be- cause Mr. Townley of the Nonpartisan league was paid $5,000 a' year by that organization. Mr. Silver, the legisla- tive representative of the national Bureau federation, gets a measly $12,- 000 a year. Mr. Cloverdale, the sec- retary, also tries to get along on the same pittance. The smaller fry in the national federation get only $5,000 and $6,000 a year, I am not against big sa]anes, when those who accept them give service - worth it. But what has Mr. Howard or his helpers done for the farmers? He admitted in testimony before a _ congressional -committee not long ago that big business men.and bankers at the head of the American Farm - downward to the state federations. -