The nonpartisan leader. [volume], February 01, 1917, Image 3

About The nonpartisan leader. [volume] (Fargo, N.D.) 1915-1921

Image provided by: State Historical Society of North Dakota

                
s'
In the interest
of a square deal
for the farmer
tained
SHE people of North Dakota last week found out how honest,
determined men, elected by the people, can when they want
to, hew to the line and redeem their campaign pledges with
out horse play, delay or quibbling. Such an example of political
honesty ought not to be rare in North Dakota, but it is a fact this is
probably the first house of representatives that ever worked at Bis
marck that put through an important people's measure without weeks
of parliamentary nonsense and volumes of fervid and useless oratory.
According to precedent, House Bill 44, submitting a new constitution
to the people to be voted upon next June at a special election, ought
to be full of jokers that will annul its effect and full of veiled language
that will conceal its meaning.
But the majority of Nonpartisan members of the lower house
smashed precedent. They permitted no tricky amendments in the
frill. They let the minority rid itself of what hot air it had on tap
against the measure and passed the bill—a straight-forward, open and
aboveboard proposition to place a new constitution before the people
for adoption or rejection next June. It is now up to the senate
USED ALL THE OLD TRICES
anti-League minority in the house, led by, Divet and Tenne
son, lawyers, the former an old-time politician who has been
in at the killing of many a farmers' piece of legislation, used
all the old tricks. Th§ gang press of the state pretended to be astonish
ed that the League house majority refused to listen to pleas for delay,
more debate and innumerable foolish amendments, put forth by Divet
and Tenneson, et al.- Every representative knew what the bill con­
every one knew that the people demanded it. Yet the minority
-tried all the filibustering tactics for delay they could think of and tried
to tack on amendments for no other purpose than, to hamper the ma
jority which was there to do business for the people on the people's
borders. 7
Some of the antics of the minority in the house during the de
*?sVbate were laughable. Divet found that somewhere in.the revised con
'Ibistitution before the house the words "patriotism" and "morality"
»TfTie
National Paper of the Farmers' Nonpartisan Political League
VOL. 4, NO. 5 FARGO, NOJtTH DAKOTA, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1917 WHOLE NO. 72
AN INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR VIEW
KILL BILL
44 11
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The sounds coming out through the door would indicate there was something doing inside. Well, well! Look who is inside making all this noise. Some frienda
of the farmers, to be sure! Unless we felt sure it couldn't possibly be true we would guess that these good friends of the farmers were Big Biz & Co. But we must
be mistaken. They would never oppose House Bill 44 in the North Dakota legislature, the new constitution bill. Oh, no.
THREE ,s»
USSI 19
had been dropped out and terms of the same-meaning, "purity" and
"public spirit," substituted in their place, in the part of the constitu
tion defining the things the public schools are to teach. This primed
him for a bit of fine arm waving and grandstanding.
"The hand that held the pen that struck those words out of the
constitution would put poison in the wells in front of his own army
and lead his sister to the brothel,'' yelled the patriotic Divit.
He might have added: "The cloven HOOP has shown its
HAND.'' The League members gave him the laugh, but the gang press
reported his righteous wrath over the work of the men who framed
House Bill 44 and who had struck a blow at our homes and our be
loved country. That sort of thing used to go down it was stock in
trade of the politicians who framed the laws. "Soak the people, but
lard it with fine phrases about morality and patriotism," was their
motto, and is still Divet's. "Was it Walpole who said that patriotism
was a cloak for many a scoundrel, or was it Pitt? Anyway, it was an
Englishman.
TRUSTING THE PEOPLE
\HE big play by the anti-League house minority was on the prop
osition of a bonded indebtedness limit in the constitution. The
constitution as reframed provides that the state can guarantee
bonds issued against state-owned utilities, which bonds are to be re
deemed and the interest paid by the income of these utilities. The
minority pictured the horrible probabilities of the state plunging head
long into financial ruin unless a limit was set What they wanted, of
course, was an amendment that would annul the carrying out of the
League program.
They were answered aptly by Representative Cole, who pointed
out that no debts could be contracted without the legislature's consent
and that the new constitution provided that any act ol the legislature
could be referred to the people on a 10 per cent petition—certainly
ample protection against any wild-eyed proposition to plunge the state
into useless and inadvisable indebtedness. It was simply a proposition
of the minority wanting to set a limit on what the people could do by
their own vote.
A magazine
that dares tt
print the trnth
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