The nonpartisan leader. [volume], September 23, 1918, Image 9

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

Image provided by: State Historical Society of North Dakota

                
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few or no. substitute employments in (he slack
periods. Many of the hired men of the farm,
many of the workers of the towns, must either
stay about idle and in want or they must leave
the community. Thus the community is con
tinuously losing its best workers thus with idle
ness about town, with the resulting loss of self
respect and family life, there develops a crop
of nearly worthless or desperate' laborers.. How
Commerce of the
"Ulte
't' tfrote® States dnd
jUs Itaade it the distributor
t'" °f all orders for war"
y*2 Sf ^jnaterials in this coun
'try through its war,
service, committees.
4 THEY ARE FIGHT-
I ING PUBLIC
IG BUSINESS has thrown down
its challenge to the country and
to President Wilson. Lashed
in the face by the damning facts
set forth by the profiteering re
port and the packing industry
report" of the federal trade
commission, big business de
manded of the president, in a
letter made public by the Chamber of .Commerce
of the United States on September 2, that the pres
ent federal trade commission be repudiated, and that
the powers of the commission be placed in the hands
of^nen loyal to the viewpoint of the profiteers.
Every newspaper in the United States that has
taken the money of the packers under guise of
advertising, and every newspaper and magazine
that is under the control of any group of profiteers,
has been furnished with this attack on the federal
trade commission. Because the commission has no
fund for advertising the people's side of the case,
and because the big business crowd, today fully
organized in every line of commerce through the
so-called war service committees of the Chamber
of Corflinerce of the United States, feels strong
enough to challenge the government itself, the
situation is one of the most serious ever created
by enemies of the administration in time of war.
THE BANKER BEHIND THE
ASSAULT ON JUSTICE .•
Harry A. Wheeler, president of the Chamber of
Commerce of the
United States and
vice president of the
Union Trust company
of Chicago an Ar
mour bank is re
sponsible for this let
ter to the president.
Wheeler controls the
committees of the
chamber. The press
statement announces
that the federal trade
committee of the
chamber, headed by
one Rush C. Butler of
Chicago, wrote the re
port which pretends
to sum up the record
of the federal trade
commission. Butler is
a partner in one of the
biggest firms of cor
poration lawyers in
a o. Wheeler
formerly w&s presi
dent of the Chicago
Association of Com
merce, in whfEh there'
are three chief ele
ments the packers,
and Insull power,
utility and coal crowd,
and the old-railroad
crowd. It was'Whefel
er and these three
Chicago groups that
punched the Chamber
Fight to Save Packing Trust
Chamber of Commerce Boldly Demands That the President
Discharge His Federal Trade Commission Which
Urged Breaking Up the Monopoly
Washington Bureau,
Nonpartisan Leader
Harry A. Wheeler, vice president
can these conditions be remedied except by devel
oping local industry that can operate when farm
ing or other seasonal work is slack? And in turn
how can we do this without breaking the power of
big business to kill off local industries
Local mills, warehouses, packing plants, cold
storage plants, creameries, other* new industries
to work over the products of the farm for final
OWNERSHIP, and they are fighting every ele
ment—such as THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE,
THE BIG TRADE UNIONS, and the liberal ele
ments in the administration—that favor public
ownership.
Wheeler, his Armour-owned bank, and the pack
ers and coal and railroad magnates in Chicago,
stand out in every line of the attack that was
launched jat the federal trade commission on Sep
tember 2.\ The Chicago corporation lawyer is a
mere errahd boy.
Like the St. Paul Pioneer Press-Dis
patch in its polecat attacks on the Non
partisan league, Wheeler's
crowd' explain that they
merely -wish to improve ___
the commission by cor
recting its tendencies and putting it in the
right path. T&EY WANT TO OWN THE
COMMISSION.
Just what are. the charges against W. B.
Colver, Victor Murdock and Franklin Fort,
the three present members of the commis
sion, set forth by big business
First is the claim that "The commission
has undertaken the exercise o£ functions be
yond its own jurisdiction to the detriment of
its proper usefulness."
It claims that the commission tried to get
the newsprint paper manufacturers and con
sumers tip agree to appoint the commission as
the arbiter of their dif-
ferences. The reaction
aries in the senate de
feated abill
giving the
commission
5
of
the Union Trust company, Chicago.
He has now returned to his former job
as president of the Chamber of Com
merce- of ,thT United States. Mr.
Wheeler is' considered by his associ
ates as. the most cool-headed and
long-sighted strategist on the whole, mission during the first year
power to do
this work,
and that
fact is cited
by the chamber to prove that the fed
eral trade commission was acting with
out authority.
WANT TO HEAD. OFF
INVESTIGATIONS S
Second, and more interesting to the
Insull crowd in Chicago, was the'offense
of the commission in trying to direct the
distribution of- anthracite coal before
the fuel administration was established..
Then, in August, 1917, the president
fixed the price of bituminous coal on a
basis established by the. report of the
commission as to the cost of production
of the coal. The chamber of commerce
fiflsays that the figures were too low, and
that as a result the prices set wjere so
low that 40,000,OOOi tons of coal were
left in the vein that at higher prices
would have been mined- This is another
1^1 way of saying that if the federal trade
commission had kept still the coal
barons would have taken' another thick
"Hp layer of war .profits off the coal iisers
of the United States last winter.
Then the chamber charges that a
jll^fnumber of important jobs that were un
"*S£ dertaken by the commission were left
Undone. The lumber industry investi
gatioifcr-aimed merely at finding out
why -the lumber, magnates were not
making a great profit several years ago
—is the chief onfe mentioned. That lum
'ber study took up almost the whole
staff and the exclusive time of the com*
battlefield of American business existence, and was loudly applauded by
PAGE NINE
of
consumption, general community planning to Be- 'f
cure all-the-year-round work for all—such steps
will give the workers better conditions and at the
same time will give the farmers such help as they
need on better terms than they now have to offer
seasonal help imported from the outside. Such
steps will stop the export of the most important
product of the community—its ambitious young
men and women.
^9
The Big Five packers are jumping rough shod on the world. They are making
enemies abroad for America. Only government ownership can curb their brutal
exploitation. The federal trade commission paved the way for this in its report
to the president. Immediately the amalgamated profiteers of the chamber of
commerce sprang to the defense. Read the story on this page and see again
why the farmers should organize to clean up the evil of
private control of the people's food.
the chamber. It kept the commission too busy to
notice the packers or the rest of the highwaymen
who were then rolling up their European war divi-"
dends. War came to the United States, and all the
old, market conditions changed overnight. The
facts gathered prior to 1917 were worth as much
as last year's birds' nests, and the chamber knew
it. So the chamber howls for the completion of this
worthless study. Nothing will be harmed—in the
world of big business—by that sort of "important
work."
BADLY FRIGHTENED
OVER THE PACKERS
its
v.
y:""
And finally the chamber gets down to its more
immediate and determining cause of alarm—the re
port on the packers. That report has undermined
the foundations of every big business graft and
commercial piracy in America. The chamber knows
it. Even at the risk of a sharp rebuke from the
.president of the United States, it feels driven by
its packer element and their friends to demand1
that Commissioners, Colver, Murdock and Fort be
publicly repudiated for daring to attack the. pack-,
ing trtfst.
"To prove its assertion that the commission was
biased in its recent food investigation," says-
Wheeler's lawyer, "the committee points out that
the commission proceeded with the apparent pur
pose of creating in advance a public impression
that the allegations concerning the artificial con
trol vof important food products were true."
Evidently Wheeler and his chamber wanted the
commission to proceed on the theory that, all evi
dence that the packers were skinning the farmers
and the general public was false.
Then the big business complaint goes on to say
that the packers were not permitted to tell their
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