The nonpartisan leader. [volume], March 29, 1920, Image 3

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

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In the interest
of a square deal
for the farmers
VOL. 10, NO. 13. WHOLE NUMBER 236 MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA,
The author of this article, a student of economics of
national reputation, has recently been appointed director
of statistics and publicity for the Bank of North Dakota.
Professor Roylance has spent many years in the study
of the farm credits and farm-marketing systems of Europe
and America, In this installment he treats of the con
ditions in Europe that made reforms necessary. In the
second installment the actual working of the European
co-operative system is explained and conclusions are drawn
as to how to apply European experience in this country.
BY W. G. ROYLANCE
IS the purpose of this paper briefly
to set forth the chief features of
European systems of farm marketing
and farm credit, and to explain those
features through an analysis of the
conditions under which they have
grown, in order to determine what, if any, aid can
be derived from the experiences of the old world
in the solution of like problems in the United
States.
In Europe and in the British Isles, as indeed
throughout the civilized world, three principal
methods of marketing farm products are found:
1. The competitive system, conducted by indi
viduals or by
private
In Europe, as in this country,
vastly the greater part of all farm
products are marketed by the first
method. As a rule the farmer has
no share in the control of the mar
kets. He delivers his products to
the nearest dealer or exchanges
them with the local shopkeeper for
the things he has to buy. He is
still, in the great majority of cases,
an isolated unit in the economic
scheme. Until near the end of the
last century the like was true with
regard to the farmer's credit. He
either got along without credit or
secured it from the local shopkeeper
in the shape of a charge account, or
from the local money lender at what
ever usurious rates the latter chose
to exact.
IN ANCIENT TIMES
FARMER WAS SLAVE
Earlier in the history of civilizaT
tion the condition of the actual pro
ducer of food products was no bet
ter, though there had been times
and places where the situation of
the owners of the land was incom
parably superior to that of the farm
er-owner of the modern period. In
olden times the cultivator was a
slave in the Middle Ages he was
a serf. At the beginning of the
modern era, in one country after
another, he threw off the yoke of
Official Magazine of the 'National Nonpartisan League—Every Week
MARCH
Farm Credits and Marketing in Europe
The Condition of Farmers and City Workers in the Nineteenth Century—
Birth of the Co-Operative Movement
serfdom, only to find himself within a few genera
tions fast bound in the service of a new master,
the lord of trade, who controlled his credit and his
market, as the feudal lord had controlled the land.
Indeed, in may localities, there was no interval be
tween the old and the new servitude. Long after
the agricultural serfs had partially emancipated
themselves from the absolute control of the lords
over their persons, their families and the land they
used, they were required to have their grain ground
at the lord's mill and their meal baked in the lord's
oven. They could buy salt and other special ar
ticles only from the lord. The lord dictated what
they should plant and when and where they should
sell it, and the price they should receive.
During the industrial revolutions that ushered in
the modern period the peasants, by associating to
gether in the manner of the mediaeval guilds, were
sometimes able partly to control the prices of their
products and of the things they had to buy. They
established, in co-operation with the workingmen
and trades people of the towns, public markets
corporations for profit, each usually conducted in conjunction with the annual In France the old regime held on to near the end
1—1 1. I*....™™ -v.n lAWQof nnnoo faira But one after another these free markets +*10 '"OTihu'w arni »not
individuals corporation buying at the lowest prices fairs
possible. and selling at the highest
prices obtainable.
2. The co-operative system, oper
ated by associated producers and
consumers, or both, the purpose be
ing to secure the highest possible
prices to producers, the lowest to
consumers, or, if including both pro
ducers and consumers, to get prod
ucts from the producer to the con
sumer at the least possible cost.
3. Public markets, owned by mu
nicipal or state governments, and op
erated in the interests of the people.
FORECAST—FAIR AND WARMER
—Drawn expressly for the Leader by W. C. Morris.
The article on this page tells of the discouraging conditions ^faced by Europe
an farmers whose governments were controlled by special interests.^ Amer
ican farmers are righting such conditions by organized political action.
JJAGE THREE
•m
29,1920 12.50 PER YEAR IN ADVANCE
A magazine
that dares to
print the truth
disappeared and all buying and selling came to
be controlled by business and financial interests
far removed from the farmer. The same interests
obtained control of his credit, of the government
which imposed his taxes, of the markets that sup
plied him with clothing and agricultural imple
ments, and finally, in most countries of the old
world, of the land out of which he made his living.
In other words, he had passed from one slavery to
another.
MECHANICAL INVENTIONS USHER
IN NEW INDUSTRIAL ERA
Industrial organization in European countries
began to assume its modern form towards the end
of the eighteenth century. In England the great
mechanical inventions of the latter half of the
eighteenth century made it possible greatly to
speed up and to centralize manufactures, which in
augurated the modern era of rapid transit and
communication, and which completed in England
the transformation from feudalism to plutocracy.
of the century and had to so great an extent made
common cause with trade monopoly
—the bourgoisie—that the latter
nearly perished in the deluge that
swept away the former. While the
French revolution fell far short of
bringing about the industrial eman
cipation of all classes it did prevent
that combination of land and trade
monopoly that in other European
countries, and especially in England
and Ireland, has been so destructive
to the' liberties of the people. As a
result the small land-owning farm
ers of I ranee have been the freest,
the most prosperous and the happi
est rural population of modern times.
Nor have other classes been exploit
ed to the same extent in France as
in other countries. Independent
business has had a better chance.
Food products have reached the city
populations with less cost for han
dling. Big business has indeed thriv
ed along some lines, but it has not
to the same extent grown fat upon
the labors of the common people.
Generally throughout the German
ic countries, in Italy, in Spain and
in Russia, the worst forms of in
dustrial oppression persisted far into
the nineteenth century. The attempt
ed revolutionary movements of the
first half of the century were as
much industrial as political. Cul
minating in the revolutions of 1848,
which mostly failed, they left Euro
pean peoples subject to the tyranny
of rulers whose pretensions to di
vine right were strongly supported
by a landed aristocracy, an arrogant
military caste, and the modern great
industrial and financial combinations.
This was the power with which the
cultivators of the soil in most Euro
pean countries had to contend dur
ing the latter half of the nineteenth
century. And they had to carry on
their fight for the most part without
the aid of the workers in the cities,
no less oppressed than they. The