The nonpartisan leader. [volume], April 05, 1920, Image 4

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

Image provided by: State Historical Society of North Dakota

                
divisions each. There are some 65 possible subdivi
sions in the Brand grading scheme, although none of
the country markets can show an elevator with bins
£or more than a dozen grades and subgrades.
That three cars of wheat graded No. 3, for differ
ent reasons, can be mixed and graded as No. 1
when they reach the Minneapolis market the buyer
and miller get the extra profit represented by the
spread in prices between the first and third grades.
That Doctor E. F. Ladd of North Dakota has
shown that between the best No. 1 northern and
a no-grade wheat weighing 45 pounds to the bush
el, the difference in value of the products after
milling is only 11 cents, and may be as low as 7
cents on the bushel, whereas the present difference
in price on the grades is 20 cents, and it has been
us much as $1 on the busheL
That the farmers and the state officials^ and the
co-operative elevator companies want grading rules
that will enable the farmer to get the milling value
of his wheat, thereby wiping out one more premium
on grain gambling.
Secretary. Meredith indicated a lively interest in
each point made, asking numerous questions and
Pairing no definite attitude as between his bureau
of markets staff and the farmers and state officials
until the whole matter had been gone
over. Then he expressed his conclur
sions. The delegations from the North
west were satisfied that he would go
ahead and sensibly revise the grades,
their confidence being strengthened
by the fact that he invited them to
stay and help him with their expert
advice.
Of course the visitors could not
overlook the opportunity to remind the
new secretary that they remembered
the previous hostile attitude of the de
partment. Several of them said that
they were glad that the department
had a new secretary and a new head
for the bureau of markets. Year after
year they had come to Washington
and pointed out the manner in which
thousands of wheat growers were put
into the power of the grain buyers by
the rules fixed by Mr. Brand, but they
BY A. B. GILBERT
ANY farmers in answering the recent
government questionnaire as to farm
conditions reported inability to get
hired help at wages which would en
able the farmer to break even in his
farming. Relatively higher wages
and the lure of social excitement in the cities were
drawing the farmhands away.
However, would the farmer be any better off if,
as the papers so frequently suggest, city labor
were getting lower wages and working longer
hours? The farmer might under such conditions
keep the hired man, but this is not all there is to
the problem of farming.
The farmer also needs a market. His market
consists of the working classes here and in west
ern Europe. Europe has been practically cut off
for the last four or five months by the adverse
rate of exchange and nearly all the consumption of
the farmers' product has taken place at home. If
the workman had not gotten higher wages, he could
not have bought so much of this produce. Price
declines for the farmers would have been more
serious than they have been. Instead of finding it
hard to get the hired man, the farmer might find
it impossible to continue farming.
An illustration may make this point clear. Be
fore the war, let us say, the X— company was pay
ing an ordinary workman $2 a day. Out of this $2
he must find foodj clothes and shelter for his fam
ily. War conditions doubled and trebled the prof
its of the company. The owners of its stock had
far more to spend but they bought no more food
and probably no more wool, leather and cotton prod
ucts than they did before. The farmer thus gets
no appreciable addition to his market from their
increased buying power.
labor, on the other hand, remains at $2, the
laborer must meet mounting costs by cutting down
the amount of food and clothes he buys. And. the
farmer thus loses part of his market, while he
must pay the increasing prices charged for sup
plies. But if the laborer's wage keeps pace with
the rising general costs, the X— company will
have less profits and the laborer will be able to
Congressman John M. Baer
of North Dakota
had come in vain. Now they came once more, hold
ing out to themselves the hope and trust that anew
man in the secretary's chair, a man from the West,
with some understanding of the conditions in the
wheat area, would take enough personal'interest
in the issue to see justice done.
Precedent and personal organization within every
department of the government at the capital make
it a herculean task to uproot and cast aside a re
actionary policy on the part of any bureau. For
mer Director Brand of the bureau of markets—
now enjoying $20,000 a year from a promotion by
one branch of the southern fruit and vegetable
combine—ruled not only his bureau but almost the
entire department by a personal organization. A
majority of his henchmen are still in the bureau
of markets and in other bureaus. They will resist,
as a matter of self-defense, any official repudiation
of "his schemes. But today the indications are very
strong that they will have to submit to certain
changes. This revision of the wheat grades is the
first reform.
In view of the great sum involved—the saving
on grades and hence on prices which the farmers
will receive from fair grading—the victory achieved
is the more remarkable.
T.KAntraS IN GRAIN GRADES FIGHT
Doctor E. F. Ladd
of North Dakota
Is Labor Responsible for Increased Cost of Living?
keep up his normal buying of food and clothing.
In the one case th^ farmer gets nothing out of the
distribution of the business gains in the other he
gets a large part of them. Labor spends about 40
per cent of its income for food.
Would the prices the farmer pays for supplies
of all kinds be any less if labor had consented to
remain on pre-war wages Let us think about this
question a minute. It challenges the whole theory
that increasing demands of labor produce high
prices.
Labor does not sell direct to the farmer or to
any other class of buyers. Labor does not manage
the mining and manufacturing business of the
country any more than the farmers manage the
marketing of their products. Those that do man
age operate always on one fundamental principle—
"Get all you can get." Consequently when the war
produced scarcity .conditions, these managers did
not say, "We can sell for so much because labor
costs us so much." Not at alL The guiding
thought was that the market warranted a higher
price—"We ask so and so because we can get so
and so." We would have paid just as much for
coal, steel, sugar, gasoline or any other monopoliz
ed necessity if labor by some miracle had been
able to work for nothing.
The recent increases in prices for sugar, painful
ly familiar to all, took place after the farmers had
been paid for their beets, labor paid for refining,
and a big manufacturing profit taken out of the
old price of around $10 a hundredweight. The
great increases in trust prices early in the war
likewise appeared long before wages showed any
appreciable increases.
Government statistics show that the general in
crease in the cost of living between 1913 and Oc
tober, 1919, was 83.1 per cent. Food costs in that
time increased 80.70 per cent and clothing 139.30.
During this period wages lagged a good way be
hind these price increases and by the end of the
period had reached a maximum increase for union
labor of 55 per cent. Other labor -dependent en
tirely on the condition of the labor market had
gained somewhat less. The differences between the
two percentages is 28.1 and this represents rough-
PAGE FOUR
Senator Magnus Johnson
•f Minnesota
Credit for whatever changes are made is due
primarily to the fight that has been made against
the grades by Doctor Ladd of North Dakota and
the Nonpartisan league. With the advent of TMx.
Meredith as secretary of agriculture early in Feb
ruary Congressman Baer wrote various state offi
cials in North Dakota, asking their views of the
situation. On February- 6, J. A. McGovern, chief
deputy grain inspector, replied, saying that the
federal grain standards law is fairly satisfactory,
but that the system of grades for wheat established
by Secretary Houston under authority of that law
was very far from satisfactory.. He considered
that if the secretary were to establish a reasonable
set of grades, "based on the quality and production
of flour, a few grades on the test weight and the
condition of the wheat as to its flour production,"
no amendment of the law would be necessary.
Under date of February 7 Doctor E. F. Ladd,
president of the North Dakota Agricultural col
lege and chief grain inspector, wrote "I am
strongly in favor of federal inspection. It is the
only satisfactory way. Grain inspected in North
Dakota ought to be the same grade as in New York,
New Orleans or Buffalo. Federal grades only can
bring this about. But I have never been satisfied
with the present federal grades, as
they work injustice to the producer
and benefit the speculator and the mil
ler. There are too many
grades and too many opportunities
for spread between the various grades
when they come to export grain or
when the miller comes to be the buyer
and he does not consider anything like
the number of grades that the farmer
has to deal with who produces the
grain."
Mr. Baer then wrote the new secre
tary, Mr. Meredith, suggesting that
he hold a public hearing on the revi
sion of the wheat grades. These
grades were first established in 1917,
and somewhat revised in 1918. He
asked Secretary Meredith to listen to
the farmers' views on the right system
of wheat grading. The announcement
of the hearing followed shortly.
ly what labor has lost in the desirable things of
life since 1913. It represents also the decrease in
labor's power to buy the product of the farm.
The talk of the better conditions of those who
work with their hands in the cities applies only
by comparison with other classes of workers. The
hand workers have lost 28.1 per cent of their buy
ing power since 1913, but other classes such as
clerks, bookkeepers, teachers, professional men,
have lost between this figure and the full increase
in the cost of living of 83.1 per cent. The condi
tion of the latter classes, who work directly for and
have generally allied themselves with the large
business element, is pathetic. They skimp and
struggle along even to the extent of putting one
or two of their children in homes to keep up ap
pearances and to keep body and soul together.
Their condition, which is contrasted so unfavorably
with that of the hand workers, is breaking their
pride and forcing them into organizations and al
liances with the hand workers against the interests
which profits so greatly from their labor.
Another factor which has increased the apparent
prosperity of the hand worker is the increased em
ployment of women. Scarcity of labor to tend ma
chines has made an opening for the wife as well
as steady employment for the husband. And the
workman's wife, with no prejudice against work
as such which the middle class women have, has
taken this opportunity to piece out the declining in
come of the husband. Recent official reports in
dicate that about 80 per cent of the working class
families are dependent on bread-winning activities
of some other member or members of the family.
Where the wife has gone to work, the combined
family income is larger than it ever was before.
But the gain is made at the expense of that strong
American institution, the home.
Home life, as the farmer likes to think of it and
as the workman likes to think of it, ceases to exist
when the wife works as long as the husband in
the factory and leaves the children to bring them
selves up on the streets of the city. Our working
people in the long run will pay dearly for extra
income so obtained, and the country will lose
much.