The nonpartisan leader. [volume], September 05, 1921, Image 4

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

Image provided by: State Historical Society of North Dakota

                
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Wall Street
Puts Burden
on Congress
1
S
poses that the railroads turn over their paper for the debt they owe,
and that then the government GUARANTEE this paper and sell it,
realizing cash for it. Instead of the government KEEPING this
cash to pay the railroad debt to the government, Harding proposes
that it be given back to the railroads! He proposes, in effect, that
the railroads be allowed to borrow from the gov
ernment what they owe the government!
Remember North Dakota!
Remember the Nonpartisan league!
The Leader showed last
week that the committee of the
Grain Dealers'
A Boomerang
National asso-
ipL-i i?iow ciation, ap
JLhat
*lew
Back Quick
pointed specif-
ically to fight
co operative
pooling and marketing of grain
by the farmers, was instead
really fighting the Nonpartisan
league, because the League is
feared by them more than the
co-operative marketing move
ment. The ads above referred
to are more evidence that grain
gamblers believe the League is
the most effective organization
they have to meet. Why else
would they attack the League
while ostensibly attacking pool
ing movements that the League
is not connected with and has
not indorsed?
Why the telegraphic order
to newspapers to eliminate the
attack on the League from the
ads, which was received by most
\newspapers too late? Simply be-
If farmers, badly in need of credit at this
time, could issue bonds for what they owe, have
their creditors guarantee and sell those bonds,
and then give the proceeds of the sale to the farm­
ers to finance them through this winter and next spring, it would
be "pretty soft," wouldn't it? Yet that is the president's proposi
tion in regard to railroads!
The money that the railroads will get in this way will be $500,
000,000, according to the president's estimate. Garet Garrett, writ
ing in the New Republic (New York), points out that this amazing
operation proposed by the president—letting the railroads borrow
from the government what they owe the government, under the nice
sounding phrase of "refunding the indebtedness"—means that Wall
street has shifted the burden of financing the roads to the govern
ment. The government takes the risk. The railroads remain in
private hands for private operation for private profit, but your
IJncle Sam steps in, in place of private capital, to do the financing!
A fine scheme, to be sure! Will congress stand for it? You might
write your congressman and ask him.
\ELEGRAPH wires from grain gamblers' headquarters back
east were made hot recently with frantic orders sent to news
papers all over the country. The telegrams said: "Spare no
expense. Eliminate last two lines." The order had reference to
advertisements offered to newspapers and headed: "Mr. Farmer:
Look before you leap." Perhaps
you saw those ads. They were
an attack on the grain pooling
movements of co-operative or
ganizations, but ended up with
these two, lines:
Farmers at this time would do well to consider what organized labor is doing to prevent the pres
ent business depression and hard times being used as a club to break up the unions and force
workers to accept the terms of employers. The ordinary union dues of city5 workers run from
$15 to $50 a year, more than any farmer organization ever required of members. At this time
many unions, as in the printing trades, are making assessments on members, in ADDITION to
the ordinary dues, amounting to from 15 to 25 per cent of the wages of members! Experience
has taught union men that the REAL time to stick—the time" when organization is the MOST
effective—is in times like these, when* big business and employing interests are trying to use
the business depression to destroy unionism. Will farmers quit THEIR organization because
of hard times, when THAT is the time that they need a FIGHTING organization MOST?
Renew your Nonpartisan league membership at once! Organize, stick, fight!
^mmmm^im:0m% ~**«**'?£.
T'
TAKES MAGNIFYING GLASS TO SEE HIM
-1
THt UNORGANIZED
PEOPLE
—Drawn expressly for the Leader by John M. Baer.
•-••'•..-• '••.••' .. :'.• V.-—v. .*..•_ .••- v.-. :'V.'.v: -r--m
cause the grain gamblers discovered, after the first few ads ap
peared, that the attack on the League was a boomerang—that it
was helping to build up instead of tear down the pooling movements.
Farmers everywhere, Leaguers as well as farmers who never joined
the League, began to figure that any movement which grain gam
blers were fighting by the same methods that they fight North Da
kota farmers, is a good movement—that it must have something in
it of benefit to farmers. The Prairie Farmer (Chicago), opposed to
the League, interprets the mention of the League as a boost for the
U. S. Grain Growers, Inc. The Farmers' Dispatch of St. Paul, a
weekly edition of the Daily Dispatch, which has been the League's
bitterest enemy in Minnesota, refers to the slogan, "Remember
North Dakota," as a reason why farmers should join the pool.
But the attack on the League in the ads is really unfortunate
for the League, even if it is a boost for the pooling movement. It
connects the League with a farmers' venture that the League has
nothing to do with and never indorsed—a venture which may turn
out all right, but which is highly risky and to date has had little
success. Also it tends to divert attention from the fact that the
Farm Bureau movement, which is responsible for the U. S. Grain
Growers, Inc., nationally and in many states is controlled or influ
enced by sinister non-farming interests, and that many of the Farm
Bureau leaders, as in Minnesota, are cheap politicians who will have
to be kicked out if the bureaus are to really serve agriculture. The
League would rather not have its name used by grain gamblers to
boost ventures with which the League is not connected.
IHE* Leader has seen a letter from one of the largest whole
sale houses of the Twin Cities, sent to retailers throughout
the Northwest with whom the wholesale house deals, "this
wholesale house is in close touch with the financial and business situ
ation, and the letter to retailers Contains advice as to how proceed in
the present emergency. The es
sential part of the letter follows:
ten
grSSs®^ •1
«.' 'i fl**
The talk in Twin Cities bank
ing circles is that money re
ceived by the farmer for his crop
will have to be
Merchants
A.
ISr
:j
far?
•7.
used for the
See Banks SS'fiS
Have Edge serve district,
to pay off notes
at the town and city banks. It is
said that the bankers are watch
ing closely for receipts of grain
at the elevators, and as fast as
farmers are selling they-are push
ing collection of their notes.
Go to your farmer customers
and make a strenuous effort to
get your share. Go to them while
they are threshing, or at least be
^fore they sell, and see if you can
not get them to take care of you
first. Otherwise*~they will not do
it, because the pressure is going
to be heavy on them this fall, and
in most districts there will not be
enough of a crop to pay off their
'indebtedness.
The letter is a plain admis
sion that this year's crop is not
going to pull the farmer out of
debt, and it shows that there
will be
a
scramble among farm-
er creditors to "get theirs.'' But
the most significant aspect of
the letter is its assurance that
the bankers are squeezing the
farmers_and have the. inside
track among fanner creditors.
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