THE FEDERATED PRESè RELIABLE NEWS CONFERENCE FOR PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL' ACTION (By The Federated Press) Cleveland. — Drawing up a pro gressive platform and providing for ef fective organization by states, but re fusing to take steps toward a third par ly, the second national Conference for Progressive Political Action came to a close here. The storm that had risen the first day over the question of seating dele gates from the Workers' Party of Am erica, who had been ignored by the credentials committee, ended with the adoption of the committee report refus ing to seat them on the ground that the party was not in harmony with the con ference policy. R. D. Cramer, representing the Min neapolis Trades and Labor assembly, and Dennis Batt representing the De troit Federation of Labor, took the floor to inquire into the manner ir which the credentials had been side' tracked and to testify that in Minnea polis at least the Worker's party had made every effort tc educate labor forces to act in harmony and not for disruption. The conference decided to hold an nual sessions of delegates from, labor, farmer and cooperative bodies while a national executive committee of 21 was instructed to call state conferences ilisuuticu possible to form permanent soon state organizations. The aim of the conference was stat ed to be for the purpose of obtaining the nomination of president, vice-pres ident, U. S. senators, representatives to congress and state and local public of ficials pledged to the interests of the producing classes and to the principles of genuine democracy in agriculture, industry and government. THfe HERRIN TRIAL (By The Federated Press) Marion, ill. — The complete defense to the charge of the prosecution that the five men now on trial murdered Howard Hoffman, a strikebreaker, at the Herrin strip mine, June «22, was outlined to the jury in the opening statement prepared by A. W. Kerr, the chief counsel, Illinois Mine Workers, who is directing the defense. Otis Clark, Bert Grace, Leva Mann, Joe Carnaghi ,and Pete Hiller were not near the scene of the killing, according to witnesses to be produced by the de fense; and in any case, the killing were committed in circumstances that could by no .conceivable interpretation justify the term murder, Kerr main tains. Kerr said that the defense would prove that the killing of armed guards was a result of the unlawful invasion of .Williamson county by these armed guards and of many acts of brutality culminating in the ruthless murder of three unarmed union coal miners. ASSOCIATION FOR LABOR LEGISLATION WILL MEET (By The Federated Press) Chicago. — Wages, unemployment, industrial waste, and workmen's insur ance will be the principal subjects to be considered by the Américan Assn., for Labor Legislation at its 16th annu al meeting here. Dec. 27-29. Among the speakers will be Albert Thomas, who abandoned Jean Longuet and oth er French Socialists and became the French cabinet minister for armaments during the w.-s end is one in which l?bor »^nd canitpl would be complete ly unified "by having them both, in some form or other, participate in the profits of the company through di _ ^ j ^ dends. and in t^e management of the com^nny through the board of direc tors. (By The Federated Press) San Francisco. — The of California are up in arms against the new adequate safety laws recom SAFETY DEVICES COST MONEY; MINERS' LIVES ARE CHEAP minp „«m,,, mine owners, mended by the industrial accident com mission following the Argonaut disas ter cannot listen to reason," said Edward Higgins, president, California Metal Producers' Assn., "we have the power to get a commission that will." Among the members of the association are.the owners of the Argonaut mine, where 47 men died but fhe mine property was saved from being destroyed. GOVERNOR HENRY ALLEN'S KU KLUXING GAME "If the p -esent comftiissicners t Uctor, (By The Federated Press) Emporia, Kan. — "I have been Ku Kluxed, and a court that did not have the guts to pull out their shirt tails and give a real Ku Klux Klan parade." Such was the indignant comment of William Allen White when he was no tified that charges against him that he had violated Allen's industrial court law, were dismissed on instructions from the attorney general. Specific charges against White were that he had violated an order of the industrial court by displaying in his office win dow a placard expressing sympathy with the striking shopmen. White is editor and publisher of the Emporia Gazette. White's hot shot at Allen's court was supplemented by a statement from District Judge W. C. Harris, presiding when White appeared. Judge Harris observed that three times White had appeared in court and demanded trial, and that three times the state had re fused to try him, asking continuance. "The state has a legal right to dis miss its case, but it is a great wrong to charge a person with a criminal of fense and humiliate him by arrest, mal iciously or without probable cause; the lay mind associates arrest with guilt," said Harris. "The court is forced to the conclusion in this case by the conduct of the moving party, that this case was commenced mali ciously or recklessly, without any in vestigation of the facts to ascertain whether a prosecution was justified, and in either event the action was equally reprehensible. A defendant in a criminal prosecution is entitled to a fair trial. I do not thinlc the defendant in this case has had jt. He is left in a ' ion." FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD (By The Federated Press) The federal reserve beard is the most important body in the United States and one of the most powerful in the world. The supreme court can veto any act of congress and so nullify the will of the people, but it does this only about twice a year. The federal reserve board comes in contact every day with the living arrangements and expenses of a hundred million Americans and can do whatever it pleases with /them. The power it posesses to raise or low er discount rates is a more tremendous and irresponsible power than was ever wielded by a king and the results are almost inconceivable. By an orde?" is sued in a fraction of a moment this board can ruin a million farmers and make a thousand rich men Richer yet. This board stands accused of the grossest favoritism in the exercise of its great power, so that, if these charg es are true, it appears to have been trying to build up New_ York financial interests at the expense of the rest of . f he countr y and b y boosting favored borrowers. , , of these c!lar ges are so staggering that thev nut intn the snarip all ntnpr nna«ps Some of the fàcts alleged in support they put into the shade all other phases of all public affairs. Thus tt is assert ed that in the fall of 1920 the federal, of time lent to 5000 member banks in 28 states in agricultural and live stock loans. Millions for speculation and 1 cent pieces for agriculture would seem to be about the size of these transactions. For the purposes of farming and pro duction, money was hard to get; for the nurposes of speculation, dead easy. The speculators were financiers of great infjuence; the farmers were ob scure persons trying to grub a living from the soil. For the farmer the kick; for the stock gambler the front farlor. That seems to have been the rule. It is further allaged that at about the same time the federal reserve system was lending to the national banks in , m v i i eserve system in New York lent to one, ° re f specu at, ;; e ba " k 111 that city sums of money three t me s as great as eight reserve banks m .hesame length the city of New York three times as much in proportion to their resources, as was keing ' en * to cf 'he 7600 banb jn a „ ^ ^ ^ Three times as much in pro potion to their total resources, you un derstand. Easy money for the great New York banking institutions already gripping the industries of the country: hard money for the bank of the interior with which the farmer does business and to which he must go for the loans by wh'ch he can live from crop to crop. If this charge is true, then the feder al reserve system is nothing but a gi gantic machine to help sweep up all that is left of the money of the country into the control of Wall St. and make one. group of financiers there of urç limittd and irresistible Il m this fall season cf !91!0 the country naiiks had been nnon an equal footing with the New York city banks in jroj'ortion to their resources, the country b.niks would have had r, bil lion dollars more to lend than they really had. The result would have been a cheapening of money and an easing of the farmer's crushing buiden. l'y shutting off the money supply to the country banks, the farmers were compelled to sell their crops for what they could get and the speculators made billions. The suicides of farmers that were ruined by this proceeding are Said to number scores. Desperate efforts havç been made to secure official attention to these charges and to cause the country to undeisiand what is going on. All these efforts have failed. In one way or another publicity has been choked off and it looks now as if this particular process of gathering power into the hands of Wall St. had gone so far that it is beyond stopping. NEBRASKA PROGRESSIVE PARTY (By The Federated Press], Omaha. — Independent political ac tion was reaffirmed as the purpose of the Nebraska Progressive party's ex tension bureau. An executive commit-, tee subcommittee consisting of Pres ident Chas. A. McDonald, Nebraska State Federation of Labor; W. H. Shropshire, Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, and H. L. Swanson, repre senting the farmer organizations, was chosen. The Mid-West Labor News, a Federated Press member paper, was was made the official organ. Amnesty for political prisoners was demanded by the conference. WALL STREET'S IMPERIALISM BOOSTED BY SECR. HUGHES (By The Federated Press) Washington. — Central America's first free champion tc the Hughdt' peace conference here is Senator Wil |; am £. Borah, of Idaho. The specta c l e 0 f fi ve handcuffed delegations from the Spanish Main nodding "yes, yes" to the articles of suicide imposed up on them by the state department prov ed too much for Borah to endure." In a powerful assault upon the sham peace conference, Borah recites the strong-arm methods employed by Am erican corporations to upset govern ments and exact concessions from the, five little "republics" and charges that the Hughes kindergarten now proceed ing in the Pan-American building is designed simply to make the Latin-Am ericans write 0. K. across the fraud lent contracts and surrender their free dom for a place within the empire of Wall Street. Before the farce conference is many days older, a resolution will probably appear in the senate calling for an in vestigation .of our imperialism -in Cen . , .ranking member of the foreign affairs rnmmiff aa «*»11 ».L~ ». :._l tral America from the time American troops took over the capital of Nicar agua in 1912. Senator Borah, second committee, will lead in the oratorical support of that resolution, according to the present outlook. t-, i " , , » - . ... Debate will show that Mexico, which jointly with the United States called the conference of 1907, is barred from this conference by Secretary Hughes, although the alleged purpose of the meeting here is to confirm,and extend the treaty of 1907. It will show that the United States itself violated that treaty when, tc re tain a naval base illegally obtained in Fonseca bay and safeguard lands grab bed on the San Juan river by Ameri can capitalists, it violated a verdict ren dered in favor of Costa R-'ca by the Central American court of justice, es tablished by the treaty cf 1907. It will show that the delegates now sitting at Hughes' feet to confirm our mastery in their home lands are all members of families or factions brought into prominence by American bayonets or other coercion. It will show that when President Herrara was thrown out and Orrillana put in control of Guatemala by Amer {can intervention and battleships, the little country was immediately forced to accept a loan from the Blair Co., of New York, amounting to $15,000,000 w jth exorbitant interest. It will show that Mexico is barred from this dummy conference because Hughes and the Mexican capitalists in volved in Central America knew that jf Mexican delegates were admitted they would review the history of Yan kee imperialism in Latin America and show that instead of a treaty the little,^ republics are being forced to sign a last will and testament of their alleged sov ereignty. It will show that by excluding Mex ico the United States aims to become the sole and exclusive "guarantor and patron" of the new order in Central America and the single judge of when the new treaty shall be torn up and thrown aside, as was done with the treaty of 1907. JURY OF PEERS (?) FOR HERRIN TRIAL (By The Federated Press) Marion,.III.— The jury for the first of the Herrin trials was finally selected Dec. 8, after a month of examination of talesiéan. One coal miner and 1 1 farmers will decide the fate of the five union miness charged with the murder of Howard Hoffman, a ncn-Otiion man killed in the Herrin cemetery last June. The jurors are Oscar Swaner, Henry Riddle, Samuel Watkins, W.H. Davison, James Weaver, Hiram H. Mc Millan, George Craig, E. S. Webb, Charles Mclnturf, Nathan Pendland, Avery Grear and George Cox, who is - . -r, r the lone miner. The average age of the jury is 44 years. Judge Dewitt T. Hartwell said that the case would be conducted in perfect Order "if he had -to have 4en times as many bailiffs as he has now.' He stated that he would permit no expres sions from the spectators of sympathy for or antagonism to the defendants. 'He then adjourned court until Wednes day, Dec. 15, when both sides will make their .opening statements and the taking of evidence will begin. HAVE YOU A FRIEND WHO IS IN TERESTED IN REAL CO-OPERA TION? SEE THAT HE BECOMES A READER OF THE LLANO COLON IST AT ONCE. ORDER A BUNDLE. POLITICIANS SCORED (By 1he Federated Press) Baltimore. — Neither the hands nor the consciences of'U. S. Senators Hi ram Johnson and Samuel Shortridge of California are clean in the Mooney case, declares the Rev. -Mercer Green Johnston, in The Voice of the People, published here. The issue in which Johnston's article uppears is devoted to "the four most infamous cases of injustice which have disgraced our country during the last fiv.e years": Mooney and Billings in California; the I. W. W. victims of the tragedy at Centralia, Wash.; Sacco and Vanzetti in Massachusetts, and the 63 wartime political prisoners still in federal peni tentiaries. DEFEAT ILLINOIS CONSTITUTION (By The Federated Press) „ Chicago. — Nearly 900,000 of the round million and more votes in the Illinois special election, Dec. 12, were cast against the proposed new consti tution. The measure on which the spe cial constitutional convention worked two years and on which over $3,000, 000 was spent was hurled back by the voters at the corporation interests that had framed it. AN ASTUTE FINANCIER (By Th" Federated Press) Seattle. — Frank Waterhouse, pres ident cf the Seattle Chamber of Com 1 merc6i organizer 0 f t h e f irst Associated Industries body in the United States, and regardecJ as an astute fi nanc ; er I and j ndustria l ] ea der, invested $11, 500 in czarist rubles in 1920, it was re vealed in superior court here recently in a suit to foreclose on notes which he had failed to meet. The rubles are now worth altogether approximately 25 cents at a liberal estimate. NATION NEEDS BEING SAVED ' FROM PROFITEERING PATRIOTS (By The Federated Press) New York. — The fiation is being saved again. This time it is by the Allied Patriotic Societies, Inc., "with a membersh:p of more than 6,000, 000." The great idça of the Allied Patriotic Societies, Inc., is to intro duce a bill at the coming session of the New York legislature making it impossible for -the name of any party "that subscribes to principles subver sive to the constitution of the United States" to appear on a ballot. The announcement was made at the annual : meeting here of the Army and Navy club. j This ingenious jcheme, however, is only part of the great idea. The Al lied Patriotic Societies, Inc., has pass ed a resolution "to direct and control ' foreign-language newspapers." That, it. was explained, will control foreign propaganda and at the same time is sue propaganda favorable tc this coun try through the Unit^ States com missioner of education. A bill to that effect is to be introduced in congress, the speaker said. And everybody cheered. THE "REASON WHY" FOR HIGH COAL PRICES (By The Federated Press) New.Yo.rk. — One-third of the na tion's coal' supply i s being held up in its journey from the mines to the con sumer; coal profiteers throughout the east are pocketing enorrhous profits on the coal which does reach the actual user, and millions cf people are being forced to use makeshift fuels, at ex orbitant prices, because of the refusal of the hard-boiled railroad executives in this section tc make peace with their striking shopmen. MAKE AUTOMOBILE KILL ING A CAPITAL CRIME New York.—New York's recent Safety Week, headed by iE. H. Gary, of the U. S. Steel corporation, with ^ s]ogan ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ * " followed by such an increase of auto mobile slaughter in the streets that au tomobile killings are coming into the homicide court at the rate sometimes of five or six in a single day. So scandalous have conditions become that for the first time, motor car dri vers who have killed' pedestrians are being held for manslaughter. This oc curs now at the rate of one or two a day. x One such driver has been sent to jail for from one to ten years; but that, according t© Assistant District Attorney John R. Henning, is about the only case where severe punishment has been visited on offenders, despite the fact that more than 1000 are killed here annually by automobiles. VICTIMS OF GREED (Bv The Federated Press) Mexico City. — With the single ex- ception of the railroad men, every large body of organized workers of this cap ital has had occasion to bury its dead during the last six months. Not long: ago, it was the tenants' union which carried to rest the coffin of a youth shot-by an irate landlord. More re cently it Was the General Federation «of Workers that mourned the death of an aged weaver shot by a squad of mounted police at the order of a bribesf officer. LET PRISONERS GO FREE; DEMAND AMNESTY FOR XMAS fBy The Federated Press) Washington. — Congress, churches, universities, and organized women were represented at thé amnesty mass meeting held at Washington, Sunday, Dec. 10, in the Shubert-Garrick thea ter, to honor the meijiory of Ricardo Flores Magon, who paid with His life; for his.ideals of freedom, and to de mand again the release of the remain ing 62 wartime political prisoners still confined in federal prisons. This memorial meeting, sponsored by a large group of Washington men and women, including 13 members of congress, was arranged immediately af ter the death of Ricardo Flores Magon,. at Leavenworth, while serving a 21 year sentence for the writing of a "se ditious" article in his Spanish paper at Los Angeles. The speakers, all of whom defended freedom of speech and of opinion, included Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, chairman; Mrs. Winnifred Ma son Huck, congresswoman from Illinois ! Dr. John A. Ryan, of the Catholic un iversity and director, social action de partment, National Catholic Welfare council; Prof. Paul Brissenden, Colum bia university, who conducted a special investigation of various labor organiz ations for the U. S. department of la bor; and Mrs. Harriet Stanton Blatch, New York, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and herself a leader in the suf frage movement. Mrs. Blatch made a fervent and mov ing appeal for the release before Xmas of the 62 political prisoners still in jail, which was followed by resolutions call ing upon President Harding to grant a Christmas amnesty for all those im prisoned for war opinions and free speech. Mrs. Winnifred Mason Huck, the on ly woman elected to congress this year, also urged general amnesty for polit ical prisoners, saying: It has been said that the women or rather the woman's point of view —will bring world peace. If that is so,, we have no time to lose, and we must present} and keep our point of . view. * * * And it is from that wo man s angle that I want to plead for these political prisoners; and, remem .ber, I am not pleading from the pris oners angle. His angle is individual, personal; and, although I, as an indi vidual, would gladly plead the individ ual cases, I am here to-day to speak for humanity, and to urge that these nrisoners be freed, net for their sake, but for the sake of our people, that v ' e might clear the way of obstacles, that our road to world peace may be easier to travel." CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA Berlin.—The Federated Press inter view with W. O. Thompson, formerly financial adviser, Russian-American In dustrial corporation, does not reveal the bitterness cf feeling injected into the interview as cabled by the old es tablished news services. Thompson be lieves thé project sound if >the Russian government fulfils its part but doubts whether that will be done. 1 Savel Zimond, on leave from the In dustrial Bureau of Industrial Research, New York, has returned from five month? in Russia with a high opinion of the future of the soviet system and its benefits to the Russian people. He confirms the report of the National In formation Bureau cf America that fa mine relief continues necessary for at least 10,000,000 people in Russia. FREE PUBLICITTFÔRT K. K. (By The Federated Press) New York. — Ku Klux Klan organ izers and leaders in New York city have and are having the benefit of publicity that millions cf dollars could not have bought outright, and they are making the best of it. They are cap italizing the stupidity of officials of the city administration and of the courts, and they are scarcely trying to hide their satisfaction at the fatuous man ner in which the màypr, the police, and a judge are attempting to shoo them away. ,