_By Arno Dosch-Fleurot._
Copyright, 1921, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York World).
American farmers are organizing industrial unions. The wheat men are
getting together in one union, cotton in another, wool in another. They
may not call their organizations “unions,” but it is a part of the new
industrial alignment. They are organizing for mutual backing, and the
wheat farmers have gone so far they are carrying on a strike.
Labor has not made much headway in organizing industrially because there
are too many difficulties in the way. These are principally the American
Federation of Labor, and the associations of manufacturers. The
organizers of industrial unionism also stand in their own light, as they
try to organize labor industrially and cry revolution at the same time.
And there is no revolutionary spirit in America.
Certainly there is no such spirit among the farmers, but what they have
in mind means such a decided change in national economy as to be a real
revolution, one that may make a decided change in the life of the
country and carried on by effective organization, instead of by the
silly parade of arms and loud talk about the proletariat, the way it is
done in Europe.
The revolution the farmers have in mind is this: They refuse longer to
be dominated by the cities; it is their purpose to dictate terms to the
cities. As it is, they are held under what they consider a financial
tyranny directed by the powerful interests of the country. They purpose
organizing so effectively that, jointly, they will not only be as
powerful as the financial interests, but having the staff of life in
their hands they will be able to force their will.
The wheat farmers are right now in revolutionary foment. They are
carrying on industrial strike. They refuse to sell their wheat. They are
asking a high price, but that is merely symbolic. What they want is to
get the price at which the wheat is finally sold. They are striking for
the profits now made by the operators, the elevator owners, the
speculators and the shippers. They have not yet carried their strike to
the point of refusing to plant more wheat unless they get the full
profit they demand, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility.