The strike is being carried on most effectively in North Dakota, where
the Non-Partisan League has been actively organizing the farmers for
several years, and in Kansas, where the Wheat Growers’ Association of
America is busy. The Non-Partisan League, while active politically, has
as its principal purpose the uniting of farmers into a group that can
get governmental action. Its chief field of operations is the Northwest,
North and South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, but it is also
spreading further and was concentrating its attention on Nebraska when I
was out there a short time ago. The Wheat Growers’ Association of
America is also operating in Nebraska and is spreading its influence
over Oklahoma and Texas as well as Kansas. It claims 100,000 membership.
Between the two they control the wheat producing States, and if there
were not a big idea behind the revolt it might prove to be a serious
kind of industrial strike.
The story of the revolt was best told to me by Senator Edwin F. Ladd of
North Dakota. He is the original champion of the wheat growers in North
Dakota, and as head of the chemistry department of the North Dakota
Agricultural College, went out years ago and told the farmers they were
not getting their share. He is a born agitator, it was his work that
made the Non-Partisan League possible, and he has just been elected on
the Non-Partisan League to the Senate of the United States. He is going
to Congress to represent wheat. I saw him recently in Fargo, N. D.,
where he was laying his plans for his revolutionary coup in favor of the
farmers.
I went to him to talk about the Non-Partisan League, but, though he had
just acquired his seat in the Senate on the Non-Partisan ticket, he
talked perhaps ten minutes on the league, and an hour or so on the
revolt of the wheat growers and the other farmers.
_Farmers Realize Situation_
“The farmers who grow wheat,” he said, “are in revolt because they have
come to understand their position in the economic life of the country.
They know they do the work of growing the wheat and the profit is
largely taken by others. Here in North Dakota the situation is so simple
it is easy to grasp, and once seen, cannot be forgotten. The rich city
of Minneapolis is exceedingly prosperous on the money it made out of the
wheat grown in North Dakota. There stands Minneapolis and here are the
North Dakota farmers who realize they are not richer on account of the
wheat operators.
“The method of handling the wheat crop is also simple enough for any
farmer to understand. During the spring and summer the banks lend money
to the farmers to grow and harvest the crop. Their notes fall due early
in the fall, when they are supposed to sell their crops. The small
banks, which did the lending, backed by bigger banks in the bigger
cities, reassemble this money, ship it back to the big city banks, which
lend it over again to the operators and speculators who handle the wheat
through its second period. They are in turn supposed to make the
turnover in a few months, to sell and repay the banks, which lend the
same money for a third time to the shippers who finally dispose of the
wheat.
“The farmer now asks why he should be forced to liquidate his crop so
quickly. Is it only so other men can clean up fortunes yearly on the
manipulation of the crop he has raised? He wants to know why. He sees no
reason why he should let this process continue. So he is making the only
protest possible. He is sitting on his wheat and refuses to play the
game as it has always been played. He will not hasten to liquidate his
crop right away in order to finance the wheat speculator.”
_North Dakota Banks Close_
“Here in North Dakota the refusal of the farmers to sell has closed
thirty or more banks. These banks are not insolvent, but they have no
money. It is all in the wheat upon which the farmers are sitting and
refusing to budge. When they decide to sell they will pay their notes
and the banks will again be able to resume business.
“It is a strike, if you want to call it so. It is a protest against the
economic system and shows the spirit that is moving. The Non-Partisan
League has been voicing this protest and organizing it. That is why it
has grown and is growing now faster than ever in spite of the political
fight that has been put up against it. It may look for a harder fight as
the organized bankers and wheat manipulators see their profits
threatened by the preparations the farmers are making to voice their
protest even more effectively through the American Farm Bureau.
“This is what is really happening among farmers. One way or another they
are beginning to understand they have been the victims of
disorganization. They have marketed all together and have bred
speculation. Now they intend to change. They do not mean to hold up the
country, but to force a change, so they are organizing, the wheat men in
one group, the corn in another, the cotton and wool in still further
groups, &c. There are dozens of different organizations all working to
the same end, and their strength is being united in the Farm Bureau.
They wish to sell through their own organizations and make the full
profit.
“So far in the United States only the raisin growers of California and
the prune growers have organized effectively. They sell their crops
co-operatively.”
_Canada’s Wheat Financing_
“The wheat growers and the others mean to do the same thing. The method
is simple. It is only necessary to get the different groups organized
and the banks will have to finance us. I have just been making a study
of how it is being done, and how it has been done for the past six
years, in the three wheat provinces of Canada. There it was operated
through the Canadian Government during the war, but it is now being
operated by the banks. There are some 700 co-operative elevators where
the farmers can store their wheat, and from which it is finally disposed
of.
“The method there, which we shall adopt, is to pay the farmer a price on
delivering the wheat and giving him a receipt which entitles him to a
share in the future operations. Last year when the wheat was placed in
the elevators the farmer was paid per bushel $2.15 in cash. When the
price was more definitely fixed he was paid another 30 cents, and when
the transaction for the year was ended another 18 cents. So he got all
that was coming to him. According to the system in vogue here he would
have got the $2.15 perhaps, and that is all he ever would have got. The
other 48 cents per bushel, which totals up on the year’s crop to
millions of dollars, would have gone to enrich the speculators and wheat
manipulators, ‘Minneapolis,’ as we say here.”
“What we need to do is to organize ourselves as they have done in
Canada, store our wheat in our own co-operative elevators and make the
banks finance us through the different periods in the handling of the
crop. There are three periods now, the farming, the holding and the
handling of the wheat. It only needs co-operation for the farmer to
share in all three periods.
“In this period of unrest following the war is beginning a new era in
agriculture. Following the Civil War came the growth of manufacturing.
After this war comes the reorganization of agriculture. For years now
two-thirds of the population has been dependent on one-third. The cities
have dominated. Now the country is going to share equally with the
cities.”
Senator Ladd has vision. There are others too, but there is danger in
vision. The farmers, being in revolt, want to do everything at once.
They want to develop the Farm Bureau into an economic machine that would
rival the power of the Federal Government. They want to centre the
selling of the whole agricultural crop in a single body. It would be
much more successful for each type of farmer to organize apart and go
forward slowly as the raisin and prune growers they emulate have done.
_League Voices Protest_
I wish to say just a word about the Non-Partisan League. It is a
farmers’ organization, but it has been developed largely by the energy
of a single man, A. G. Townley. It has, in consequence, made many
mistakes, mostly political. But its enemies, fighting by fair means and
foul, have not been able to kill it off. As a league it is chiefly
important because it expresses the protest. That is also why nothing can
kill it. The one convincing thing about it, to any one, is the way the
farmers will unhesitatingly pay the $18 dues it demands. Farmers are not
so notably open-handed they would cheerfully hand over $18 if they were
not after something the league was working for. It is economic
independence.
The League’s purpose, and its only excuse for existence, is the
establishing of a new and fairer method of marketing wheat, but where it
is at work politically it is always fought on other issues—because it is
“socialistic,” because “Townley is radical”—anything but the real issue.
It was defeated in Minnesota this fall because it was declared to be a
movement in favor of free love. It appears some books of Ellen Key,
bearing on sex problems, were found in the North Dakota public school
reference library. Promptly its enemies cried down these books and
virtuously declared against the “free love movement.” In Minnesota its
enemies quickly seized upon the party cry. The wheat manipulators of
Minneapolis, who, being rich, dominated socially, sent their wives out
to tell the women of Minnesota to vote against this “free love” party.
These ladies, being rich and powerful socially, went with the virtuous
plea into every town in Minnesota and, being known as rich and prominent
socially, swept the woman vote of Minnesota with them. The Non-Partisan
League, that organization of free-loving North Dakota Scandinavian
farmers, was not allowed to pollute the virtuous State of Minnesota.
It is ironic, but it cannot stop the farmers’ protest. If Senator Ladd
is right, the protest will be organized so effectively that the farmers
will all be in industrial unions long before the industrial workers.
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]
[Illustration: [Fleuron]]
* * * * *
“RUSSIA FROM THE INSIDE”
_By Hector Boon._
A New York Business Man, Recently Returned From a Long Stay and
Extensive Travel in Russia
_Reprinted from_
[Illustration: The World]
_January 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 1921_
* * * * *
“AN AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN ON THE SITUATION IN RUSSIA”
To The New York World justly belongs the credit for giving the American
people the best description of the present situation in Russia that has
ever appeared in the American press. Beginning with Sunday, Jan. 9th,
and ending on Friday, Jan. 14th, The New York World has published daily
articles by Hector Boon, who has just returned from Soviet Russia, which
he entered on April 6th and left on Oct. 12th, 1920, after spending more
than half a year in Lenin’s kingdom.
Altogether, Mr. Boon spent ten months in Russia, of which four months
were spent in the so-called “buffer state,” the Far Eastern Republic,
which extends from Verkni-Udinsk to Vladivostok, and more than six
months in Soviet Russia proper, mostly in Moscow. * * * To this is added
that Mr. Boon was in Russia in 1917, before the Bolsheviki came into
power, and thus he was able during his last visit to compare the
conditions in Bolshevist Russia with the situation in Russia during the
first months after the March Revolution.
_From an article by A. J. Sack, Director of the Russian Information
Bureau in the United States._