WHY THE NON-PARTISAN LEAGUE GROWS

...A startling factor in the situation is that the common man is for the first time making r decisive effort to get control, legally, of the machinery of government 1830 and 1848 say many and divers programs of the common ma-wrested from him because he used the method of the barricades and bloodshed in an effort to enforce them...

...The work of propaganda is obviously open, as open as a public hall or street corner, and the organs of expression, newspapers and organizers, are unqualified in their statements of the league methods and aims...

...The committee of investigation is given unlimited inquisitional powers which are not in any way subject to retaliation or redress from the courts...

...Rule one of the association's by-laws provides that the government of the association is vested in a committee of thirteen...

...Paul attorney who for fifteen years has been fighting ring rule and corporate control in Minnesota...

...Farmers are not bloody revolutionists...

...Methods Are Arbitrary THESE rival political associations, while alike in freedom from partisanship, differ widely in organization and method...

...Paul, Minnesota, has made an exhaustive investigation of the economic conditions which gave rise to the starting of the Non-Partisan League in the Northwest...

...From the days of feudalism when farmers were barons, to the time of the Agrarian party in Germany, the peasant land owners of France and the gentry of England of the last century, farmers have been the force tending toward conservatism if not positive reaction...

...The eight-hour law for women, the disability compensation act, the coal mine inspection law, the full train crew bill, the minimum wage for women and other like legislations were written into the laws of the State in one short session...

...One of the inflexible rules of these meetings is that no office seeker or politician shall be permitted to attend or shall be chosen as delegate or prospective legislator...

...Both have recognized in the practical political al-liance which they have made that they must unite their forces against parasite and profiteer...

...The Non-partisan league seeks to break this monopoly and to give a fair share of control in the state government and of essential factors in production and distribution to the common man, city and country toiler, through centralized, unified effort...

...The Chamber of Commerce, for instance, is essentially soviet in its exclusive and arbitrary method of controlling its members and activities...

...At last comes the movement which seeks to express as a unit the will of the common man through the recognized legal channel—the vote...

...In this state, the decisive battle, in which the farmers have the advantage in numbers but for which the monopoly can, mobilize millions, is yet to be fought...

...The Non-partisan league has captured the political machinery of North Dakota, but the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce continues to maintain its supremacy in Minnesota...

...The succeeding decades have seen all forms of unions, strikes, sabotage, and whatnot in the line of direct action prove alt but temporarily ineffectual in ameliorating con-ditions...

...Doubtiess her father's first-hand knowledge of the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce and of the Non-Partisan League, which he has acquired from witnesses and documents examined by him in various lawsuits and hearings in which he has served as counsel, has been of invaluable aid to the daughter in the preparation of this timely article.—Editor's Note...

...even the private co-operative move-ment, late product of the last century, has been pushed to the wall through the "back door" control of legislatures by big private concerns...

...This in connection with curtailment of gambling and prevention of the use of storage grain for market manipulation purposes would let in the lifegiving fresh air to the closely sealed Minneapolis Chamber of trade...

...In simple truth there is no conflict between these classes of producers...

...The northwestern farmers by similar Non-partisan activity are striving to break this monopolistic control by legislation which will put the market place and its controlling agencies, such as terminal elevators and the trading floor, under state management...

...These are not strange facts when you consider that the prime purpose of these traders in grain is to make profits...

...The Chamber of Commerce is in politics fighting desperately to maintain its monopoly...

...and the farmer buying shoes and shirts for his family is very apt to doubt the need of a minimum wage and eight-hour laws for factory workers, Bold-faced editorials, arguing that there is an irreconcilable conflict between toilers in town and tillers of the soil, have frequently appeared in the daily papers which enjoy full-page ads of the packers and millers, and their stupid readers never suspected the motive nor detected the lack of logic...

...To accomplish this and to free the live stock market from monopoly by establishing and operating state-owned packing houses and cold storage plants in connection with the broader purposes of protecting the interests of the toilers in the city shops and factories whom the farmers recognize as having identical interests with them as essential and basic producers, is the league program...

...This essentially is democracy...

...Neither can suffer exploitation without injury to the other...

...They buy for the lowest and sell for the highest possible price...

...Program of The League THE legislative program, that is, the actual aim and purpose of the league, is controlled by the members who meet in caucus in each precinct to discuss principles and candidates...

...To the city toiler who pays a high price for meat and bread, it is easy to insinuate that farmers get too much for their cattle and corn...

...This alliance between organized labor and organized farmers was brought about by the good faith and statesmanship of the progressive farmers of North Dakota, on winning political control of that state...

...The terms "usage and custom" are sufficiently elastic to enable "the committee" with its inquisitional powers and closed trials to control every grain dealer and option trader and to enforce the unity essential to the exercise of monopoly...

...Just what are the methods by which the Chamber of Commerce asserts its monopoly rights...

...Backbone of Conservatism TO call the Non-partisan league of farmers, originated to combat the sovietism of the Chamber of Commerce, Bolshevistic, is under the circumstances either inexcusable negligence in the matter of self-information, or a deliberate attempt to misrepresent for the purpose of discrediting a movement which could not be defeated by argument...

...She is the daughter of the former congressman, James A. Manahan, the distinguished St...

...Heretofore the exploiting monopolist and profiteer, with cunning dishonesty, have found it possible to separate and antagonize the farming and laboring classes...

...The power vested in the leaders extends only to matters of organization for campaign purposes...

...The ultimate selling price being limited and determined in large measure by the purchasing power of consumers, manifestly it serves the self interest of the traders to hold down to as low a point as possible the price yielded to the producers...

...The Minneapolis business men by strictly Non-partian political activity (it is significant that John S. Pillsbury was at the time governor of Minnesota) succeeded in getting the Minnesota legislature to enact a law under which they have successfully organzed and perpetuated a monopoly that controls the price fixing and marketing of grain...

...the voice of the common man finally will be heard...

...This essentially ir, sovietism...

...If it succeeds in this state, as it bids fair to do, the age-old aspiration of the democratic idea of government will be realized...

...The farmer's association became necessary as a matter of political self-defense...

...THE Non-partisan association of Minneapolis business men operating as its Chamber of Commerce is responsible for the organization of the Non-partisan league of farmers...

...Captains of industry, moreover, have been in the practical business of politics as a potent factor in money making, for years, while farmers and wage workers have blindly followed their respective partisan bell-wethers only to pay in advance their surplus earnings into divers monopoly money tills camouflaged as ballot boxes...

...The Non-partisan league, on the other hand, is democratic in its work and propaganda...

...While our courts where civil or criminal cases are tried are always open to the press and the public, these star chamber trials of the Chamber of Commerce are behind closed doors, and secret and sealed by inflexible rule and discipline...

...To sum up, the gambling in the pit, the limitation and discipline of members of the Chamber of Commerce with the consequent exclusion of outsiders from the market place, tend, while operating under the indulgence of a friendly state government, to the arbitrary and absolute control of the price of grain by the few Minneapolis dealers...

...The offender has no protection no matter how unjust the sentence...

...They enacted every law requested by organized labor...

...The farmer ever has been and will be far removed from the irrational radicalism termed "red," due, pehaps, to the heritage of wholesomenes left him from long contemplation of distances, green-gold fields and blue sky...

...Labor and The Farmer THE recognition by the farmers of the wisdom and justice of political co-operation with organized labor marks a forward step in the struggle for industrial justice to the men and women who do the world's work...

...In this country, the farmers as separate entrepreneurs, even though on a small, scale, have placed themselves at the farthest extremity from the class of shifting I. W. W.'s, who desire, in their complete lack of material assets, to overturn the existing order of government...

...Comparison of Organization Aims By KATHRYN MANAHAN Kathryn Manahan of St...

...Unfair inspection, supposedly done by the state, but actually controlled by the operators, coupled with control of all great terminal elevators where immense quantities of grain in storage can be dumped upon the market at opportune moments to lower the price of the farmers' grain, are the screws which the Chamber of Commerce twist most effectively on the producers...

...The Non-partisan league maintains that to free the farmer from this impoverishing monopoly the market place must be made public, state elevators in which everyone can store and hold grain must be built and actual state grading and inspection for the purpose of securing to the farmers the true milling value of their grain, must be attained...

...A membership in this soviet of Minneapolis traders costs over seven thousand dollars and no cooperative concern can become a member at any price, which effectively excludes the farmers from any voice or control in tho market where their crops are sold...

...To connect the word "farmer" with a "red" state of mind is absurdity in any case, because farmers have for centuries been the very backbone of conservatism...

...Rule four gives this board power to try any member for "violations of the rules, customs, usages or regulations of the association" and "to enforce such rules and regulations by such penalties as it may prescribe...

...The monetary restrictions on membership are nominal and membership itself unlimited...

...This soviet management of marketing in Minnesota, as revealed by these rules and by the practice of the Chamber of Commerce, might have been copied by Lenine and Trotsky in drafting their Bolshevik constitution for Russia, but it is to be hoped that the harsher restrictions of the Minneapolis soviet were relaxed to meet Russia's aspirations toward liberty...

...The device of option trading, that is, betting on the future price of grain, is used to lower the present price to a minimum following harvest when the farmer must sell for lack of his own terminal elevator...