FARMERS’ GROUPS PORTEND FAR-REACHING CHANGES IN NATION’S ECONOMICS

By Arno Dosch-Fleurot.

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.

Kansas and North Dakota Non-Partisan League Centres

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.