Kansas City journal. [volume] (Kansas City, Mo.) 1897-1928, 1898-01-11
KANSAS o EVOLVES A SCHEME
FOL LEGISLATING MEN RICH.
EUROPE TO BE STARVED OUT.
TO GET NOTHING UNTIL SHE COMES
TO THE TRUSTS TERMS.
A Congress to BE Elected Which VIII
Prohibit Exports Until Foreign
ers Are willing to Pay Dig
Prices-kansns News
and Gossip.

Topeka, Kas., Jan. 1o.-(Special.) Walter
N. Allen. a Populist farmer in Jefferson
county ard member of the state board of
charities during the Lewelling administra-
ton. has evolved the most gigantic scheme
o. the age. 1t distances Leedy's Aurora
BorealiS e. South Pole railroad scheme
and even puts to shame Percy Daniels
project to build a ship canal connecting the
Gulf of Mexico with Butte City. Mott.
Aliens scheme is to form a national farm
ers' trust, 10 include every farmer in the
United States.
The object of this trust. like all other
trusts. is 10 control prices. Mr.. Allen
would have it dictate the price of grain.
meat products and cotton. His plan diff
fers widely from the way other trusts are
organized. Prices are not to be maintained
by mutual agreement, but by law. His
scheme is for the farmers to organize d
trust, sweep the country at the next cleo
ton, and elect a farmers congress-: then
have it pass a law ordering the secretary
of agriculture not to permit the clearance
of any outgoing ocean vessel carrying any
OF the products named until further or
ders. Mr.. Allen thinks that if these prod
ucts of this country are withheld for some
time, the people abroad will get hungry,
and that, in the face of starvation. they
.'- I@NNS $1,000 -
says this country raises 20 per cent of the
cotton, 90 per cent of the breadstuffs and
so per cent of the meat products of the
world, and that II would only be a short
time after the gates were closed until the
foreigners would be compelled to knock
for something TO eat. The Dingley tariff,
he says. does not benefit the producers Of
these products. but the law which he has
suggested would give them protection.
Allen is enthusiastic in advocating the
scheme. He has prepared a paper on this
subject which he will read before the state
board of agriculture at its annual meeting
here this week. In it he will outline a
scheme for the organization of the farmers
trust, and will go into the minutest de-
tail.
When asked tonight IL there was not
danger of the scheme kicking backward;
II such a law would not cause other coun-
tries to take up wheat, corn, cattle and
cotton-raising to supply the demand and
ultimately leave the American farmers
with their surplus products on hand and
no market, with no starving people in Eu-
rope. he said:
Now. 1 don't care to discuss that feat
IRE. until 1 read my paper. 1 expect just
such questions as that, and 1 am loaded
for them. However. l will say that the
other countries can't raise these products
in sufficient quantities to supply the de-
mand."
He admitted that there might be a
scarcity Of money among the American
farmers for awhile during the starving out
process. but said that when the foreigners
commenced to want stuff, the farmers could
get enough more for their products to just
ify them In holding them for awhile.
Allen evolved a scheme about ten years
ago for the farmers to organize a trust to
govern the price of wheat. A big confer
ence was held in St. Louis. but nothing
ever came of it. That failed. he says. be-
cause IT was to be a mutual arrangement
among the members; this new scheme, he
says, will work. because the law will be
behind it. He wants to run for congress on
the Populist ticket in the First Kansas dis
trict on a farmers trust platform.