The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-10-14

|
 sible radical. We've swapped one for
 the other. The thermometer by
 which we may reckon the strength of
 a nation is the proportion of its farms
 worked by owners. In 1910, 37 per
 cent. of American farmers were rent
 CTS. In six years that percentage had increased to 50!
 In Germany, SC per cent. of the land
 is Harmed by the owners. German
 farmers are organized-as our indus
 tries are-they are the strongest in
 the world. The German farmer is
 now as expert a merchant as is our
 city manufacturer. Go into meet
 ing of any American farmers grange, 1 and this is the burden of their com
 plaint-'we are being eaten up by the
 trusts Sit down at a table in a gar | den restaurant of a hotel in a manu- featuring town in Germany, and what
 do you hear? 'Das verdamptes par I tel agrad fressen uns auf.' The
 damned agrarian party is devouring
 us.'
 Do you see the difference? It is
 better that the farmer should do the
 clubbing, if clubbing is to be done, | than the trusts. Every outcry of the
 German manufacturer enhances the
 value of the land, and cpnserves every phase of economic, social and political | life. Whereas in American the cry Don't hurt business means that the dogs want to eat, and the public may | be damned.
 There is a wide difference between our autocratic Big interests and the | autocracy of the IHohenzollerns. Ours is the more dangerous to the public. The trouble with our democracy is that it don't democratize enough Our al-
 tocracy is selfish. The Hohenzollern is scientific, consequently more effi- ] cient. Our aGtocracy is in the arms of our beloved darling trusts. It's
 motto is, for their own interests, Pro
 gress,' for all other interests, the sta tus Quo. Our fight for economic free
 dom must be waged against igno- rance on one hand and the status quo on the other. The American eating
 public has got to decide whether our Armours and Swifts and Rockefel1ers are our gods. When we dare smile
 when the gods of this or that trust
 look on something with disfavor we
 have started ouI emancipation.
 The high cost of living is the high l cost of handling. We as a nation must take away the autocratic power of the handlers. Until that power is taken away the prices of staples, war or no war, will go on mounting higher and higher. The influence of our far mer has been neutralized, with the re- suit that our democracy has become chaos and anarchy. In Germany the whole pedestal of the state has been democratized from the top down. We should have,democratic thought in our government. A government which is really democratic with democratized economic state would make us, among the nations of all the world, the best prepared. It is the nation that must be strong, not Big Business. A nation can't be. prosperous by serving a Rockefeller or a Morgan.
 There are certain ways of getting at the trusts. This administration knocked the props from high protec- tion. It also gave us an effective Interstate Commerce Commission to get at them. The iniquities of the old system of freight rates were many and far-reaching in their results. We already begin to look back as ancient history the days when the power of the clique juggled freight rates on bulk traffic. They didn't do that with the rates on package traff1c-chairs, cook stoves, handkerchiefs-oh- no, the freight rates of manufactured articles were only altered on sixty days mo- tice. But not such notice on bulk traff1c-staples of agriculture, corn and wheat, oats and cotton. Certainly not. They were dealing with the farmer there, not with the manufacturer. They could juggle the farmer as they pleased. They could change the rates from day to day-in an hour! They could raise or lower them, and ho- body knew the day or the hour when the rate would be- changed. Nobody but the clique. As they shifted the The power over the negro slave was as play co4npared to that of this clique. Every time staples shifted up or down the ultimate consumer, the eater, had to pay not only, the difference in the shift but, in addition, the risk of the shift being made. That was the big nigger in the woodpile. the little joker in American business-the power of the clique to juggle rates.
 The third weapon by which to strike the makers of the, high cost of living is the Parcel Post. President Wilson sees clearly the enormous ad- vantages to be- gained through the possible extension of such government service. There is as much reason why we should mafl-orderize eggs and po- tatoes, and carrots and chickens, as that we should use the Parcel Post for neckties and suspehders, millinery and cause the idea is new and because the invested interests-the standpatters, the status quo people-fear lest their own special interests might suffer through the necessary readjustment. What these timid souls fail to real ize is that when the Parcel Post be- comes so efficient as to bring the ul- innate consumer in touch with the original producer, the producer will get more for his produce and the con- sumer will pay less, and the enor- nous sums that now go to non-pro- ducing labor will be turned to increas- ing the output and multiplying the ca pacity of the consumer in every direc- ton.
 There is nothing radical about this Parcel Post business. It is not only necessary if the farmer is not to be pushed out of existence, but the very hope of the Republic depends on ma 1r;-, $y,a YrnrnorouS