New Britain herald., 1917-11-15
FARMERS LEAGUE
 WILL BE A FEATURE
Association Has Its Eyes Trained on Congress, Commissioner Says

that the Farmers National Non-Par- tisan League, which originated in North Dakota, would become a feat ure in congress and perhaps in the next presidential campaign was made by Frank E. Packard, state tax com- missioner of North Dakota, in an ad- dress he delivered here today before the eleventh annual tax conference of the National Tax Association.
 MT. Packard reviewed the underly- ing causes of the movement which re- suited in the political unheaval in North Dakota. He characterized North Dakota as 'one-crop" state. making it peculiarly subject to all the ills in marketing conditions. The control of the local market through locally controlled elevators, he said, is ineffective without control also of terminal market, hence arose the de- mand for state owned elevators. A constitutional amendment was adopt ed to authorize these but the legisla- ture refused to act. This one circum- stance, said MT. Packard, furnished
 
 starting in March, 1915, the move ment which in June had grown from nothing to an organization with 15O,- 900 members, maintaining three news papers and with hundreds of organiz- CTS working in eleven states scattered from North Dakota to Texas and from Wisconsin to the Pacific coast.
 Outlining the arguments set forth to bring about this organization MT. Packard said they included the fol- lowing:
 That boards of trade, such as the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, controlled the great milling and ele- vator companies and "played at ducks and drakes' with the farmers profits through manipulation in sales with the result that the farmer was com pelled to accept an inadequate price for his wheat while the consumer was forced to pay an unreasonable higher price than the farmers received.
 That the farmers were "gouged" out of millions of dollars annually through false dockage for foreign seed and dirt.
 That high grade hard wheat raised in North Dakota was mixed in the terminal elevators with soft wheat
 
 of the hard wheat.
 That the selling price of feed wheat had been raised moro than 125 per cent over the price paid to the farm CT by invention of new grades.
 Mr. Packard quoted President Ladd of the North Dakota Agricultural Col lege as asserting that the marketing conditions cost the farmers of North Dakota $55,0O0,00 annually.
 Another argument used by the farmers was that the present profit on a barrel of flour milled by the big milling concerns of Minneapolis is $4S9, that the middlemans and dis tributor's profits are $500 per bar rel, making a total profit on the wheat used in milling a barrel of flour $9.89 while the flour itself retails for $500 l barrel.
 The Farmers National Non-Parti- l san League" said MT. Packard, "has ] now added a new argument for the , conscription of wealth for the conduct 1 of the war, embracing state-owned elevators, packing plants, flour. mills 1 and warehouses and the exemption of 1 farm improvements from taxation. 1 Only the latter plank-exemption of Improvements from taxation-has ben enacted into law
 Like all radical or unusual move ments," he said, "it has attracted to it many cranks, faddists and one idea men. But the great body of it's mem bershtp are honest, straightforward intelligent American citizens who be- lieve that they are suffering economic wrong and that they have hit upon a plan to right them. They bitterly resent the charge that the movement { is socialisic, unpatriotic or un-Amer- ican. They contend that it is what 1 1t appears to be, a non-partisan move ment, to secure economic advanta ge for the farming class"
 F. H. Johnston left Monday for