The Bottineau courant. (Bottineau, Bottineau County, N.D.) 1895-1929, 1917-11-22

That governmental ownership is the only solution for the
problem of the high cost of living, was the message of Frederic
C. Howe, immigration commissioner at the port of New York, to
the City Club of that metropolis. He advised publicly owned ware
houses in every city and elaboration of the parcel post into a great
marketing agency.
The public ownership of cold storage houses and stockyards
and the adjustment of fancy tenancy, the latter being the great
est reform of all, in the opinion of Mr.. Howe. Discussing these
means to stop the continuous soring of prices. Howe said in part:
I'm the two years between April, 1915, and April, 1917, the
cost OF dairy and garden produce shot up "a per cent, and food
stufts los per cent. At the same thine wages increased only 10
per cent. 1t is reducing the standard of comfort of the American
people, and even impairing the vitality of our children.
1.-THE homecoming farmer is disappearing. In some states
he is becoming the exception. In 1880, ESQ per cent of our farm
ers were tenants; in 1910 the percentage had risen to 81 per cent.
In a number of western states tenancy has risen to so or 60 per
cent, and in some counties in the west and southwest it is univer-
"There are 4%Oo,OOO,Oo0 acres of land in the United States in
closed in farms that are not cultivated. Worse than that, there
are ~2O0yOOO,O00 acres, according to the census, devoted to great
feudal holdings whose average size is 42SO acres. One-quarter of
the acreage Of the United States is owned by less than $4,000
persons.
Agriculture is being destroyed by the railroads, the packing
monopoly, the warehouse men, the grain and food spectators, and
by cold storage warehouses and endless middlemen.
"Price fixing will not solve these problems-land monopoly,
transportation monopoly, credit monopoly, and the marketing mo-
nopoy is changing America. How can this tendency be reversed
and the stream of population be reversed toward the land again?
The farmer must first be protected from distribution monopoies
that are destroying agriculture. And the only possible means of
control of distribution is through government ownership and oper-
alton of the agencies through which the food of the country passes
to market.
"There should be publicly owned terminal warehouses in
every city; there should be a we'll organized system of markets;
the parcel post should be elaborated into a great market agency;
cold storage should be publicly owned; the abattors and stock
yards must be publicly owned. ..-E
"But this is only the beginning of the redemption of agricul-
ture. Tenancy must be abolished. The great feudal estates of
the west must be broken up and hungry humanity permitted to
go back to the land. We can only end tenancy and land monopoly
by two devices. One is the taxation of land values to bring land
into use, to end speculation, to compel men to use land or to per-
init someone else to do so. This is the greatest reform of all. The
other alternative is the farm colony planted by the state and pro-
tected by the state. The farm colony involves the sale of ready
made farms to the would-be farmers, and the organization of mar
keting and purchasing.
agriculture can only be redeemed by the state. It can only
be redeemed by the use of surgeons knife on the monopoly in
terests that now fatten off the producer and the consumer"