The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1918-03-01
WHAT WORKING
FARMERS THINK

Americas food.
Wise men who wish to know what
the trainers are thinking and saying
about any public question must now
think at least twice before they ac-
cept the announcements of organ
izations purporting to speak for the
men on the land.
America has been accustomed to
think of the interests of all engaged
in agriculture as common interests.
Today there are rapidly emerging
two opposing groups.
One group includes large land
owners, bankers who lend money to
farmers and buy farm mortgages,
grain elevator men, farm land spec
ulators and promoters, packing house
interests and spectators in farm
products. This is the group that is
crying today for the importation of
five million Chineses coolies for la
Dor on the farms.
Liz OChcI SIOuP 10 uP Va
the working farmers-men who own
their own farms, with or without
mortgages and who are struggling
against taxes and monopolies to
make an honest living in the most
essential and honorable of all in
dustries. They are the men who
actually raise the crops and build
up the country. They are the farm
ers whose children go to the district
schools and whose patronage keeps
alive the large and small towns in
the farming communities. They
are the people who take a deep per-
sonal interest in the improvement of
the neighborhood, in the school sys-
tenn and the free libraries and the
good roads and the churches.
These working farmers have come
to realization that the cards have
been stacked against them. 1t is
becoming harder each year to make
decent living. They are exploited
by bankers, elevator men, board of
trade spectators, packing companies
and the corporations that manufac-
ture and sell them machinery and
supplies. For every dollar of value
added to their farms by their own
enterprise, they are required to pay
more in taxes. Industry and enter
prise are thus penalized by the tax
system. AS for their boys-they
find that idle farm land can no
longer be had at fair price-it is
being held by spectators. Their sons
must go to the city to find employ
ment.
In California these two classes of
farmland owners have come to an
issue over the question of Chinese
labor. The bona fide farmers don't
want Chinese for their neighbors.
They know that the tenant system of
farming is growing rapidly, and they
know that spectators who own ad-
joining lands will not hesitate to
lease them to Chinese, who very soon
would outnumber the whites in that
locality and ruin the neighborhood
as a congenial home for themselves
and their children. On the other
hand, the big speculators-absentee
owners-and the banks, real estate
agents and Chambers of Commerce
which they control, are insisting on
the importation of Chinese.
1t is the same old division between
those who toll and those who eat
their bread in the sweat of other
mems brows. 1t is the division be-
tween the producer and the monopo-
list.
California farmers of the produc-
err class have joined hands with the
producers of the cities in a powerful
new organization, known as "The
California Union of Producers and
Cosumers." 1t is composed of the
California Division of the Farmers
Educational and Cooperative Union
of America, the Pacific Cooperative
League, Inc, of California, and the
California State Federation of La
Dor. Fred Willard, a farmer, is
president; Paul Scharrenberg, a
member of the Seamen's Union and
secretary of the State Federation
of Labor, is secretary.
Naturally enough, the new organ
ization believes in the taxation of
land values and the exemption of
improvements from taxation. For it
is composed of working farmers, not
land spectators and monopolists, and
it wants the land opened up to those
who can make good use of it. The
new Union is pledged to work for
"public ownership of all public util-
ities-to free the land and society
from privilege and monopoly, and to
provide for the equitable distribu-
ton of food and other necessities of
life"