The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1918-04-27
FARMERS RALLY:
AGAINST GROUP
oFExPLo|T ! !: i /!
Soil :TI||ers Realizing That Cards
Have Been Stacked By
monopoGsts.

NEW YORK, Apr. 25.-"The farm
err" and 1.-The farmer VOTE" long
familiar to politicians, no longer exist
as simple and adequate designations
of the men who produce Americas
food.
Wise men who wish to know what
the farmers are thinking and saving
about any public question must now
think at least twice before they ac-
cept the announcements of organi-
cations 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 landown-
ers, bankers who lend money to farm
ers and buy farm mortgages, grain
elevator men, farm land SPECTATORS
and promoters, packing house inter-
ests and spectators in farm products.
This is the group that is crying today
for the importation OF 100000 Chi
nese coolies for labor on the farms.
The other group is made up of the
working farmers,-men who own
their own farms, with or without
mortgages and who are struggling
against taxes and mcnopolies to make
an honest living in the most essential
and honorab BILE OF all industries. They
are the men who actually raise the
crops and build up the country The1
are the farmers whose children go to
the district schools and whose pat
ronage keeps alive the large and small
towns in the farming communities.
They are the people who\take a deep
personal interest in the Improvement
of the neighborhood, in the school
system and the free libraries and the
good roads and the churches.
Cards Are Stacked.
These working farmers have come
to a realization that the cards have
been stacked against them. It is be-
coming harder each year to make
decent living. They are exploited by
bankers, elevator men, board of trade
spectators, packing companies and
the corporations that manufacture 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 taxes.
Industry and enterprise are thus pen
allied by the tax system. AS for their
boys-they find that idle farm land
can no longer be had at a fair price
it is being held by spectators. Their
sons must go to the city to find en-
ployment.
In California these two classes of
farm land owners have come to an
issue over the question of Chinese
labor. The bona fide farmers don't
want Chinese for their neighbours
They know that the tenant system
of farming is growing rapidly, and
they know that spectators who own
adjoining lands will not hesitate to
lease them to Chinese, who very soon
would Outnumber the whites in that
locality and ruin the neighbcrhood as
a congenial home for themselves and
their children. On the other hand;
the big. eculators-absentee owners,
and the banks, real estate agents and
Chamber of Commerce which they
COAIAOIs are AuS1St1IlS OI1 tuS liHpOE Ia
ton 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. It is the division between the
producer and the monopolist-
Producers and Consumers Unite.
California farmers of the producer
class have joined hands with the pro-
ducers of the cities in g powerful
new organization, known as "The
California Uniop Of Producers and
Consumers..' It is composed of the
California Division of the Farmers
Educational and Cooperative Union
of America, the Pacific Cooperative
league of California, and the Califor-
mia State Federation of Labor Fred
Willard, farmer, is president; Paul
Scharrenberg, a member of the Sea-
mems union and secretary of the
State Fedora ton of Labor, is secre-
tary.
Naturally enough, the new organi-
"a ton believes in the taxation of land
values and the exemption of improve
ments from taxation. Fol- it il COM
posed of working farmers, net 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 and monopoly, and
ton of food and other necessities of