The Bottineau courant. (Bottineau, Bottineau County, N.D.) 1895-1929, 1919-07-31
THE BROTHERHOOD OF DEMOCRACY

The Working Peoples Nonpartisan League Of Min
nesotaf organized at the convention Of the Minnesota
Federation Of Labor last week, represents without
doubt the final form Of labor political organization in
tended to work in conjunction with the farmers Ma
tional Nonpartisan League. A labor nonpartisan league
serving the interests of democracy in the towns was in
evitable as soon as the farmers nonpartisan league
was a fact. Conditions have created there two natural
allies, with platforms and programs that supplement
each other, and assigned each it's work in it's own field.
With the great business interests monopolizing the
wealth Of the country, controlling prices and markets,
Selling the powers Of government and rapidly forming
an industrial autocracy, no power was left to oppose
them but the power Of the organized common people.
The strength of the autocracy was based upon it's abil-
ity to set the farmer and worker against each other.
The day these two powerful elements get together will
sound the doom of arbitrary industrial power in Amer
lea. ., ..~
Divided as they were, nothing but the rise Of the
organized farmers movement in North Dakota and
the friendship and fairness it displayed in putting over
the greatest labor program could have made possible
the union of these two elements. The farmers were
largely employers-no one dreamed that as such they
would ever champion the cause of labor and recognize
in a labor alliance the brotherhood of democracy. The
farmer is a Observation-Disclosures He could have
gone as easily the other way and allied himself with
the big employers, but he chose %splendidly to join the
workers in establishing a real democracy in this coun-
try. 1t is a shining example of historic wisdom.
4 Wisdom, why? Because, had the farmer gone down
the other road of history, the principle of ownership
in farm life would have %triumphed over the principle
of labor in farm life. Allied with the great autocrats
of industry the successful farmers sole consideration
would have been to obtain an income as much as pos
sible from ownership and as little as possible from
his own labor. They would have abandoned labor grad
ualy to others and would have become a small land
lord class, while the bulk of farm workers would have
become either renters and serfs or mere farm labor
ers. The foundations of the republic would have crumb-
led and the autocracy of the landlord, the industrial
and financial magnate and the monopolist would have
been erected on it's ruins.
The farmer of the Northwest has wisely chosen to
be a worker-farmer allied with the industrial workers
to make the glorious, supreme, creative thing in life
and the foundation of the new industrial democracy.
Every tribute and every discount and every unjust bur-
den laid on labor is to wiped away. The worker in the
field and the worker in the city with hands joined in a
new fraternity will yet stand forth emancipated, the
real sovereigns of a redeemed democracy, the new rul-
ers of the republic, the masters of their own destiny.
enjoying in freedom the undiminished product of their
toll. ~ .