davidaulloa/AmericanStories huggingface dataset:
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26
ne Trust! Farmers, Too, 10000 Of Them

ciple of fixing wheat prices on this CONT
nent at an equitable price to the grower.
In the spring of 1917, before the United
States entered the war, wheat stood at
about s175 per bushel, but had wildly
fuctuated during the preceding twelve
months, ranging from $1,06 to s191, and
was climbing steadily higher. The British
government had fixed minimum price for
home grown wheat of about $1S2, had
bought the whole available surplus of Aus
trala at about SLIP and controlled the sur
plus crops of India and Egypt. Acting, there
fore, as an intermediary for the British
government, Sir George Foster, Canadian
Minister of Trade and Commerce. ap-
preached the Canadian Council of Agricul-
ture which is a consolidation Of all the
FIVE organizations mentioned above, with
the offer of $3.50 bushel for their entire
1912 crop before it sown, this price to
Great Lakes. Much to his and the general
SURPRISE the council refused his offer, and
named as the lowest acceptable the fiat rate
of $40 or preferably guarantee of prices
from a minimum of $3.50 to maximum Of
sl9O Taking into consideration the tre-
mendously increased cost of production,
the organized farmers of Western Canada
defend their seeming profteering by sub
hitting that there was no moral obliga-
ton upon them to produce wheat at loss
or lower than the British farmer - a
price in fact, which would have the oppo-
site result of dscouraging wheat produc-
ton. The government felt this figure was
too high, but q very few months later in
concert with the action of the United States
government, itself fixed the price at s221.
There is very little doubt that had the
price OF wheat not been fixed it would
to-day be around SO or s4. It actually
touched SO in May, 1917; so that on both
counts the farmers offer would in the IN
shot have been to the national advantage.
"u' no" came the farmers to possess
these unexpected powers of saying "no"g
The farmer had hitherto been the ultimate
goat, to whom the world successfully PASSED
the buck Of low prices. Practically alone
OF all prime producers, the farmer was
the only one who did not control the selling
price of his commodity, based upon cost OF
production plus handling charges. but had
to take what the world would give him
Inc more there was Of his one commodity
in the market, the less he got. The answe,
lies in tho fact that while in 1905. it's irst
year, the one farmers trading companv
handled less than 3 per cent of the total
volume Of grain exported from Western
Canaoa, which was roughly 10000, ,o0o bush
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26
The Terrible Lesson of the
''Cerman Desert" and Its
Begggary to France
By Frank H. Si1nonds

French and Belgians lived five years ago,
just nothing. Villages, forests, the fruit
trees, and the garden shrubs, like the
buildings, all gone. How, then, are the
peace makers at Paris to set in motion the
machinery, itself all to be made which will
bring the old inhabitants back to the Ger
man desert which, like the Great Amer
lean Desert OF the last century, separates
two smiling regions? How are the millions
of little people, with their hocks and their
farm implements, TO be returned? How
ere the Germans, who did this thing to
undo it?
In Paris one talks of the league Of ma
tions and the right of self determination,
but the Hndenburg hne one thinks of
something more specific, more tangible
On the Hndenburg line I found a French
woman who had come to look for the first
time at what had been her home, the village
in which she had been born, and her peo-
pie time out of mind. | found her ex-
hausted beside the road, after the thirty
mile walk, her face again turned toward
her place of exile. And this is what for
her, for her children, her friends and
neighbors the Hindenburg line was
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26
In tie "Gern7an
De eSert"

1t is in the dead cities and even more in
the dead villages of Northern France that
one must seek evidence Of what this Ger
man thing has meant must seek some
innate of that vast account which remains
to be settled The German has gone. He
has vanished out OF the trenches, out of
the ruins of the region he has wasted.
His conquerors have gone after him, but
the real inhabitants have not yet begun
to return AS consequence, from YpTes
to the border of the Disc above Noyon,
more than hundred miles in longitude,
aud from a dozen to fifty miles in latitude,
there exists the most appalling desert of
which the mind can conceive-a few Ger
man prisoners cleaning debris from the
more important highways, few British
soldiers standing guard material, and
for the rest in land where three million
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26
Things America
Must Remember

l have dwelt upon these circumstances at
this time because it seems to that
Americans must understand in some meas
ure the mood and temper of France to- day.
1t is the tragedy which has not been abol-
ished by the armistice, it is the ruin which
formula of words and sentiments can
abolish. The men who planned and guided
this thing are in the main alive and un-
punished. AT least million French women
and children are still practically homeless.
Years must pass before the open wound
which stretches from Belgium to Switzer-
land can be healed, if at all, and it will
remain an open wound forever in the side
of France If France and not the German.
have to carry the burden. And yet, save
for the French in Paris and out Of it, ono
feels p certain tendency to forget this Ger
man desert. The German is singing a new
tune now. His humility is as complete as
was his arrogance year ago. The French
woman told me how her German master
made her work in the fields close up to the
fsing line, growing potatoes, and then
allowed her two day to live on; yet the
German now imperiously demands that we
feed him while his victims remain without
all that which they must have if they are
70 begin life again
Over in Germany the Germans are feed
ing our soldiers with words and with pro-
visions, carrying on monstrous propa-
ganda with something of the success they
had in similar work in America not SO
long ago. In Paris the peace conference re-
ports concentrate upon the Adriatic prob
lem, the Polish readjustments, while the
question of the Kingdom Of the Hedjaz
threatens to shorten the lives of statesmen
and diplomats alike.
But by automobile one may almost in a
moment reach the old German line, and it is
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26
Gone, but Not
Forgotten!

In the centre of Lens returned citizen
was searching amid the ruins of his store
for well, down which he had lowered val
liable papers, and he could not find the
we'll; even so we'll defined an objective
was beyond his resources, destruc-
ton was so complete And the story Of
Lens was this. When the German found he
could not stay he resolved that France
should still be dependent upon Germany
for coal; that she should still be crippled
for an endless time. SO, systematically, he
destroyed the mines, the machinery, the
dwelling houses; he took the furniture
do rot know how words can describe the
monstrous the amazing miracle of destruc-
tion he accomplished in the Lens district
He is gone now. But the problem re
mains. He wasted the fields that the peas
ants might not return. He destroyed the
cities and the mines, that the industrial
population might not come back, that this
region and this portion of France might
die, and now, when the German peasants
are returning to their undisturbed farms,
to their undamagad industrial centres and
their intact factories, the people of North
ern France are still eX!es.
hope my American friends will think Of
the German desert which occupies so much
of Northern France when the peace CON
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26

number of owners tenants of farms in
the three prairie provinces, Manitoba, Sas-
katchewan and Alberta. The companies have
paid up capitalization of $4,000, 900, with
reserve funds of an6ther $4,000, 900 They
have assets of over s12,ooO0,o 900, and last
year paid dividends of 10 and Der cent.
respectively Since the beginning of the
war they have paid over 81 100000 war taxes
IN cold cash. They operate between them
Cos country grain elevators, two large pub
lie and two large private elevators at the
head of the Great Lakes, where western
gram first enters commerce. The United
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26
The Farmers
Say "NO"

When, in the fall OF 1917, the Canadian
government abolished it's historic two-party
system OF Liberals and Conservatives and
established "Union" party, thereby con-
solidating all political crceds in single
unified win-thc-war programme. it offered
the portfolio OF Minister of Agriculture
90 I. A. Crerar, president and general man
nger Of the United Grain Growers, Limited,
business man who had never entered
political life or espired to parliamentary
honors. That portfolio. which Mr.. Crerar
accepted and holds very ably, testified 10 the
powerful position that the grain growers
movement had attained. But what really
made the general public first sit up and
take notice that new force had arigen
in their midst was that the trust" was
most entirely responsible for the prin-
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26

ference begins its work. If the French ask
the possession of the Saar coal district
(once theirs and stolen by the Germans in
1910 to replace the ruined coal fields of
Artos and Flanders. trust that the Amer
leans will not see in this demand French
imperialism, but the effort of France to re-
sume the business of life in spite of the
herman effort permanently to destroy
French industries. And in the same sense
if there is discussion of compelling Ger
many to supply labor to remove the shells,
plough the fields and open the roads, hope
that the Americans will think that the
French are not seeking revenge, but a way
to repair the most brutal of all injuries
and permit their exiles to return home
again; the exiles who, like the French
woman at Croisillee, have courage, but have
lost everything else
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26

sheep passed through their hands last year.
But apart from this, they not only sell
their shareholders output; they also sell
to them. Since their original conception,
they have entered on a considerable scale
into the handling Of large portion of the
staple goods necessary for their members
requirements. Their collective buving
power IS enormous, and their unique sys-
tenn of internal distribution, the Tocal"
sending in its requisition to headquarters
for large district, entails that practically
the whole of the saving effected in whole
sale buying is passed on to the individual
member. Over s7,00O,o0o worth of coopera-
tive trading is now done annualy-coal,
flour, machinery, fencing, lumber, apples,
groceries, and so On. The combination owns
3oo,0o0,0Oo feet OF standing lumber in Brit
ish Columbia. 1t owns land company for
the sale OF lands. 1t owns a weekly paper
the "Grain Growers Guide" one of the
brightest and different" agricultural pub
locations on the continent.
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26
France viii Yet
Come Back

Yet by contrast there was the French
woman, and she said quite simply, "Are we
coming back? Of course we are coming
back; as soon as the government will give
US the barracks in which to live. We must
get to work on our fields again. Yes, it
will require courage to do this work, but
we have courage. We must do it for the
young, is it not so?" And that as I said
is the problem, not Of the French govern
ment alone but of the Paris conference.
Somehow these thousands and hundreds
OF thousands of women and men who have
courage must be brought back to these
fields. Somehow the German who created
the desert deliberately, wantonly, viciously,
must be made to abolish it, to excavate
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26

Grain Growers Company conducts a grain
exporting business, with headquarters at
New York which prior to the war was one
of the largest grain exporting concerns
on the continent and is now in the service
of the Allied governments. And all this
has been accomplished in the short dura-
ton Of twelve years, in field strewn with
the wrecks of farmers cooperative COM
panies, oranges and societies of equity!
Nor are the interests of these companies
confined entirely to grain selling. They
handle livestock for their shareholders
about 5000 carloads Of cattle, hogs and
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26
How the Trust
Started

The actual "grain growers movement" be-
gan in 1901, at the little town of Indian
Head, Saska atchewan, when group of farm
ers from the Northwest territories STAYED
In their chairs in corner of the municipal
hall after the conclusion of a debate be-
tween two we'll known politicians, which
debate really had nothing to do with what
happened subsequently. That group of seri
Gus faced men, hardened and determined
looking, were not there entirely by accident.
They had assembled as the result of call
that had gone over the whole country, sum-
moning some Of the prominent settlers to
consider the grievous conditions which af-
fected not only themselves, but every farmer
between Winnipeg and the Rocky Noun
tains, and to discuss the abuses and hard
ships under which they were living and
working. The man who had taken the
initiative in organizing that little after
meeting was ". R. Motherwell, now Minis
ter Of Agriculture for the province of Sas-
katchewan.
The conditions at the beginning of the
present century which led to the rapid or
ganization Of the grain growers associ.-
tions were characteristic, perhaps. of the
circumstances which have stimulated revo-
lutionary movements throughout history
For nearly twenty years the farmers had
been growing restless and disseminated
under the conditions they were compelled to
lace. Between tho early sos and 1900
there were no regulations directing or con-
trolling the wheat trade. Those were the
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26
This Bill Must
Be Paid

1t is not hymn of hate that / am try-
ing to sing. There is no longer any room
for emotion. The war is over, tho fufilitv
of. the German methods carries final iuar-
ment; but either the German must nav or
the French and Belgian people stagger un-
der the burden of his terrible destruction
while the German, escaping the burden. re-
cuperates for new adventure lie exnccts
to escape. A year ago he was starving mill
ions; to-day he openly demands that the
world feed him. His propaganda is every
where at work, in Paris and out of it. and
such small part of the non-militarv mart
of the world as thinks of the German
desert, knows it as it exists, that one fears
that the world Will forget.
To-day talked with an American Jour
nalist flaming with fury because in soma
fashion his precious comment was DELAYED
or lost in transit, to the great injury Of the
freedom of the press. talked with Brit
lsh colonel, keen to erect a new Hcdiaz
kingdom under the sympathetic eye OF
America. The frontiers of Poland move
with the tides; a new map of Asia Minor is
made each hour, and the islands of the
Egean change hands every moment but in
the midst of all this diplomatic discussion.
the mingling of idealism and realism, in
ternational romance and high finance, find
myself constantly thinking Of the ruined
cities, of the wasted fields and the forlorn
graves of the north. Shall we forget them
all in Paris, and if we Go shall we not in
vite the German to come again, however
lofty structure we raise in the name Of
tie league of nations?
Copyright, 1919, by the McClure Ncus.
paper Syndicdtc)
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26
These Perished
In Vaiu:3

And IN the Paris conference there is to
be talk of the responsibility not alone for
the acts of war after the contest itself
came, but for tho causing of the war If
only one could translate into words that
had a meaning the fact of the dead and
deserted battlefelds, that shell torn region
one looks down upon from KENNEL and
from Scharfenberg, the region that was
once the Ypres salient! At least half a
million men died there. few sleep in
graves, but for the most part they and
their graves have been ground I'D in the
never ending pound Of ceaseless lombard
ments.
A year ago every ridge, every slope, every
heap of dust and ashes had its military
value and an historic meaning. Men died
by the thousand to advance few hundred
yards; but now all the hills and ruins have
been it were demonetized. They have
no further value. The Germans lost them.
the British advanced beyond, the war has
gone and peace cannot return Half d mill
ion dead remain, but nothing for which
they fought to the end is worth a second
thought, nothing in the material facts And
the Hndenburg line, the Somme battle
fields, it is the same thing in both cases
million and half of dead sleep between
the User and the Somme but in the lands
they died to hold no living thing stays, save
a few prisoners and their guards. The
trenches dsntegrate in the rain the
barbed wire rusts in the brown of the
landscape, the snake grass is beginning to
bury everything.
And for all this some one must pay, not
a matter OF punishment, that is another
question; but some one must pay in order
that this part of the German plan may not
prevail, that this much of civilization may
not perish, that this corner of France may
not die. In Flanders, Artois, Picardy, you
get the full measure OF the German fury
of destruction. A more terrible force one
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26
Real Canada
ParIian1enfS

From this small beginning has grown
these three numerically strong, highly sue
cessful and tremendously powerful agricu-
tural organizations of TODAY. perhaps the
only really successful example of agricu-
tnral cooperation, and certainly one of the
most interesting studies in the cooneraticr
OF large body Of prime producers. The
commercial ventures foated during the sub
seQuent years as independent companies,
the stock of which is held entirely by mem
bers Of the other organizations, have en-
abled them to develop their educational
aims. The annual four-day conventions Of
the three associations are the real parlia-
ments of Middle Western Canada. It would
surprise casual visitor, going to one OF
these conventions and expecting merely
short course IN agricultural science. to find
instead thousand or more enthusiastic
farmers debating, with considerable ability,
almost everything except the practice OF
farming. The records Of these conventions
show that besides recommending to the
provincial and federal governments the
establishment of cooperative elevators.
banks, dairies and trading associations. free
trade, single tax, and many other economic
reforms, the grain growers urged women's
suffrage many years before that measure
was generally favored and were almost the
first sponsors in Canada of the ideas OF
direct legislation and proportional repre
sentation.
The action that has been obtained upon
many of these recommendations, especially
during the last few years since the power
OF the associations has been clearly demon
stated, is the greatest testimony to their
determination. In the federal field, too.
the influence of the grain growers has
made itself felt with greater force every
year, and as the directors OF public opinion
IN 'hs western country the associations
have become an Increasingly important fac
tor in determining national affairA
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26

hardly three hours to the Gcrman-msd.
desert of the Somme. And these dessr..
present the problems l have mention.a
problems of restitution, rcparation and re,'
toration. AS it stands, the German has lo,.
the war, but before he lost the war he
ruined half of Northern France, and If he
does not repay his factories will profit, his
1aborers gain, and glory will be to the vic.
tor, but the dividends to the vanoujsbed
who only fought while victory seemed nos
sible and grounded his arms when the bat
tie approached his factories and fields
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26


days Of 80 and 40 cent wheat. q had
been very much impressed" )" Mr.. Motbcrwcl
has since said, with the necessity of
permanent organization among the farm
ers to represent the special requirements of
the grain growing interests of the country,
to press persistently for an improvement
of market conditions, transportation, ware
housing, and for the Introduction of amend
ed legislation from time to time. A cam
paign to organize local associations was
undertaken Immediately, with the gratifying
result that when the first grain growers
conference was held, two months later. no
less than 38 locals were represented.o
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26

on which the village stood, she looked out
upon land torn by shell fire until it re-
sembled skeleton rather than the flesh.
Along every swell in the slopes actually
behind it crumbling dugouts, ugly holes
in the ground slowly sinking under the
action of the rains, separated from each
other by endless rows of barbed wire, sown
everywhere with little crosses, themselves
half fallen, where dead men were buried
at hazard-this was her own country,
And beyond the nearer view, curve on
curve, the land swelled away in all direc-
tiors, a monotonous waste without a tree,
without single surviving habitation, with
out any obstacle to interrupt the vision
not desert with clean sand, but waste
in which everything spoke of decay follow
ing death For nearly twenty miles in
either direction this desert extended. East
ward against the horizon was the skeleton
Of Bourbon Woods, where the first battle
of Cambrai was won and lost III 1917.
Westward was Arras, behind the slope, the
city of a thousand bombardments, gone
now to dust and ashes in the main. Here
where there had been smiling villages, fer
tile fields and happy people was nothing
but q desolation tragic beyond expression.
And all this was not the wreck of bat
ties. 1t was nothing of the sort. In Jan
uary, 1917, Hindenburg had said, eve shall
retreat twenty miles, wasting the country
to create desert in front of US; thus we
shall escape an Allied attack while we
settle with Russia" and with German thor
oughness the thing was done. The people
were marched off to Belgium to be fed by
American relief missions, or to die The
villages were destroyed, the roads mined
every living thing was cut down, every in
animate thing was blown up. So the Ger
man desert was created, and so it remains
sown with millions of unexploded
shells, the debris of late battles, with he'll
NETS and hand grenades, pegion where
every heap of ruins is deadly peril, where
the plough must reopen burrows among
live shells.
New-York tribune., 1919-01-26
Bv Charles W. Stokes

NE fine day some enthusiastic trust
q q buster will go up into Western
Canada and bump into g really
large trust-one with over 10000
,rbscribing members. Somewhat remarkably,
although it controls the selling price OF
Sc product it is rather an amiable KIND
r. p trust. and shares its profits on
- cooperative basis; and. most extraordi-
nary thing of all, is composed entirely
of farmers. None Of your ladylke orange
growers or apple orchardists, either, who
merely use a central agency to sell produce
znder a trademark, but regular dyed-ln-
+he-wool farmers who wear overalls, have
calloused palms, and raise difficult things
like wheat and cattle. About the very
last people in the world, in fact, who would
ne susnected of self-organization, but, in
the SEQUEL. the most notably successful
This trust, if such it can be called, is
nominally composed of FIVE separate units.
These are the Manitoba Grain Growers
Association, the Saskatchewan Grain Grow
ers Association the United Farmers of
Alberta, the United Grain Growers, Limited,
and the Saskatchewan Cooperative Elevator
Company. The first three represent what
may be called the educational side of the
trust and the remaining two the trading
aide, but as all the stock in the trading
companies ia held by members of the edu-
in fact, finance the propaganda of the lat
ter, the two branches dovetan so exactly
that Jointly they comprise a somewhat out
standing and significant movement which in
tho West Is generally known as the grain
growers movement