The gazette-times. [volume] (Heppner, Or.) 1912-1925, 1919-07-24
GOSSIPS.

A gossip is one who bears tales.
Usually these tales are based on ru-
NOR or half fact and in the popular
mind the telling of them is associated
with sunbonnets, long noses and
high-pitched voices. But a great
many gossips are masculine, and this
editorial refers to a particularly per-
nicious and harmful sort Of male
trouble maker.
We are thinking Of those editorial
writers on city newspapers who per-
sist in calling the farmers of the
country profteers, and who make
other vicious and ignorant charges
which are widening a dangerous
class-hatred breach. All the real
evidence that anyone had adduced
proves that farmers are not prof.
teers. Very few of them had suffi-
cient income to demand an income
tax return. Such farm-management
surveys and cost-accounting figures
as are available show that the aver
age farmer does not earn interest on
his investment and establish conclu-
Sively that he is able to make wages
only by selling off the fertility re-
serve in his soil and compelling his
family to labor without compensa-
ton.
Because the farmer gets most of
the packers dollar, it does not prove
that he makes a large profit off his
cattle. Who gets the most Of the
consumers dollar? There is the
trail to the skunk's derfs Nor was
the price of wheat fixed up. 1t was
fixed down, and everyone who pos
sesses any acurate knowledge on the
subject knows it.
The real profteers, as proven by
the income-tax returns, do business
just around the corner from the sane
tum where the sappy newspaper
economists write their drivel regard
ing farms and farmers. But these
editorial Samsons, casting about for
subjects to fill their columns every
day, possessing a mighty show of
courage of any convictions they can
hear of or think of for space filters,
and brave enough not to let their ig-
norance of farming deter them from
solving the economic problems Of
the back county, clutch at the ru-
mors amout farmers making lot of
money, and parade them before their
readers with show Of strong words
and ornate phrases. Their work has
the high sound Of truth, because Of
their cleverneSs, but it is plain bunk.
Never do they refer back to the dark
days of crop failure and ruinously
low prices to the producer.
A sample of the sort of intellectual
drool dealt out by these factless light
ming calculators is this phrase from
a daily newspaper in one Of our
great cities, city, by the way, whose
prosperity is rooted in the farms
about it:
the best paid artisans in
cities do not receive as great a wage
for the year as the average farmer"
farmer"
If this is true the joke is on the
best paid artisan. At Chicago the
milk commission refused to allow
farmers thirty cents an hour wages
for producing milk. In various cities
newspapers and other agencies have
fought the demands of milk pro-
ducers that they be allowed to pay
themselves managerial salary. The
wages Of city plumber would seem
like riches to the average farmer.
Another intellectual pearl, thrown
out in the same newspaper, is the as
sertion that the average farmer does
not work eight hours day the year
round.
In some sections Of the country
this is true. These are the same To-
calities, however, in which Gus
toner is a nuisance because he dis
turbs the merchants nap. II is also