Norwich bulletin., 1920-08-13
WANT FAIR DEAL NOT GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE

(written Specially for The Bulletin)
 It's election year. once more and the would-be candidates are a-candidatin' in customary style and according to the usual formula.
 Picking up a. western paper the other day, I read in the big headlines over q displayed article that 'Bjones Declares riculture' Bjones being the city-dwel- ling candidate for congress in that other wise farming district.
 You can see at the first glance that Bjones, being a city lawyer with just about as much knowledge of farming conditions as the rural farmer has of Pennsylvania law, thinks the way to de- coy the shy hayseed intto Bjones' camp is by telling him what a sprouting angel he is and what grand life his would be- if the government would only do something big for him.
 And there's at least one working farmer within a few inches of the end of my nose who is invariably made so mad by this sort of cheap coggery that he wants to go out behind thhe barn, paw up the turf, and just bellowi
 More government attistance." for sooth. Why not? Farm work is ad- mittedly hard work. Very well; let congress pass a law that, hereafter farm work shall be easy. What could be more simple?
 About every so often burning drought comes on and destroys the big gest half of a farmers crops. Very well again let congress pass law pro- hibiting droughts. (Perhaps it would work in practice about as well as the law prohibiting internal moisteningD
 Then there are the potato bugs, and the cucumber bettles, and the cutworms, and the cinch bugs, and the seventeen other kinds of bugs and slugs and worms which annually descend on the farmers crops. Let congress abolish them by law There's no doubt this would be a tremendous assistance to the farmer,- if the abolition works
 And, not to prolong the list unduly, there are the grofters who want jobs and offices and titles, (and fat salaries), 'em by soft-soaping hayseeds. Let con- gress enact a lew denaturing them and elevating them to the class of more or less useful goats.
 Why, there are just lots and lots of things which are bothering the farm CTS and which congress might legislate against. "Who will enforce the legisla- ton ?'' That question is of the sort which a peppery old college professor used to call 'captious whenever stud ent launched one at him which he couldn't answer, off hand. It's the function of the executive to enforce the laws which the legislature passes. First 70 umust elect a law-making body to enact the desired legislation; then you must elect an executive capable of en- e. l. few years, or centuries or millenniums, till the various Investigating committees and executive commissioners have looked the matter over (and under and rounda- about and developed a practical com promise which shall please all parties concerned, including the farmers and the bugs and the worms and the wealth er-gods.
 Oh, fudge and fddlesticksi
 There are two classes of farmers. One is represented by John Do-His-Work. One by Peter Tumbledown. I make smalldoubt that the class represented by that last loafer would like all the government assistance" which the Bjones gang of tricksters could invent and shovel out. They would like to have the government, or the town, or their neighbors, or almost anybody else shingle their barns and milk their cows and cook their cabbages and do every thing else for them except eat and sleep and swap fish stories /
 But these critters do not represent farmers, as a whole. They are merely the warts and wens and bunions on an otherwise fairly healthy body. Excres- cences which the body would be better off without.
 I have yet to meet a real honest-to- 
 ment assistance in his farming l have met not a few who resent and sheer at the so-called assistance already being offered. I have met more who regard it with cobined amusement and amaze ment I have met others who take it in much the spirit they might show to- wards taking in a founding left squal- ling ou their doorstep, 'Durn the brat! Who wants it? But I s'pose we can't let it starve But, as I said, I've never yet met one active, industrious, fore-looking and fore-handed farmer a true son of the soil, who really wanted government assistance - or outdoor poor relief from the town either. Such a man usu- ally brackets these two things together in the same class.
 have met scores and scores of farm CTS who want government protection which is an entirely different thing.
 Assistance is help given as a sort of charity: protection is the safeguarding Of rights and essential interests.
 The real farmer wants protection for his rights and assurance of a square deal and fair play in the big game of production and distribution. But he's not q beggar snivelling for aims, either on the Capitol porch or at a neighbor's back door
 The old Swedish statesman said to his son, when that overmodest young man demurred a the elders plan to get him 9 place In government, alleging his own preciate with how little wisdom the world is governed! !'
 The worlds treatment of the farming problem is glaringly conspicuous to the truth Of the old cynic's aphorism.
 For fifty yeaSs or more this country protected in manufacturers against the competition of foreign rivals. It pro- tected them till the infant manufactur- CTS of half a century ago grew into giants-with the appetites of giants.
 Now, for decade or more, the same government has been coddling and cos setting the trade unions, which are form ed for the purpose of protecting the in- terests of employed workmen.
 In all that time not one single credit able attempt, even, has been made at protecting the farms and the farmers of the country. The manufacturers have from the beginning been organized and single-minded in their pressure on con gress and legislatures :; the labor unions are similarly organized and work unit edly for their ends. But the farmers of the country, who outnumber both manufacturers and employees, combined, nd ic