Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1920-10-27
OUR WASHINGTON ETTER

WASHINGTON, II. u. - AIter
three days of debate, committee dis
cussion, reports, visits of appeal and
protest to the treasury and federal
reserve board and fruitless attempts
to get in touch with the president,
the 60 delegates from % farm organ
izations who met here October IL to
deal with the collapse of prices of
farm crops have gone home.
They have gone with empty hands,
and with bleak despair in their
hearts They know. now, that Wall
street is squeezing them, as it did in
the panic of 1873 and in 1898, and
that the federal reserve board and the
secretary of the treasury are going
to stand by and refuse to offer any
help.
This was no make believe protest.
The delegates represented hundreds
Of thousands of southern farmers,
whose children must be taken from
high school and college if cotton
prices DO not go up within few
weeks Mortgage foreclosures will be
plentiful in the South next spring. One
planter from Texas stated that he had
been unable to get bid at cents
a pound for his cotton. which had
been grown for market between 30
and 40 cents.
With the Kansas and Miss uri
wheat and livestock growers the story
was almost as desperate There are
no hogs today on 40 per cent of the
farms in Kansas. Cattle are being
sold at a loss Of $50 per head Wheat
brings S160 at the farm, when $277
is required to pay the fair c st of it's
production. More women w,re EN-
ployed on western farms this year
than ever before, due to lack of male
help. These women are now going to
lose even the wages of their hard t Ill.
But Secretary Houston talked of the
sin Of "encoul aging the former to
hold his crops for speculative price"
and the federal reserve board said
| that it was unable to create farm cred
| it except in proportion to the gid re-
! serve. The farmer must accept the
| market!
SEE NONPART:SAN LEAGUE
NEED.
After Marion Butler, former Popu
list senator from North Carolina, had
told the conference that the proposed
"strike' against planting cotton or to-
bacco or any other staple next season
would he a fzzle, the delegates set
tied down to considering more seri
GUS measures. They agreed that tn
trouble lay in the propaganda carried
on by the federal reserve board and
Secretary Houston, in their insinus>t
ing Way, to depress farm prices, ani
their combination to shut off farm
credit
They found that the trouble was due
to the control Of the government b,
anti-farmer and prevail street ele
ments: Their only real remedy would
be political action--to capture thu
government at the ballot box for tn
wealth producers and thereby get rio
of profteer government
1t is safe bet that this prctes
meeting in Washington has broker
down many mental dead wall tina
has resisted the idea of the Nonpar
tisrn league movement in the Yves
and South. These men, who have fol
lowed the old party PROFESSIONS il
blissful innocence for so long, aie nov
picking themselves out of the ditch a.
best they can and are looking aroun,
FOR the big motor trucks of the farm
, ers' movement of the Northwest
BANKERS MAKE" PUBLIC
7 OPINION.
Do you think the American Bank
ers' association has no influence o.
public opinion in America?
The report of it's public relatio l
committee. made public at it's CONVEX
ton here, discloses that nearly hui
dred financial papers and writer's hay
2 received weekly news service" fror
2 it, this year, while more than $50 Q
: the leading newspapers of the countr
I have been supplied every two week
with bulletins containing news q
! banks and the association. The ed
tors have been exceptionally ;espo1
> | sive"
And not merely the editors-col
l. greSs and the administration and a
the long line of mc-t6o officials an
g experts" and leading business me
s Of every small community have lik'
t wise been exceptionally resp nsive
In lis annual report presid Z
Richard S. Halves tells the banker
that the passage of the Esch- Cummin
j. transportation act was great victor
II TO. the investors, and that while farl
prices are falling, yet Increased pr
t, Guction is not nearly so much a caus
for concern as is more economic
It CONSUMPTION. The orgy of FOOLS
;. 7xtravagant and speculative con sum
> ticn which has prevailed in the On
g ted States. and is yet too largely ey
dent. must cease if we are tt obtain
4 permanently strong position in wor
n trade.'
That is to say we farmers are Ii
I ing too well, and Unless we get ba<
e to the standards of 1894 We will spC
is the foreign trade game.
t. =
# BRITISH COAL STRIKE.
~ The British coal miners strike b;
y stirred even the sleepy embassies al
s legations in Washington, for it meal
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