The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1920-12-08
LEGISLATION AS A REMEDY.

When anything goes wrong in this
country, somebody always is ready to
remedy the evil by suggesting the en-
actment of new law. Looking back
over the history of congress and legis-
latures. one might reach the cenelu-
sion that enough laws have been
! passed to cover every contingency, but
apparently the, call for legislation con-
tinues undated.
The legislation which seems in
greatest demand just now is some
thing along the line of enabling the
farmer to obtain higher price for his
crops. Congressman STEVENSON of
Minnesota stands ready to supply the
need with bill to levy tariff on i'm
ports of Canadian wheat and flour.
If Mr. Steenerson's plan would work
1t might satisfy the American pro-
Queer of wheat, altho it would be hard
on the remainder of the people who
do not produce their own bread.
Senator Capper proposes to perform
similar service for the farmers by
taxing the boards of trade out of ex-
istence. The agricultural interests of
America probably never will be great
ly benefited by beating down those
o. other countries or those of citizens
engaged in other lines of business.
People, like pations. are interde-
pendent and no one class or nation
long can profit at the expense of an
other. This fact is we'll illustrated
in bulletin issued by the Guaranty
Trust company of New York, which
says:
No nation, no community, no indi-
vidual can now live alone. Economic
interdependence is such that distress
or disaster in one country is inevitably
reflected in every other country.
When Russian markets fail, for ex-
ample, the industries of Great Britain,
OF South America, of the United States
feel the effects. When the great
sources of raw materials fail or the
free flow OF such materials thruout
the world Is seriously interfered with,
then Industrial countries must close
their plants, and workmen must leave
their machines.
Thus, a Massachusetts, truck farmer.
for instance, might fail to lift the
mortgage on his half dozen acres be-
cause flax ceased to come out of Rus
STA. Because there was no flax, Irish
linen manufacturers turned away their
operators. 4neS0 IN turn could not
buy shoes and that fact swept across
the Atlantic to New England. These
shoemakers left their lasts and cur
tailed their purchases at the grocery
store and the groceryman in turn cut
down his receipts of vegetables from
the truck farmer. 1t may be that the
truck-farmer's analysis of the situa-
ton would extend no farther than the
city which had been his market, be-
cause the effects of a flax shortage
in Russia were communicated to him
slowly and by indirection. Had he
been producer on a large scale, how
ever, one who had built up a foreign
market and maintained it as the
source of that marginal profit thru
which his domestic business was but
tressed and stabilized. his understand
ing of primary causes would have been
swift and sure. Whether the effect
comes slowly or swiftly. directly OF in
directly, whether it is clearly under
stood or not, eventually and inevita-
bly, it does come. And that is why
the American farmer cannot escape a
direct interest in what is happening in
Europe, in the financial crises in japan
and Cuba, in the depression in Aus
tralia and South America.