The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1920-02-06
NOTABLE SPEECH BY
WALTER THOS. MILLS
Delivered at Princess Theatre
in Everett, January II
(continued from last weclO
Monopoly of Manufacture and
STORAGE

NFNl comes III OfueG the matter
OF manufacture and storage. There
arc lot Of things we use all the
year around we only produce once
q year and have to keep in storage
for ! months. The man that stores
the stuff that has been produced
is just as essential to our existence
as the man who raises il. The man
who takes the raw material and
converts it into form for final use
is just as essential as the original
producer of raw material.
Give us an example. The packing
house industry. The men in this
country who are able to push down
the price of live stock and push up
the price of beef at the same time.
The men in this country who, when
Australia, through the public owner
ship of her packing house and
through the public ownership of her
/ transportation and storage was able
to sell at 12C pound the beef pro-
duCod in Australia, i'm the London
markets. &c a pound cost for the
cold storage and freight bringing the
beef to London, making the total
selling price during the war lac a
pound. Then the British government
took that beef and sold it to the
British working men at 40C pound ;
anu Allt kAuSli eillillS uNliltllNlth an
explanation and a member of the
British House of Commons said it
didn't seem quite right to sell for
40C beef that only cost 14c but he
said they would have to explain TO
the people of Australia that Austria
liza that Australia didn't produce
enough and the rest had to be Sc
cured from America, and the price
was so high that in order to bring
the price down they had to bring
the price of Australian beef up.
Then the Australians wanted to
know why they sold Australian beef
for 40C in order to give the differ
ence to the Beef Trust and no min
lister has been brave enough to
answer that.
Has anything been done about this
in North Dakota? Yes. What does
North Dakota produce? Small grain.
Her harvest sold two years ago for
$427, 100000. What was the COM
plant with regard to grain storage,
transportation and manufacture d?
The complaint was that the farmer
never had anything to say about it,.
The man that bought the grain fix
ed the price of grain, the dockage,
and fixed the farmer whenever he
sold any. They said in each 60
Bpuilh0 vi w iNtlt lll'it was -"
pounds of flax, and locked the
farmer for the 10 pounds of flax
and paid him nothing for it. They
used to weigh the grain up in a
cupola and the farmer could stand
i'm the road and watch it. We
have finally brought the scales
| down whore the farmer could watch
them. The farmers of North Da-
/ lSota are human beings and got tired
! of it. They said I'VE will solve this
/ problem" They organized coop
| eratively owned elevators until the
| farmers owned more elevators of
! their own than were owned by all
the farmers of all other states. But
they found that when they owned
/ the elevator and the other fellow
/ owned the elevators at the other
! end, they couldn't do business un-
less they owned the other end, so
! they raised a quarter of a million
! dollars and built an elevator, and
| they found il took more money to
| fill an elevator than to build it. They
! have never got credit enough to fill
| it to its full capacity. Then they
came back to the Legislature and
said, "The only people rich enough
to handle this situation is the whole
people. Give us a state system of
mills and elevators" They voted for
that 25 years before they got it into
operation. They got the law ? 3 years
ago the first time they asked for it.
and it went into operation the same
as your powder mill-you got the
mill and Dupont got the powder.
They got the mills and elevators and
the old gang kept the business. All
of the five parties several years ago
were pledged for this thing, and
when the farmers asked for il they
laughed and told them to go home
and slop the hogs The farmers
said, 1--WE can get it, We can or
canize the farmers. We will organ
ize the Nonpartisan League indie
pendent of all parties. Then what?
We will go to the primaries and Sc
/ lect candidates in one party whose
candidates we Will name for them
and whose program we will write
for them and whose executive COM
mittee we will name for them, and
then we will support that party.
There they took the Republican
party, and since il has become de-
cent party most of the machine poll
ticians Of Washington have gone
back on it, DO you know that the
National Republican Committee has
refused TO pass Sl00 Of the funds
paid for the Republican Party in the
state of North Dakota? DO YOU
know that the Republicans OF Min
neSota came into North Dakota
with the Republican Governor max
| ing speeches in North Dakota to try
to get the people TO vote for "A DEM
ocrat instead of a Republican? We
elected everyone, and won over the
machine and washed it's clothes and
made il respectable, and got into
line and put it across. Some friends
of. mine in San Francisco told me
that they heard | had supported the
Republican ticket i'm North Dakota.
! said. what sort of n man would
| il be that wouldn't stand for a party
when his crowd controlled it?"
What did you do? We authorized
the sale of 100000 Of bonds 10
be used as a fund to build mills and
elevators. What were the measures? ?
In the first place. we said that II a
man locked the grain and said there
was flax or mustard i'm il, he must
pay for the flax or mustard. As
both mustard and flax are worth
more than wheat, they can't find
any mustard or flax. We said the
grade shall be fixed, not by the buy
err or seller, but by a disinterested,
competent authority who shall fix
the value on n scientific process
based on its food value. You are
familiar with the Babcock test.
When | was a boy in Iowa and they
started creameries, they started
about fifteen quarrels at the same