Norwich bulletin., 1920-08-13

union and put their concrete demands
 into the hands of one lobby.
 For this very reason, the government, ! which is the one supreme and ruling organization, in common with those Of the whole people, should have shown, | from the start, the keenest interest and 1 the deepest concern and the wisest con 1 structive statesmanship in dealing with | the continent-wide questions and issues
 which vitally affect them.
 But the tirne-servers and 1, trimmers i and opportunists whom our party bosses direct us to elect to office are not. never 1 have been and never will be qualified | to grapple with or ever to understand such problems. Their motto is that the | longest way round is the easiest way , out" They usually are more naxious to | insure their own reelection than to con serve the interests of the constituents. When one does make a bluff at doing the latter thing. he seems to regard the aforesaid constituents as being repre- ! sented by the various gangs of loafers and grafters who infese the purlieus of his district, rather than by the hard
 working. little-talking majority who are tending to their jobs and producing things.
 There are today in this country manu- facturers who are making huge profits, profits almost beyond the dreams of avarice, from the sale of their products
 at extravagantly inflated prices. There are dealers whom the criminal courts have found to be making over 100 per cent profit on the retail sale of these Already wickedly over-priced goods There are hundreds of thousands of workmen who are demanding and ob- taining excessive wages, because of their inability to pay these before mentioned high prices and inordinate profits from reasonable wages There is no symptom or suggestion of any improvement in this state of things Instead, bad is march
 comes to farm and garden produce, the price tendency is already strongly marked downwards.
 The money-sOaked manufactures can afford to pay such high wages as are
 demanded, because of his excessive pro- fits. This takes any chance of securing i adequate help away from the farmer tending to reduce his output and increase his already hardly tolerable burden Of labor. To meet this condition he should be assured prices in some degree com parable to those in some .llftsohhoksI
 goods and demanded by labor. Instead of which. he finds the cunning ly manipulated markets of the country so thimble-rigged that he must take low I
 and lowering prices. or let his already too shortened crops waste, unharvested. So far as I understand his state of mind, he wants protection against this manifest and outrageous unfairness. The government exists in order to give him that protection. It is capable of giv- ing it. But it doesn't give it That is one thing which farmers are sore about about and which they have the right to be sore about. They do not , want government to assist them. but they want it to protect" them in their fair and equal rights.
 Will the government do 1t? As well ask; Will a Hen Sing Hall Columbia?
 One of the New Beatitudes reads Blessed are they who expect nothing l for they shall not be disappointed" I, for one. have about given up hope of seeing sanity and reason rule in any
 sort of governmental functioning as re- gards agriculture.
 But that doesn't prevent me from