Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1920-04-09
THE NEXT PRESIDENT" AND
THE FARMERS

No one who is not blinded by fear,
prejudice or mere party myopia can
be in the smallest doubt that the
farmers of the whole North Amer
lean continent have entered politics
with an entirely new and virile force.
Conditions in Canada are very like
our own in respect to the possibilities
of the organized farmers in politics;
and up there the farmer is the man
of the moment The government of
Ontario, the leading province, is
frankly a farmers government. The
farmers party is the one party that
the coalition government of the Do
minion fears. The western prov
inces from Lake Superior to the
Rockies, are entirely farm; and
the United Farmers movement car
ries by-elections at practically every
opportunity all through the east.
The American farmers, through
the National Board of Farm Organi-
cations, have just drafted a question
naire for presidential aspirants
about whose unalloyed authenticity
there can not be the smallest doubt.
It was clearly drawn up by farmers
who know farm opinion" 1t is no
academic or theoretical platform put
together by phrasemakers who try to
write what they think the farmer
ought to think. 1t is "racy of the
soil"
There isn't a word in it about the
League of Nations or the balance Of
power or imperialism" or tariff
making, or any of the many lofty
themes on which the farmers have as
many opinions as anybody, with quite
as much real information and sound
judgment behind them, but with
which they do not bother when they
sit down to the serious business of
making our already democratic in
o1i1uIiohS osiIS loI duu IdII W our
greatest single industry. The ques-
lions to be presented to the presi-
dental candidates go straight to the
point. They want to know how these
men stand on things whose right
treatment will be felt daily and def
nitely in the life of the farm.
The first thing they want to do is
TO cut down the cost of marketing
farm produce. This is, seen rightly,
the dominant, paramount and most
Immediately pressing question of the
day, for both the farmer and the con-
sumner. Every city man who goes far
enough into the country to meet the
real farmer knows that there is a
great gulf fixed between the price
which the producer of thetfruits of
agriculture gets for his finished pro-
duct, after he has labored the sum-
mer through in bringing it to per-
lection and the price which the
aforesaid city man must pay for
much less attractive specimens of the
aforesaid fruits" as they are deliv-
cred at his kitchen door A benevo-
lent despot who should try sincerely
and ruthlessly to reduce the high
cost of living" would fling away so
ineffective an implement as a prun-
ing knife, and, Selling a double-head-
ed ak, would slash right and left into
the ENHANCEMENT of middlemen's
charges and profits precisely at this
z point
That is exactly where the farmers
QUESTIONABLE strikes first It de-
mands such direct dealing between
producer and consumer as will Sc
cure to the farmers a fair share OF
{ the wealth they create, reduce the
cost of living to the consumer" and
7 wipe out the profiteer. The farmers
J. see clearly that the entire elimina.
9 ton OF the intermediary is impos
e sible in our ramified modern civili
IL cation. There is legitimate serv
&C Ice to be performed in carrying tn,
y fruits OF the farm to the city anC
'r there selling them. But, after all
10 that service is only supplementary
ana convenience. 1t should not ge