The Bottineau courant. (Bottineau, Bottineau County, N.D.) 1895-1929, 1920-03-04
SUCH A

Let us turn 10 the SAD plight OF one +. ID.
Sherman, said to be the proprietor of a hotel at
Hannah, N. D., whose tale Of woe is spread over
a good part of the front page of the st. Paul
Dispatch of Feb. GOTH 1t is time that shivery
music, and handerchiefs should be handy.
It appears hat landlord Sherman is being
driven out of North Dakota and is seeking else
where to lay his weary head. He is driven out
SO his pathetic letter to Minnesota's immigration
Commissioner says by the awful increase in
taxes here, by socialistic administration of the
farmers and by the horrid free love books the
farmers are installing in all the schools.
He would like, would this sad-eyed b~oniface,
to go to Minnesota and hide himself on a farm,
far from the maddening crowd, but he under
stands that the farmers are about to take Min
nesota over and he is timid about moving there,
because the socialists may drive him out again
with free love texts books and increased taxes.
So he refers hopefully to Wisconsin as a place
of refuge, not having learned that the farmers
in that state are getting uneasy and reaching
for the levers that control the state govern
ment.
Let us weep together over his sad fate. He
says it would be like Jumping out of the frying
pan into the fire" to leave North Dakota and
'have Minnesota captured by the farmers. He
poitns to the awful increase in his North Dako-
ia taxes. In 1918 they were $17.S6; in 1919 they
were $48.16. Part of that increase pays for our
soldiers bonus, about one cent on the dollar
goes to the industrial program-the rest is the
enormous increase in county and school taxes.
If he lived in Minnesota he would have had, a
1872 per cent increase in his state taxes alone,
none of which would have gone to either the
the soldiers or an industrial program, and he
would have helped pay for the twenty million
dollars of bonds for building roads and the
twenty millions of bonds voted to pay the SOL
diers a bonus-and the heavy load Of interest
consequent to these bonds. Out of the irving
pan into the fire says Landlord Sherman. If he
goes to Minnesota and the farmers DO NOT
take over the state government it will be out
of the frying pan into what the general who is
our landlords name-sake said was war! North
Dakota is paving as she goes. Minnesota is pill
ing up the debt with interest for future genera
tions and new settlers like Mr.. Sherman.
It appears to us that the landlord has sat
around the big stove too many winter nights
listening to the awful tales that the prune ped
dlers are wont to tell, of the "socialists." In old
times the ghost story was the ~favorite, when
nights were long and dark and the fire burned
bright. Well the "ghost stories" that make shiv-
ers run up and down ones spine are still being
told. They relate solely now to the spook, social
ism, which is prowling around and has been seen
in a number of political graveyards in this state.
Like all other spooks it is either the creation Of
some overworked imagination or the phosphor-
escent glow arising from some political corpse.
Broad daylight Of good sense makes it vanish
for it does not exist in North Dakota.