New Ulm review., 1922-03-01
La Toilette Lifts The Veil.
Such is life!

Taking as his text, They have sowni
the wind and they shall reap the Whirl-
wind" Senator La Toilette delivered ser
mon in the Senate in the form Of "a
comment on the present status Of agri-
culture, which, he declared lies utterly,
prostrate and helpless before the country" :"
He disagreed with President Harding and
Others who have spoken before the agri-
cultural conference as to the causes of the
agricultural crisis. The real cause of
the disaster z he said, was m mo pol "
During the last half century, said
the Senator, Industry, commerce and
finance have taken on monopoly forms.
| Monopoly interests have acquired con-
troll not only of the major industries, but
| of raw materials, fuel, transportation and
credits. Feeble attempts to prevent the
growth of these monopolies or to control
after they were established have been
made from time to time, but always in
vain. 3.,
t.The secret of this failure, in my
opinion, lies chiefly in the fact that people
as whole have been unable to compre-
hend what the organized powers Of wealth
learned long ago. These monopolies and
exploiters discovered that the road to
power and profit was through the
control OF vernm n t.. They
knew that man may labor all his life
I time with his hands or his brains and
have little more at the end Of a life Of in
dustry and frugality than he had at its
beginning. They learned that by the use
| Of the government to create sp &C ial
pri vile IS, wealth beyond measure
can be amassnd within few years. For
that purpose they have always been zeal
Gus to secure and maintain control of the
machinery Of government, control Of the
Presidency, Of the Senate and House. :
The war, he asserted, completed the
enthronement oj the profit taking, pri-
vileged, imperialistic group
The economic state and political state
he said, had become so merged that today
they could hardly be distinguished. t
"Those who are nominally in control
of the political government, g the Senator
continued, "dare not make move with
out first consulting those who rule
the &c n m c. W o RI d = and have
been forced time after time to a ban
don or reverse their mos
sacre dly pledged policie $
when the financial masters so directed" !"
Senator La Toilette went on to declare
that through process of profteering and
cumulative monopolization there had been
created in this country an inequality of
wealth without parallel in history. This
inequality, he held, was the prime cause
|of the "unending cycles Of panics and
depression with which this nation is
afflicted sa
Touching on the process Of forced
deffation," he said it was "artifcially pro-
duced by the powers that control the credit
of the nation and the Federal Reserve
system was the instrument used to ac-5
complish it. The policy, he added, was,
first applied to holders Of Liberty Bonds
and the farmers. The financiers wanted
the bonds and Through the instrumen-
tality Of the Federal Reserve system pro-
ceeded to acquire them" at what he called
"rock- bottom prices" ~
In all the history Of the world, q con
tinued the Senator, there has probably
never been an act accomplished by yio-
lenee which caused such great destruction
and suffering as the dehation of the far
mers during the past two years.
.s During the autumn Of 1920, while
crops were being harvested and when the
farmers looked forward to a winter ofl
prosperity, the process Of dehation began.
Loans we're called, renewals were refused.
IN the meantime freight rates had been
raised SO high by the Esch- Cummjns law
that the farmer could not afford to move
his crops to market, and thus the farmer
was left helpless. Hundreds of country
banks went down, but the great financial
institutions were protected. !"
The destruction which Ia Follette said
had been wrought could, yhe asserted, be