The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-11-22
THE FARMER-LABoR PARTY.

] Because farmers and 1aborers voted
for the same candidates in many in
stances this fall and by so doing
\ elected such candidates, certain per-
sons who akpire to be leaders in polit-
icaI thought have conceived the
possibility of amalgamating the two
elements permanently. Yet never did
two classes of citizens have so little
in common economically or politically.
| When a considerable number or Il
very aggressive group of the people
organize for the purpose of dominat-
ing the whole they in effect destroy
free government or at least make it
ineffective. When two such groups
attempt 10 unite, an early division over
the matter of benefits is certain to
arise.
From an economic viewpoint the
United States in recent years has
adopted or submitted to the estab-
lishment of the principle of passing
it on to the consumer Not long
ago railroad executives attempted at
least to justify the practice of "Charg-
ing all the traffic will bear" and
shippers have been known to assent
to the doctrine that ''it makes little
difference how high the rates are SO
that they are stable.'' Labor leaders
base their claims for wages on certain
weeks established by them as the
minimum and maximum respectively.
There IS no known way of giving to
one what he has not earned without
taking from another what he has
earned. There is finally only one way
to produce wealth and that is by work.
The farmer appears to be the only
man who recognizes that fact; and
yet today he is the one man who
can not increase his prices and pass
the increase on to the consumer" In
everything that he buys, and he is
a large consumer of manufactured
and transported products, the farmer
IS paying his full share of the wages
Of miners, steel workers, carpenters,
masons. railroad men and others;
while theyear getting his wheat at
81 a bushel, his corn at less and his
pork and beef at proportionate prices.
Press reports tell of a coal miner
in Pennsylvania who received $3.50
for one months work. In the Satur-
day Evening Post of Oct. IS Eugene
Davenport, formerly dean of the
University of Illinois, in an ar
ticle that every American should
read, tells how bricklayers demanded
$3.50 an hour for laying 800 bricks
day in a rural high school
building in a purely agricultu-
raj community, the bids for which
were rejected because they ex-
eeeded the 500, 900 bond issue author
lied TO build it. The farmers, he
points out, could readily figure that
at prevailing prices busheI of their
wheat would pay for and put into the
wall only twelve bricks; and that food
sufficient to feed fun grown man
twenty days equaled in value a row of
bricks eight feet long.
Dean Davenport points out in his
article, which is entitled, when the
Showdown Comes" that the farmer
begins to suspect that labor Conditions
are the chief cause of his difficulties,
a suspicion that is confirmed every
time he buys machinery or supplies.
He begins to understand that Iabor,s
fight for an unjust wage is a fight
against the public. in some of its
aspects a trial of strength between
the government itself and organized
labor The conflict now is political.
and into a political fight the farmers,
constituting a third of the entire pop.
ulation, can strike a telling blow. But
they can not do so by allying them
selves with a group whose interests
are dramatically opposed to their