The call of the North. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1923-1924, 1923-12-26

The history of every nation is full
Of stories of rebellions Of hungry,
poorly armed, and poorly led farmers
against minority classes which have
profted from their labors. Always
the farmer has had to fight for every
inch of progress he, has made. The ex-
listing uprising in Bulgaria is just
one more instance of a demand of
peasants for their rights.
In America, however, the farmer
has been more successful in escaping
from his historical lot than in the old
world. America has no peasantry, in
the European sense Of the word. It
has no peonage, such as that of Next
co, where generation after generation
of Indian toilers has eked out bare
existence cultivating the land for
the Spanish conquerors and their sue
cessors. But even in America it is
hard for many men to recognize the
business Of agriculture's demands, or
to sympathize with the farmers who
declare that they must have a fair
price for their products.
In our own land, as elsewhere, the
farmer has been INCLINED to fight his
battles with poor equipment. At the
very start of our national government
General Washington himself was
compelled to put down a rebellion of
farmers in western Pennsylvania and
in the Alleghanies, due to the fact
that an excessively heavy tax had
been placed upon whisky. This ap-
parently highly desirable tax, from a
moral viewpoint, was ruinous to the
settlers on the western side of the AL
|leghanies, for, lacking transportation,
they could not market their corn in
other form than that of liquor. These
farmers adopted the old practice of
starting fight against superior
forces, instead of seeking more bust
nesslike solutions of their difficulties,
and as usual were beaten.
It is just as ridiculous for a farm
organization to seek to establish CO.
operative business without proper
banking facilities as it was for the
downtrodden peasants of France to
attempt to defeat the armies of their
lords with knives and sticks. It is
just as impractical for farmers to
seek to establish their business on a
sound foundation without organiza-
ton as it was for unorganized mobs
of Russian serfs to attempt to whip
the troops of the imperial govern
ment.
I have called attention to the mag
nitude of agriculture as business in
the United States. The figures I have
given are taken from United States
census reports. They may or may
not be entirely accurate, but they are
sufficient to prove to any one that ag-
riculture is big enough and strong
enough to stand on its own feet.
Farm organization after farm or
ganization has risen and passed away
in the last century. Farmer move
ment after farmer movement has been
inaugurated, has accomplished more
or less of it's aims, and has fallen
back. But in all the history of farm
organization, do not find a single
evidence of sustained effort, backed
by anything like a majority of our
agricultural population, to attack the
problems on an organized, systematic,
business basis.
We will presume, for example, that
the business to which I have referred
was not agriculture, but steel. How
long would it be, my friends, if the
steel industry were to be found as
disorganized as agriculture always
has been, until the Morgans, the
Schwabs, the Carnegies and the
Garys would be getting together to
do something about it? How long
would it take to form an organization
Of at least a majority Of the 6,448,-
343 owners of individual plants (that
being the number of farms in the
United States) to insure fair price
for the product?