The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1924-07-17
THE TRUTH AT LAST


wrought by Kansas politicians full
page advertisements are appearing
in the big eastern dailies setting
forth the merits of Kansas as a
place in which to live and to do
business. Especial stress is placed
on the advantages which the Sun
flower state offers to farmers. Ne
braska and Iowa have been compeli-
ed to follow a similar course.
The advertisements tell vastly
different story from that which the
duly elected representatives Of Kan
sas have been telling in congress
and in newspaper interviews for the
past three years. 1t is these mis-
representatives who have made the
present advertising campaign neces-
sary.
The New York Times, which this
week carried one of these full page
advertisements at large expense
to little group Of Kansas news
papers, comments on the circum-
stance as follows:
The fiction that the middle west
and the northwest are filled with
millions of enraged and despairing
farmers has been sedulously put
about for more than year. The
signs are that it has been much
overdone. The farmers themselves
are beginning to resent it. They
don't take to the pictures of the
west as land where the banks are
all going broke, the agricultural
population is ruined itself and is
running all the rest and the soil
is being left uncultivated. ..
The western states still like to
represent themselves as inviting
fields for outside capital. They have
not left off desiring to proclaim the
opportunities which their rich lands
offer to good farming. Latterly
they have even begun to advertise
their great attractions.
The Times points out that.
The western farmer is by no
means a down-and-outer. He pro-
tests that he is an up-and-comer
Naturally, he has been willing to
play the political game for all that
there was in it, He did not openly
object when the politicians in con-
gress who pretended to speak for
him insisted that he was a dispirit-
ed bankrupt who must be helped
by dole out of the treasury. If
others were getting government SUBJ
sides, the western farmers we're
not adverse to getting one for them
selves, if it could be worked under
some disguise or other. But now
that those hopes and devices have
turned out to be illusory, the farm
ers are going back to farming again,
and, displaying more of the spirit
which has made them hitherto the
typically Observation-Disclosures and
self-reliant citizens of the United
States.
They have reason to take courage
from recent changes in the agricul-
tural outlook. Tricky and insincere
politics has failed the farmer, but
nature and economic law now pro-
mise to do him a good turn. The
price of wheat at Chicago has gone
up 10 CENTS within week. So good
an authority as Professor David
Friday predicts that by the autumn
wheat will be selling at $l.25. If
dollar wheat saved US from Bryan
in 1896, dollar-and-a a. quarter wheat
ought to save US from the worst
consequences of demagogues and
disturbers of the peace this year.
And the farmers are not so stupid
as not to know whence their help
came. 1t was not from humbugging
tariff taxes on farm products. 1t
was not from applying the quack
remedy of reduced freight rates on
agricultural shipments. 1t was not
from the labors or Vaccinations of
the farm bloc in congress All the
bills that were to work the salva
ton of the farmer fell by the way
The trumpeters of the McNary-Ha
gan measure cried to all and sundry
that no other plan could make the
price of wheat bulge. But the much
touted nostrum was discarded. vet
the price of wheat at once shot up.
Attention is called to the work
of General Dawes in the interest of
the farmer, in the statement that he
is the man who actually had done
more for the farmer than all "the
mouthers and air-beaters in con-
gress put together. Not Senator
Capper or Magnus Johnson, not the
McNary- Haugan twins, not even the
loud-sounding senator from Wiscon-
sin did the business, but General
DawesA "-Topeka Journal.