New Britain herald., 1924-10-21

 farmers are entirely out Of hand; the old c. O. P. organization is like a hen whose chicks have jumped Into creek,
 These farmers, he says, know ex- actly what they want and arc go- Ing out after 1t in manner calcu- lated to strike terror In conserva- tive circles,
 Freight rates are at the bottom of their unrest, it Is declared. Hun dreds of letters. have been written by farmers to the farm press, all telling Of the Courageous freight rates on farm products and farm implements. At first manufacturers of farm implements were blamed for the high prices on implements, but the manufacturers succeeded in getting it into the brains of farmers that high freight rates had much to do with the high prices of implements. .
 Here Is a letter that manufac- turer wrote to farmer who com- plained that before the war farm wagon which cost him sS0 now costs nearly three times as much, while his corn is worth less than before the war:
 ."Our present price f. o. b.
 Moline. on farm wagon, is
 100 percent higher than our
 price in 1914. At this price we
 are selling this wagon at ap-
 proximately 20 per cent less
 than cost. The cost to you at
 Culbertson, Neb., however, does n not bear tlle same relation to
 the pre-war price, for the rea-
 son that in 1914 the freight
 on a farm wagon from Moline
 to Culbertson was s1.37 hun
 dred; the present rate, includ-
 ing war tax, is s2.32." Then
 he goes on to point out to the
 farmer that although he is get
 ting less for his corn than he s did before the war, when he
 sells it to Chicago he has to pay double the freight. The
 letter continues;
 You state that it requires
 $50 bushels of corn to buy a
 wagon today. At 12 cents
 bushel increased freight this
 means that you are paying SIS
 more transportation on the
 corn necessary to buy this
 wagon, therefore your in- creased contribution to the railroad company in getting this wagon out there and ship ping corn to Chicago to pay for it is $Ss.4o.
 "You can well see from this that it is absolutely impossible for any of us to get back to ,l normal basis of prices until the cost of transportation is very materially reduced" This correspondence. of course, took place before this years crops.
 In the west farm papers form an important political lever. and almost all of them follow policies that in the east would be called radical" The first |. objective is greatly reduced freight rates. Then the attempt will continue-to swerve the major parties into two camps, liberal and conservative, and the third party movement is regarded as a step in this direction. These | farm papers say that the Republi- can party is composed solely of New England, New York and Pennsylvania. Dante Pierce, farm editor, who exercises more influence among farmers than any other man | in Iowa, has this to say about the | situation:
 "Out here we are coming into our own. We've been gypped enough. We got the votes to do ii. And we are go- ing to raise hell two years from now unless we get what we want in the meantime which is extremely doubtful. We can't put in our ticket this year be- cause we are bound to certain - candidates and to declare for others would ruin our chances with those we already have. But with these safely across, and it is almost certain that Congress in the next two years will be stalemate, we can go ahead with the rest of our tick ct, our strength having been shown on La Follette's run this year.. Watch us. We are going to turn you upside down."