The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-12-09
Delegation of American
Dirt Farmers Should Visit
Union of Soviet Republics
BY J. LOUIS ENoDAHL.

TT is stated that the American
4 Farm Bureau Federation, now
holding It's eighth annual meeting
in Chicago, is planning to send a
Delegation OF 500" to visit in Eu-
rope, to leave these shores on July
30. This is a splendid idea.
Those who have the interests of
the American farmer as an immedi-
ate concern, however, must urge
two propositions in connection with
this proposed delegation:
First: 1t must be made UP of
working farmers, those who are &C
tually carrying upon their shoulders
the burdens of the soil.
Second: No tour Of Europe, no
matter how limited, will be COM
plete without visit to the Union
Of Soviet Republics.
There is little of the smell of
the soil about the bureau federation
gathering. Last year Cal Coolidge,
the president of all the robber in
terests that feed off the farmers as
well as plumber the industrial work
ers, was the bureaus invited guest.
Cal was cold shouldered by last
years assembly, because OF his blunt
refusal to provide even the most
meager relief for the agricultural
districts, but this year the hero of
the meeting is Frank o. Lowden,
ex-governor of Illinois, beneficiary
thru marriage in the multi-millions
of the Pullman estate. Lowden is
gentleman farmer, who has an es-
tate bought with his wife's money,
and he raises farm issues as handy
weapons With which to win political
power. He is a perpetual candidate
for the presidency. Another lime
lighter in the gathering is Magnus
w. Alexander, of New York, presi-
dent of the national industrial con-
ference board, who is supposed to
bring big manufacturing and indus
try closer to the farmers. 1t is thus
seen that the spirit of the gather
ing tends toward federation of the
hungry profit leeches who blood
suck the nations farming popula-
ton.
In fact, the gathering is domin-
ated by the interests of the small
bankers, the landlords, the manufac-
turers, the food spectators and the
rich farmers, whose interests are
Numerically opposed to those farm
ers who actually work the land and
produce the nations crops. Relief
legislation that benefits the banker,
landlord, the grain buyer and the
manufacturer, leaves the actual dirt
farmer just as broke as ever.
1t is taken for granted that the
bureaus delegation to Europe will
be packed with the interests that
dominate It. But this should not pre-
vent the issue being raised of a
working farmers delegation to Eu-
rope, and not a delegation of the
parasites who live off the farmers.
The delegation should visit the
Soviet Union because there only
will one find a government actually
concerned with the interests of the
working farmers. In every other
country of Europe the same profit
interests dominate as here.
In the Soviet Union there are no
bankers to charge exhorbitant rates
of interest and to call in the sher-
if to foreclose mortgages; there are
no spectators to force down the
price OF grain in harvest time to
ruinous levels and then push them
up again after the crop is out of
the hands Of the farmers; there are
no manufacturers to charge as high
prices as possible for all the i'm
plements the farmer needs to work
the land; there are no absentee land
lords, retired in luxurious abodes
in the cities, to push up the rents,
higher and higher, at every oppor-
tunity.