The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1930-02-06
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1890.
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"HELPING" THE FARMER

al IltuL DIloUdlISy sOIlC VI GhC AA4OoC
persistent and talented horn-tooters
for Soviet Russia in the country,
writes, after taking slam at indus
trial conditions in the United States:
"News to worry grain merchants in
Europe and interest American farm
ers. Russia's soviet steamer 'Prole-
tariat' arrives in the Baltic with $500
tons of grain offered by the Soviet
Trade Legation at prices rs to IS
cents bushel below the world market
prices. Communist Russia promises
heavy exports of rye, oats, barley,
fodder and will if necessary cut prices
ruthlessly. Russia's government re-
ally interests itself in farmers, buying
tractors for them by the thousands,
experimenting intelligently r..with
wholesale farming destined to solve
the farm production problem as
wholesale manufacturing has solved
automobile production"
The news will indeed interest Am
erican farmers and the American peo-
pie generally, but not just the way
Moscow's press agents might believe.
In the first place it is significant
that Soviet Russia is dumping grain
on the world market at cut prices
while millions of Russians are starv-
ing or on the verge of starvation. 1t
is recalled that when the American
Congress sent twenty million dollars
worth of food stuffs to Soviet Russia
to keep hundreds of thousands of peo-
pie in the Volga district from starv-
ing to death, they met cargoes of
grain in Russian ports being shipped
out of the country by the Moscow gov
eminent to raise money to keep the
biggest army in the world and provide
money for worldwide revolutionary
campaigns.
Americans are also interested in the
fact that American capitalists, includ-
ing a leading automobile manufac-
turer, the General Electric Company
and other factors in big business, are
helping finance Soviet Russia's move
ment to take the land away from the
farmers, and go into state farming on
a huge scale, with the peasants re-
duced to practical slavery and COM
PEELED to work at such wages as will
make American farm competition il
the markets of the world irGpossible:5
"Russia really interests itself in
the farmer" says Mr.. Brisbane. Press
dispatches show the way in which the
Moscow government is interesting it.
self in the farmer. The farmers,
lands are being appropriated by the,
government. Every farmer who. owns
a domestic animal or two is classed
as kulak or "rich peasant" He is
not only being robbed of his land,
but is being Invested of political and
economic rights, and has been told
by the Moscow masters In So many
words that he can ego, g6mp under
an automobile" if he wishes to end
his misery. Even Lenin's widow has
publicly protested against this bru-
tally, yet we hear it praised in the
United States! Hundreds Of these
farmers guilty of owning horse or
cow have been killed, jailed, exiled
because of resisting this seizure or
even complaining about it. Terms of
two years in prison are being hand
ed out to peasants who try to put
themselves out of the erich peasant
class by killing their domestic ami
mails.
This is the sort of thing recon-
Ynended to the American farmer by
the Moscow publicity agencies. 1t
amounts to reducing the nation to a
gigantic Jail and poor farm. At the
same time it is interesting to note
that American "big business" is help
ing finance this Russian enterprise,
and is careless of the fact that if Rus
STA can be equipped for state farming
with slave labor the price the Amer
lean farmer can receive for his sur
plus grain will be decreased by from
25 to 80 per cent.
n