The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-09-15
BY RUDOLPH HARJU


nURING the past few months special attention
has been given by the Party in district to
the work among the poor farmers Organiza-
ton work with limited degree of success has
been carried on among the poor farmers in the
various sections Of the Party. Many farmers
local committees have been organized in Nor
thern Wisconsin Upper Michigan and Northern
Minnesota. However the Mesaba Range Section
has been the point of concentration and as
result of the organization work delegate meet
ing of farmers from st. Louis county was held
on August 7, where it was decided to organize
q Hunger March to Duluth to the county seat
to present to the county Board of Commits
sioners demands for tax exemptions and other
relief for poor farmers.
1t is no accident that it is the st. Louis coun-
ty farmers that are organizing Hunger March.
The deepening of the capitalist crisis is being
felt much more intensely by the st. Louis coun-
ty than by many farmers in many other Sec
tons of the Northwest The ST. Louis county
farmers (also in many other counties of nor
thern Minnesota are semi proetarian in the
true sense of the word. They have never been
able to make their living out of the income of
the farm. So long as there were timber so
long as the iron mines were running on a more
or less stable schedule and so long as work on
the state and county highways was in progress
the farmers were able to get along from day to
day without much difficulty But the postwar
capitalism and more recently the capitalist crisis
has profoundly changed the conditions Most of
the timber has been exhausted, the roads have
been built and the iron mining industry is at
stand still. Thus all the outside income for
the ST. Louis county farmers have been COM
pletely cut Off
Also the formerly meager income that the
"a 6oHya he'd Fro,,
diminished to almost nothing with declining
prices of farm products. The system of robbery
and exploitation has effected the poor farmers
of this section of the stage both ways, going and
coming. The unemployment has aggravated the
situation of the declining prices and therefore
1t has driven the st. Louis county farmers into
a predlcament that they must either organize
themselves for struggle or starve in the midst
of plenty.
In addition to the falling of prices of farm
products and the unemployment situation that
has made the lot of the farmers from bad to
worse, there is the constantly increasing burden
OF farm mortgages interests and climbing taxes
that is driving the farm masses of St. Louis
county against the wall The farmers have been
aware OF this condition for years, but they have
tried to escape it with ventures ineffective pro-
ducers and marketing co-operatives There is
hardly hamlet or community of any inpor-
lance in the entire county where there isn't
some sort of cooperative venture OF course
during the postwar period of capitalism the
farmers really thought they were getting sub
stantial benefits from such activity The fact
OF the matter is, however, that it has only pro-
longed the coming of the acute condition that
the vast mass of farmers are in today.
The preaching of this illusion of farmers
saving themselves from ruin thru whatever kind
OF cooperation has tended to detach the farm
ers' attention from the real problems Nothing
has been said about mortgages, interests and the
rising taxes This, of course, has been deliber-
ately done by the Electromagnetic Now, how
ever, after the farmer has reached the end of