The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1932-09-01
BY BRUCE CATION
NFA service Writer

CIOUX CITY, Ia, Sept. 1.-The
- conservative farmer of the
northwestern corn belt-Where
the soil is both rich and heavily
mortgaged-is beginning, for the
first time, to think about the dan
ger of going hungry. That ex-
plains the surprising farmers
strike"
This is the opinion of Wallace
Short of Sioux City. Short has
been closely in touch with the
strike from its beginning-indeed,
he helped pave the way for it by
a decade of preaching the farm
er's needs for unity-and he
probably knows as much about
the problems of the farmer as any
man in northwestern Iowa.
THE conservative farmer"
Short says, is beginning for the
first time to think about hunger.
These farmers know that so per
cent of them may be dispossessed
of their farms at any day. That
puts them face to face with the
e>nger of actual hunger"
Short was mayor of Sioux City
tor six years. He has been a
member of the state legislature
for an equal period, and still is
a member.
He is publisher of weekly
newspaper, Unionist and Public
Farmer, and he holds the odd dis
tinction of being, at one and the
same time, an ordained minister
of the Congregational church and
a recognized member of the bar
tenders union.
IT WAS talking only yesterday
i with the leaders of this
group" he says. They told me
this. We want to be so com
pletely right that no right-minded
group can condemn lis.
1--we don't want any irrespon-
sible fellows who just are look
ing for excitement to join us. So
far they have lived up to that aim
very we'll.
Another conservative farmer
told me this: I never have seen
anything like this in all my life.
These farmers are making their
anneaI from what is legal to what
is right.
"'They may have forgotten
what is legal, but they do know
what is right, and they mean to
get it,
There was a case here just the
other day in which farm land
lord forced a sale of his renters
crop to pay claim on last years
rent. Get that-last years rent,
not this years.
"A day or so ago I met a man
who just had sold five 2oo-pouno
hogs. After expenses incident to
the sale and transportation OF the
animals had been met, he got q
check for about $40,
That man is deeply in debt.
If he had sold those five hogs at
the time that he incurred his
debts. his price would have been
around SITS, instead of what he
actually got. Can you see what
he's up against in trying to pay
off his debt?
CT KNOW another man whose
4 mortgage was foreclosed just
recently. His entire years crop
wouldn't even pay the interest on
his indebtedness"
Short believes that the leglsla-
ture eventually will have to recog-
nize the Iowa farmers plight and
enact legislation to meet it.
Such legislation, he believes,
should include a provision for
moratorium on debts until the
dollar regains the value it had be-
fore the depression; sharp re-
duction of interest rates on all
agricultural loans; a very drastic
reduction in taxes and some pro-
vision for getting foreclosed loans
back into the hands of the bona
f1de property owners.
The revealing characterization
of the movement, perhaps, comes
from Henry A. Wallace OF Des
Moines, editor of "Wallace's
Homestead" famous corn belt
magazine, and son of the late Sec
rotary of Agriculture Henry G.
Wallace, who served in Harding's
cabinet
There is a certain amount of
the same : of dynamite in this
affair that there was in the Bos-
ton tea party" Wallace told me.
"THEY talked the whole thing
Il over at meeting here in
July. At that time I told them
that it would be weak gesture.
In the first place, they won't be
able to get enough farmers in on
it to affect prices very much, and
in the second place, even if they
did, they'd just be holding an
umbrella over the heads of farm
ers who aren't cooperating with
them.
And then, of course, when they
finally started selling. they'd
inevitably put the prices down just
as far as they previously had put
them up
But Wallace admitted that
there is no way of telling just how
far this strike" may go.