The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1941-08-13
In OTHER
WORDS
Hold Your Wheat!
Fit for the Funnies
Isolationists Exit
To Have One Voice
What Grandpa Wanted
By JOHN STAHLBERG

There must be some grey boards
| the big drives that were put on along
about threshing time, way back yon-
der, with the slogan: Hold Your
Wheat" Everybody told everybody
else, and the newspapers screeched
the words from every front page-but
nobody did anything about it! The
wheat and coarse grain producer
wanted to hold his wheat and grain
from the rush to market, at a time
when a deluge of grain submerged
the price until the bulk of the grain
was safely stored and in the posses
sion of someone else. Then the price
began to recover" and those who
bought at the low price of the rush
to market sold few months later at
a handsome profit and went to Flori-
da for the winter
Those were the days before the
farmer had any organization. He had
to go it alone and what with creditors
pressing him to sell and pay his bills
and the need to buy coal, winter
clothing and necessities for the fam
lily, there really seemed no way
around selling the grain at a price
that was less than half what it cost
to produce. Then after decades of
Union and its call to organization and
to orderly marketing through farmer
owned co-operatives. What dumb
clucks" those first few farmers were
thought to particularly by the or
ganized grain trade. The idea that
common, dirt farmers knew enough to
market their own grain or run an
elevator was just too funny for any
thing but the Comics" which were
Just beginning to come In vogue in
the newspapers.
In spite of mistakes, of blunders
and of bitter opposition by the mar
keting monopoly, this plan of coop
erative organization helped. Even
when the elevator showed a loss at
the end of the year-the lesson and
the experience of working together
and bringing the producer elbow 10
elbow with his brother was worth the
pricel The isolationists of the farm
began to turn into the intervention
lists of the market place. The point
is-they had their ups and downs
togetherl True, for too much of the
time it was "downs"-for both state
and federal laws were so phrased that
they Disseminated against the farm
err. 1t was as the old song of the
Gay Nineties had it: Reuben held
four aces, but the sharper held a gun
at the little bunch of whiskers on
his chin!"
Then as the farmers began to see
what good working together was, |
heir ranks stiffened and grew strong |
or. They began to have one voice, |
instead of a thousand little voices |
That is when the Farmers Union |
Grain Terminal Association was es-
abolished. That is when the Nation
al Farmers Union Legislative Com
nittee was created. That was when
he farmers themselves began to I'M
that they lived in legis-
ated economy-not natural one, but
1ne built of man-made laws. Out of
hat came the Commodities Exchange
Act, which trimmed the talons of the
.rimmers. Then came laws to bene-
it the farmer and protect him against
what as an isolationist, he never
could battle.
The law, calculated to put floor
lnder the price of the basic products
wheat, corn, cotton, tobacco and
ice-was enacted and under it the
ederal government fixed loan value
10 that the producer need not rush
lis wheat to market, but could store
t and actually Hold Your Wheat"