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THE LIBERATOR

Vol. 1, No. 8 October, 1918

THE FARMERS" CRUSADE

Letters from George Cronyn, a Non-Partisan League Organizer

promise with the corrupt two-party system, upon which the League has built its rapid success. But do not the farmers demonstrate, by their skilful use, here of one party ma-chine and there the other, their complete cynicism as to democratic and republican professions of faith, and a healthy contempt for t (e whole political system? To " see through " political democracy and yet be keen enough to make immediate and effective use of its machinery for gaining economic ends, requires a high degree of economic-group intelligence.

The League's program, concerned as it is with the immediate interests of the farmers as producers, varies in different states. It is never very much occupied with the century-worn slogans of political democracy; perhaps its central features are government ownership of the " Channels of trade " (terminal elevators, warehouses, flour mills, stock yards, packing houses and cold storage plants), rural credit banks operated at cost, and the exemption of farm improvements from taxation. In North Dakota these measures are to a large extent already accomplished.

There is no hint of revolution in this program-nothing proposed here which has not already been tried in some part of the world, but, remember, this amazing class-conscious movement of farmers is already to a considerable extent officially allied with organized labor, its victories in the five states named have been won with the cooperation of labor in the cities. This, in America at least, is new-it chal-. lenges the attention of those who fear and of those who pray for the social revolution. At the League convention in Idaho last July, six organized labor delegates were admitted with full powers, and all Tabor's immediate legislative demands were endorsed. It was in effect a joint convention and two out of the twelve candidates nominated were labor men, placed there at the dictation of the State Federation.

The League farmer explains why he has made friends with labor by a simple bit of arithmetic: We grow wheat which we sell for 72 cents a bushel to the middleman who holds it in a privately owned grain elevator for four months after which he sells it for $1.46 a bushel. And it is labor in the city that pays that price-in the shape of 15 cent bread and thirteen dollar flour. Now if we farmers out here and those

Introduction

< VW HAT is the Non-Partisan League? " said a puzzled

1 V U. S. Secret Service man who came to THE LIBERATOR for advice one day in July-" I can't seem to find it in the telephone book." Perhaps it is significant that this organization of farmers, which has ruled the state of North Dakota for two years, which will probably gain control of the legislatures of South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana and Idaho in November, and, according to Wall Street fears, will place zoo candidates in the next Congress, has no office in New York City, or any other city east of Chicago. This is an organization built by middleawestern farmers for their own economic needs, independent of the East-financially, politically, intellectually. It will have a New York office when the New York State farmers are_organized, not before.

The political method of the Non-Partisan League is to select in each district its own candidate, pledged to its legislative program, then to go in force into the primary of which-ever party has the best chance of winning in that district, secure the regular nomination of this candidate on tla party ticket, and counting on the strength of the League pus the inertia of those who will vote the party ticket anyhow-to elect him. Thus in one state the League is " Republican," in another " Democratic "-and it varies in the same vay in different districts of the same state. Nor is this the extent of its political flexibility, for if a League candidate fails of a majority at the primaries, the League may still endorse the candidate of another party, or run its own candidate as an Independent. Thus the farmers have avoided the long slow, expensive process of building up a new political party with the inevitable combination of old parties against it as soon as it begins to look dangerous. Theirs is a shrewd practical method characteristic of the American farmer at his best, and it has already proved a short cut to political power. In North Dakota, for instance, where the Non-Partisan League secured its first member in February, 1915, it had won com

plete political control of the state 18 months Iaer.

An absolute idealist might regret this unholy

conl-

THE LIBERATOR

laborers in the city can get together, and take possession of the grain elevators, what's to prevent our getting $1.00 a bushel for our wheat? And, allowing a cent or two for the actual cost of handling, what's to prevent labor's buying it in the city for a fraction over $i.oo a bushel? Knowing all this, why on earth shouldn't we get together?

Strongest proof of our claim that this Non-Partisan League is, consciously or unconsciously, one of the vital forces in the growing social revolt, is furnished by the opposition. Terrorism, only a few degrees less brutal and shameless than that practised against the industrial unionists, has been adopted by the special interests in their efforts to overthrow these " embattled farmers." And, as in the case of labor, patriotism is the excuse. League meetings have been broken up, organizers have been beaten to unconsciousness, members forcibly deported, and one old farmer killed, by Horne Guards and Loyalty Leagues, for no crime except belonging to the League. The Bellingham Journal explains this vicious determined persecution of loyal American farmers in a word -" politics." " Back of the politics are the profiteers, alarmed nationally over the growth of the farmers' power in politics. They cannot handle the farmers' organizations ;as in the past they have handled the Republican and Democratic organizations, and the breaking away of the farmer vote from the old-line parties, in combination with the growing labor vote, threatens their control of national politics.

It will not be surprising if the organized farmers, finding that Big Business uses the same desperate and unscrupulous methods to destroy them that it has always used against organized labor, draw conclusions of some consequence to the future of America. The phrase " farmer-labor candidate" appears about half a dozen times in a typical editorial page of the Non-Partisan Leader. It has a powerful sound.

We are glad of the opportunity to publish this vivid personal account of his experiences by one of the League's young organizers. There is a buoyancy and faith in these letters which is rare to-day, even among the youngest of us.

C. E.

D EAR E.

How very simple my life has grown all at once, a matter of corduroys and gray flannel shirts, of tin wash-pans, lumpy beds, fried potatoes and pork, and the Ford, my constant companion; of endless fields of young wheat, end-less miles of passable county roads, endless talks with keen-eyed, tanned countrymen. And always the League looms bigger and stronger, defying sheriffs, the miserable yelping press, the howling chorus of politicians and the subtle craftiriss of the Big Fellers, who work over-time through every organ they control, work desperately, insidiously, unscrupulously-and vainly! For they are already beaten. The farmer and organized labor are shoulder to shoulder for the first time in our political history-and they are going to do the job. This, my friends, is revolution in action, out here. Revolution of the kind that our slow-to-move, ponderous, and irresistible American farmer alone could produce.

As to organization, we have never seen its like before. Our campaign is as studiously and efficiently organized as a modern battle. In the home office a great map marked with thousands of pins, shows the daily gains. Each organizer sends in a daily report, and no incident of his local effort is too slight to escape the attention of the commanding officers. I think we will carry Idaho, Montana, So. Dakota and Minnesota, as well as No. Dakota, this election, and we have hundreds of letters begging us to enter other states.

April 29th.

N 0 lull in the fighting along the Western Front. Big Biz active with gas attacks and camouflage, but we're pushing 'em steadily back. In some counties the Farmers ticket is joined with that of Organized Labor and the candidate for Governor is a straight Labor man. We have 60,000 farmer members now and are putting them on at the rate of about a thousand a day. So I can't see how we can lose. Our last prominent court case, resulted in acquittal on first ballot. Our man, L. W. Martin, had as witnesses against him five officers of the peace, who swore that a speech he had delivered seven months ago was disloyal.

My job is a sort of First Steps in the Study of Human Psychology. We need heavy financial backing to carry on the campaign, run our newspapers and support a small army of lecturers and organizers. We have to collect that money by making members, at $16.oo per. But the farmer, as you might guess, is loth to part with that $16.00. He will buy $1oo.oo shares in a fake copper mine in Utah, or an " almost " Orange grove in California, but, no sir! he don't see why he should have to pay $i6.oo to vote.

Then we have to explain that the local grocers pay $32.00 per annum for the privilege of organizing to arrange his store bill, the lawyers $35.00 to empty his pockets in court, and the doctors $50.00, so that they can charge $1.oo a mile to visit him in sickness. And even the loathed I. W. W. pays (if a bonafide member) $3.00 initiation fee, and $8.00 annual dues.

Oh, it takes hours of talking and a good booster along to do the job. But we get him at last.

Once get him in and he will shout League propaganda from the housetop, he will pester his neighbors, jeer at the opposition, and get the vote to the polls. He will go out of his way to refute current lies about us. He will give his old League papers to the doubtful neighbors. And he will follow the light of that $16.00 into the jaws of hell itself.

May 3d.

I didn't think I was a conspirator until a couple of days after six of us organizers arrived in this county. We came in separately. We did not hang around together. The town we landed in, Mankato, is a hustling little city of 15,00o, the streets are full of strangers, farmers in cars, in wagons, afoot. The arrival of our party certainly was nut conspicuous

October, 1918 7

-but listen to this. I was eating breakfast one morning in the best cafe in town, alone, when two well-dressed men entered and sat down behind me. I could hear every word they said, and soon spotted one for the editor of a St. Paul paper, one of our bitterest enemies. I guessed the other to be a local editor. " What you here for, Bill? " said the local man.

" Important business," quoth Bill. Then came the revelation. " Do you know, they've just put six organizers into this county? " I kept right on eating.

" Yes, and those fellows are going around telling the farmers not to subscribe to the Liberty Loan."

I kept on eating, but kicked the table.

" Why, they're regular I. W. W.'s. They'll be burning haystacks and poisoning cattle soon."

I bit deeply into the imitation plated silverware. The Mankato editor shook his head and allowed that he had al-ways known that League organizers were desperate characters.

So here was a real live editor of a big paper eighty miles away, whose important business was to lie to a local editor about six scrubs who had just appeared in the vicinity. Thereafter we congregated even less, and our consultations were held in whispers behind locked doors! Gosh, talk about the Secret Police of old Russia, the Diplomatic Service and the sleuths of the Burns Agency-They've got nothing on Big Biz in Minnesota.

And the funny part is that the farmers enjoy it. They like being part of a great Conspiracy for Democracy.

_ *

The pleasantest side of Organization work is the contact it brings with these so-fundamentally American types of farmer. We get close to their lives, eat of their fried eggs and potatoes, sleep on their not too downy mattresses, take their families to town in our machines, haul their cream if it lies in our direction. 'We hear their slow, unimpassioned indignation at the constant outrages practiced against their pockets and their intelligence; we see their complete disillusionment regarding the promises of the old parties, the news in the papers, the righteous asseverations of their once respected " leading citizens." But most illuminating of all is the frequently-repeated pronouncement, " Without Labor behind us, we can do nothing."

The farmer has at last awakened here in the northwest to the fact (of such immense significance) that he is no longer g. unit, that he must become a part of his class, and help carry on the struggle for the rights of that class; and furthermore that his class is only a part of a still larger class---of Labor the world over.

I can tell you that as I feel the heart-beat of this movement in its individuals, at close range, and see the innumerable feelers darting out in every direction from these six states toward the others, I get a profound conviction of irresistible pressure, of something which will alter the whole face of our American economic structure. No wonder money is

piling up against us, as it never did before against any other party that proposed Democracy!

Here is one of my impressions: Inside the barn a lantern throws a quivering spread of light, falling sharply against the heavy timbers, and drifting over the piled hay. There my farmer friend stands grayly, fork in hand, and we discuss the Great Change coming. He takes in each idea, handles it, turns it about carefully, and stores it away, as conscientiously as he did the corn crop. I can hear him say, " I was raised poor as dirt. I love my wife and my kids, and I ain't agoin' to breed into poverty. No sired "

May 7th,,1918.

DURING this last week I have seen how our fighting farmers choose their candidates for the coming offensive. About 7 o'clock Friday night I got word to summon all the members in my district to a county caucus to be held secretly in the city of Mankato at noon of Saturday.

It was in the loft of the Equity House that about fifty-delegates met. 'We dropped in separately, casually, like conspirators, searching each new face for a possible spy or in-former. We climbed a ladder to a room dimly lighted, and totally devoid of ventilation (it was a fine broiling day) and there, among cultivators, corn planters, drills, hoes, and what-not machinery, held session for two mortal hours, talking in low tones while the sweat poured from our aggrieved brows. There was something immensely serious and deter-mined about that convocation. You felt the reservoirs of strength in these men. Not the " farmer " type as we imagine him. Mostly clean-shaven, cropped mustaches, alert and vigorous of mind; some young, others veterans of the plow who put in sixteen hours a day at an age when most men retire if they can.

There was no wrangling The meeting was informal, discussion open and general, and amazingly frank regarding the character of proposed candidates. These men didn't intend to be fooled ; they had had too many years of that.

Saturday night a committee of a dozen called on the man of our choice to persuade him to run. Imagine a barnyard with four cars lined up; the committee standing in a group. Henry comes slowly into the radius of the car lights, stoop-shouldered, gnarled and knotted with work, in old dirty jeans, and soiled shirt, and battered hat, a week's stubble on his chin-slow, deliberate, taciturn-a man with a county-wide reputation for uprightness and intelligence.

The neighbors do a little joshing first.

" Come on, you old I. W. W. We got a rope for you." " Make out your will, Henry," and so on.

Then they tell him that he is the unanimous choice of his neighbors. After a long pause, he says, " Sorry, gentlemen, but"

Well, the battle raged. Henry didn't want to leave the place, two hundred acres and no help ! The boys all away to school or teaching or out in the professions. For two hours we argued. It seemed we were up against a stone

8 THE LIBERATOR

wall. Finally, an organizer from Dakota, a little middle-aged farmer, turned loose with a powerful plea, winding up:

" Henry, are you going to have your boys and their children be the slaves we've been? "

Henry said he'd have to ask the old woman. So he went in and woke her up, and three of the committee went in and talked to her. They told her that this thing was for the children, that it was safeguarding democracy for them. And she said Henry could do it.

When the news was brought out, we whooped and rushed in to shake Henry's hand. At the door we stopped. They were reading something to Henry, the declaration of principles that he had to affirm before accepting the endorsement of the League. I wish I had a copy of that document. It is a solemn pledge to support in its entirety the platform of labor, to work for those who produce.

* *

When I think back over that moment I realize that this is not a campaign, it's a Crusade.

MY dear E.: May 15. The great winds of Spring do blow with much the same abandon that they did on the whistling plains of N. M. in our ranching days. And the sun hangs keen and bright as God's new-minted penny over fields almost pain-fully green-so green they seem to ache with eagerness of growth. But behind this lovely mask of spring, and within this extreme beauty of the world, the battle for future lives, hopes, and pleasures and loves is being fought to a finish, with ever increasing violence. The decisive moment, as momentous to my mind, as that election of 186o, lies only a month off. On June 17 come the Minnesota primaries and the fate of democracy at home hangs in the balance.

Yesterday I heard a long argument between the priest of this parish, a very important m