Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1916 — FIRMER REAPS GAIN BY EIGHT-HOUR LAW [ARTICLE]

FIRMER REAPS GAIN BY EIGHT-HOUR LAW

Prevented Tying Up of Crops Valued at $6,000,000,000. BY FRANK G. ODELL Editor Nebraska Farm Magazine. The New York Sun quotes James Wilson, of lowa, former Secretary of Agriculture, as saying that the farmers were hit hardest by the Adamson Eight-hour Law, which stopped the threatened general railroad strike. According to The Sun, Mr. Wilson said: “The farmer has no eight-hour day. Should that number of hours become general in all occupations, including the farm, the prices of food would rise still higher than those current." The logic of the venerable ex-Sec-retary is bad. The farmer is not worrying about the high price of food. He raises his own food. He grows food for sale. That’s his business. If, as the ex-Secretary says,—the eight-hour day will increase the cost of food, — the farmer has everything to gain. And “Uncle Jim” has overlooked the fact that the fanners of the United States had not less than $6,000,000,000 worth of products practically ready to send to market when the strike crisis was imminent at the first of September. The threatened strike would have paralyzed the farmer's market and stopped the wage of the worker in every industry. Incalculable losses, running into hundreds of millions, were averted when the strike was prevented. Woodrow Wilson did it. “Tama Jim" was Secretary of Agriculture through four Republican Administrations—sixteen years. These were sixteen years cf monopolistic control of the farmer’s market. During this period, these great combinations, which have stood between the producer and the consumer, reached the zenith of their power. Greed and extortion ran riot.

During this period, the farmers of the country complained continually of capitalistic extortion. They held conventions throughout the great grain and live stock belt to voice their protest. They sent deputations of able men to Washington. They sent their appeals for justice to the Secretary of Agriculture and waited at the door of the White House during the administrations of McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft. They asked for bread and received stones of indifference. They demanded justice and received platitudes about “prosperity,” “contentment," and “making two blades of grass grow where one grew before.” Then came another Wilson—Woodrow Wilson. Things began to change. David F. Houston was made Secretary of Agriculture. For the first time in the history of the Government, the business problems of the farmer received the attentions of his Government. The Office of Markets and the Bureau of Rural Organization were created to help him break tile stranglehold of entrenched monopoly. The epoch-making Rural Credits Law was passed by Woodrow Wilson and a Democratic Congress. The power of the usurer and extortioner was broken when that Act was signed. The farmer has a good memory. He does not forget his life-long battle with entrenched privilege—organized and grown purse-proud during forty years of Republican indifference and misrule. He will not forget that it was WOODROW WILSON, the People’s President, who saved his market from ruin on Sept. 2. 1916. The special pleadings of Republican defenders of special privilege and monopoly will find the farmers ready on Nov. 7.