Image provided by: Multnomah County Library; Portland, OR
About Gresham outlook. (Gresham, Multnomah County, Or.) 1911-1991 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 1914)
HOME AND FARM MAGAZINE SFCTTON THIS IS TO THE MEN AND WOMEN of OREGON, who LABOR, IN and Out of SEASON, to FEED US ALL: William Hanley, Candidate for United States Senator, Shows How the Farmer Is Entitled to Lower Interest Rates and Tells How He Proposes to Get Them if Elected —Lend the Postal Savings Bank Deposits Direct to Farm ers Instead of to the National Banking Trust. (By William Hanley.) The farmer, the man who makes fertile fields where stumps eumbered the ground; the man who puts in from 12 to 18 hours a day at real work; the man who enables the rest of the folks to eat a square meal; that man is the king pin and the corner stone and the very top of the nation’s solid pyramid of prosperity. But I notice that mighty few farmers get into congress. The men of the fields and the orchards and the meadows have considered politics a strange business, fit only for lawyers and edi tors. And because there have been few farmers put on the job of making laws, these laws arc generally in the interest of everybody but the farmer. Why not put a man from the soil back in Washington for a spell? is paying, and will do more to establish the art, science and pros perity of agriculture than any measure now in force or suggested. Give to the farmer 4 per cent money. Encourage him. Stand behind him in his work of feeding the nation, as you have been standing behind the banker and the money broker and the political fakers, and the farmer will profit. The farmer then can hold his grain until the market offers a fair price; he will not have to unload every fall at the price set by the combine and he will have reserve stacks of grain and produce that will make impossible the present scheme of arbitrary boosting of those commodities by the same brokerage interests that forced the farmer to sell for a song and whistle the tune besides. I know the cattle business; I know what irrigation means; I understand the problem the farmers of this state have to face and I know how hard, by sad personal experience, the fight is against the commission pirate, the shipping trusts and the banking clique. Doesn’t this sound reasonable to you fanners? Doesn’t it sound l'ke lower feed prices to your town consumer? Just split that fat profit the middleman and banker have been receiving; take this graft away and give half of it to the farmer and half to the con sumer; the broker and the banker have other ways of buying gaso line without hammering the farmer and the housewife. I not only know these things, but I have planned a way out, and if the farmers of this state decide to give a fellow farmer a chance, there will be some laws enacted that will mean something for the benefit of the far4ncrs. This is a simple, easy, plain plan of relief that is possible and that if presented to congress and fought for intelligently would win, but I notice that oilier senatorial candidates don’t appear to chance on these simple little ideas. Here is one big thing that should be done by the government. The government should make its postal savings deposits available to the farmer, instead of handing them over to the National Banking Trust. ' Perhaps if they had sweated brine on a harvest field and blood in a banker’s sanctum, they would have gleamed a few bits i f wisdom. The people deposit their money with Uncle Sam. lie takes this money and hands it over to the banks at 2 ^ per cent. Mr. Banker takes that money and loans it at from 6 per cent to 10 per cent. It is your money released to you with 3% to 7% per cent added. I be lieve the prosperity of Oregon would be promoted more if this money was loaned the farmer at 4 per cent than given to two dozen bankers at 2 ^ per cent. Don’t you believe that too? Yards and yards of talk and statistics and reports have been unwound back at Washington on rural credits and federal aid to the farmer. But I notice that when we farmers need money to har vest our crops, we have to beg for it, and pay about 8 to 12 per cent. And the banker will not loan on your crop in the field. But let that crop be harvested and handed over to a miller or a broker, and put in a warehouse, and the bank will loan money on the mere ware house receipt at 6 per cent. Everybody can get money in this country except the farmer. All he gets is the opportunity to pay two times a just rate for his money, and receive a price for his produce at the lowest market. After he sells the price goes up. If the American farmer was not the most wonderful worker in the world, he would be universally bankrupt; no other business could faee the commercial conditions forced on the farmer. Let Uncle Sam loan to the farmer this postal savings money at 4 per cent. That will give Uncle Sam almost double the interest he is now getting, and will give the farmer money for half what he Never mind the full dinner pail talk ; the farmer will dinner pail when he gets a fair price for his produce, rubbed by the money sharks. The town folks will have a pail, at a price they can afford, if the financial and bandits are shooed away from the trough. have a full and is not full dinner brokerage Political parties do not bring prosperity by themselves. G. O. Pism is Good Old Punkism unless definite, honest, effective measures for relief are passed. I know what is the matter with the laws relating to agriculture. They have been made too long by brokers, bankers and lawyers. Give the farmer a chance. My name is Bill Hanley of Bums. The only college I ever went to was the school of hard work in central Oregon in the days when crops usually failed to mature, and when they did they could not be sold. It may not be a good school in which to «liscover how to wear a frock coat and plug hat; but it is a fine institution to educate a man regarding the stem necessities. I have learned my lesson well; it is the same lesson 50,fKM) farmers in Oregon are today painfully acquiring. Let’s send 9. farmer to Washington and see if we won't have a better grade of poltic&l fodder in the nation’s congress. Think thia over Talk it over with the good wife. Look me up. My record, my work for central Oregon and the farmer. Study my platform, and then do what you believe is the best thing for you on November 3. (Paid advertis« ment by William Hanley Campaign Committee, Clarke Letter, Manager, Yeon Bldg.)