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% \ — Xflt . - y Wrtnlr XT’ri r] I n rr Editorial Page WE S$g®flrtl@ AN W66K IjllulLLg Dec.23,1913 How the Government Aids Speculators and Hurts Farmers. In the new Postal Savings Banks the deposits now amount to more than $36,000,000. The Government pays only 2 per cent interest on this large sum. ■A deposit as small as 10 cents is received by the Postal Sav ings Banks, and no one is allowed to deposit more than $500. More than 500,000 persons have thus left their savings with the Government AT A LOWER INTEREST RATE THAN IS PAID BY ANY OTHER GOVERNMENT IN CHRISTENDOM. What does our Government do with this money? Does it use these wise pennies of thrifty, patriotic people to aid the in dustry and the production of the country, THE FARMS, FOR INSTANCE, and so benefit the small consumer? Not at all. The Government, in the Postal Savings Bank Law, does not act as if the consumers of the country, or even the postal depositors, were worthy of any special consideration. It acts as if the interests of private bankers were of the first con sideration or paramount in importance. Postmasters are re quired immediately to redeposit all savings received by them in the nearest “solvent bank willing to accept such deposits.” And although part of these deposits may afterward be invested in United States bonds, the banks MUST ALWAYS BE AL LOWED TO KEEP THE GREATER PART, OR 65 PER CENT OF THE TOTAL DEPOSITS OF POSTAL SAVINGS. What does the national bank do with the money? It is for bidden to loan any of it to any farmer upon the security of his farm, no matter how good that real estate security may be. But the bank is free to loan it to other customers, or to send it to any “Central Reserve City” (New York, Chicago and St. Louis), where the money is used for the most part to pro mote speculative operations in the Stock Exchange or grain pit. The Government of Germany has given direct aid to loan associations making a specialty of lending money to farmers on improved farms at 4y 2 per cent interest. The Government of France helped to create a financial lend ing agency to furnish money to French farmers at 4% per cent interest. Even the Government of England, traditionally cruel and unjust to Ireland, has provided a Royal Commission and an Irish Land act to improve the farm conditions of Ireland, providing money for the farmer at about 3y 2 per cent. But in the United States the Government takes the small savings of the people, pays 2 per cent for them, and turns them over to national banks expressly forbidden to make loans to farmers. THE AMERICAN FARMER IS FORCED TO PAY AN AVERAGE OF 8i/ 2 PER CENT FOR THE MONEY ESSEN TIAL TO HARVEST HIS CROPS. The six million farms of the country carry an average debt of $1,000. They support twenty million farm workers. They feed the hundred million Americans. And they pay an EXCESS INTEREST CHARGE OF 210 MILLION DOLLARS a year alone (8V2 per cent instead of 5 per cent), while the reserves of all the 7,473 national banks of the country, amounting at the last Comptroller’s statement to 240 million dollars, are deposited under the law, in Central Reserve Cities for the benefit of specu lators in stocks and bonds and to finance new trusts. Is there anywhere such a perversion of government as this? Was any government ever guilty of more monstrous favorit ism than the United States Government has long shown to the speculator and the banker, who by themselves create nothing, over the toiler and the actual producer, who by themselves'pro duce everything that we eat or wear or require for our health or well-being? Was there ever a monarchical government in the world so heartless and short-sighted as the Government of our own glori ous country, when it takes the savings of poor people, who trust the Government more than the banks, and then uses those sav ings to show that the Government itself trusts the banks more than the people, and is willing that the banks and speculators shall prosper even at the expense of the people? \ Government Ownership of Telephones and Telegraphs Desirable and Inevitable Eight years ago almost to a day, Representative William Randolph Hearst introduced in the Fifty-ninth Congress “A bill to enable the United States to acquire, maintain and operate electric telegraphs,” etc. The bill very carefully provided a specific method of fair, legal purchase of “any or all existing lines,” and their operation for the benefit of the people as the postoffice is. Rates were to be adjusted to provide a reasonable profit to pay off the government bonds issued at popular subscription to buy the telegraph or telephone systems. A stand-pat Republican Congress regarded Mr. Hearst’s bill as dangerous, if not revolutionary. It was neither dangerous nor revolutionary, nor impractica ble, but only NEW—like the Panama Canal, election of United States Senators by direct primaries, income tax, and so many other things that Mr. Hearst advocated long in advance of their realization. Mr. Hearst’s bill of EIGHT YEARS AGO was reintroduced in substance in the Sixtieth and Sixty-first Congresses. TWO YEARS AGO, Postmaster General Hitchcock, a Re publican, recommended it in a report to President Taft and to Congress. TO-DAY a Democratic Postmaster General makes the recommendation the principal feature of his annual report. President Wilson approves it in principle, although he has not passed on any bill in detail. Representative Lewis, of Maryland, to whose energy and persistency we owe the parcel post law, is at work on the bill for early presentation to Congress. It will first be submitted to the Democratic caucus. WHETHER APPROVED THIS WINTER OR NOT, IT IS SURE TO BECOME LAW. The telegraph, the telephone, the mail, owned by the gov ernment, all operated together, united in one system. The United States has thus talked government ownership for eight years, but England has—since Mr. Hearst’s bill was in troduced in Congress—actually accomplished it. The method adopted was substantially that suggested in the Hearst bill. The Government of Great Britain took possession of all the telephones last year. Competition is impossible between telephone companies. There is no more excuse for two telephone or two telegraph companies in the same place than for two postoffices side by side. Duplication of offices is wasteful. The telephone now reaches more remote and more numerous places than the telegraph. The postoffice is even more universal. Every postoffice can be the communicating nerve center of every community—with the * choice always at hand of the slow mails, the quicker telegraph or the telephone capable of annihilating both time and space. This combination is inevitable. Its realization is much more difficult now than it would have been when Mr. Hearst first advo cated it, because much more expensive. Representative Lewis estimates the cost at NINE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS. Where will the money come from? All the money centers of the world could not furnish so great a sum at the present juncture, even for the richest nation of the earth. The development of the telephone has been pushed in the past decade by men of great genius who have spent more than $500,000,000, and made it as easy for the New York business ' man to sit at his desk and talk to Chicago, Kansas City, or Den ver, 2,000 miles away, as to the man in the next room. The chief telephone system now has 50,036 stockholders, and the stocks and bonds outstanding amount to $637,590,278. The independent telephone companies not identified with the American Telegraph and Telephone have stocks and bonds amounting to $322,965,588 more, according to the Census figures. The total, i>l,010,555,836. of the telephone securities alone (ex cluding all telegraph lines) exceed the total present bonded debt of the United States, which on December 1 was $966,823,490. The rate charged for telephones in New York City ($48 minimum for private house or office) is more than in London (£6 or $30), but is LESS than in Paris (400 francs, or about $80). London and Paris telephones are now both under government control. The problem of administration is as certain to be overcome, in time, as the obstacle of first cost. Our fleetest battleships are those built by the government, not by the private shipyards, and our Panama Canal could not have been finished under private engineers, even at government expense. It took a government engineer to do it. The government can employ or train another VAIL or BETHEL, and it will in time, for government ownership of all telephones and telegraphs is BOTH DESIRABLE AND INEVITABLE.