You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Monday May 3, 1915
From the Appeal to Reason: H. G. Creel Series on the Walsh Commission in Texas
Today's
Hellraisers presents the third installment of H. G. Creel's coverage of the investigation made by the
Commission on Industrial Relations into the conditions of tenant farmers in Texas and Oklahoma. The Walsh Commission was in session in Dallas in March and heard remarkable testimony of the wretched conditions under which the tenant farmers live, notwithstanding the back-breaking toil undertaken by the entire family, from small children to aged elders.
Creel maintains that the plutocrats hate the Walsh Commission because of the relentless questioning of witnesses by Chairman Frank P. Walsh. We have reprinted the entire article by H. G. Creel below the fold.
From the Appeal to Reason of May 1, 1915:
Why the Plutes Hate the Walsh Commission
BY H. G. CREEL,
Staff Correspondent Appeal to Reason.
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Frank P Walsh
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LESLIE'S WEEKLY and other reactionary organs are demanding that the United States industrial relations commission be dissolved. The following testimony, brought out before the Dallas hearings of the commission, shows why capitalism fears the commission.
When Pat Nagle, the prominent Socialist of Oklahoma, took the stand, he read letters from a number of landlords to their agents. One was from J. W. Newcomb of Ardmore, telling his agent that future tenants must have plenty of "force." The term "force" among southern landlords means children too young to rebel and too weak to resist oppression. Large, Rooseveltian families of illiterate children are preferred.
Continuing, Nagle produced some photographs that all but pulled members of the commission from their seats. The case was that of an 82-year-old invalid woman, a tenant, in Kingfisher county. Her ancestors fought in the revolutionary war, the war of 1812 and in the civil war. She and her husband came to Oklahoma 20 years ago, where they homesteaded land. Her husband's death, sickness and the resulting invalidism took the homestead from her and gave it into the hands of Fred Lankard, a landlord of Kingfisher, Okla. Alone, forsaken and utterly helpless the aged woman was set out into the middle of the country road by Lankard and his agents. It was the photographs of this eviction, together with a recital of the case, that sent a tremor over commission and auditors.
[Said Nagle:]
Don't misunderstand me...I am not attacking Mr. Lankard personally. He is doing what many other landlords are doing and none of them do it because they want to. I know Mr. Lankard. We are neighbors. I know him to be a "good " man and a patriotic one. But when business interests are involved the patriotic man says to his patriotism. "Goodbye; I'll meet you July fourth." If it's religion that interferes with his business he says to his religion, "Meet me in church at ten-thirty next Sunday morning. I'm too busy to bother with you in business hours."
He told how Oklahoma nightriders shoot Johnson grass seed into the soil, destroying thousands of dollars, worth of property in a few hours.
Fewer Births, Advises Professor.
Nagle was followed by Professor Charles B. Austin of the University of Texas. The gist of his testimony has already been given in these columns. He declared that landlords were not responsible for the plight of tenants, but threw the blame on physicians who do not instruct renters how to keep down the birth rate, upon preachers who tell of a home beyond the sky and fail to mention betterment of the home on earth and declared that storekeepers who inveigle tenants into unnecessary purchases were even more responsible than landlords. By trying to shield the owners of rented property he condemned the entire capitalist system.
Professor Austin declared that foreign born tenants rented pieces of land and became owners in one generation. Austin is a landlord.
Usury in Oklahoma.
E. J. Giddings, and Oklahoma City lawyer and counsel for the Farmers' Protective Association, declared that tenant farmers remain poor because they pay out from one-third to one-fourth for rent. "No business can endure," he said, "if it pays out one-half its gross income for rent. Yet that is what thousands of farmers must do and then they're reviled because they do not become well fixed." He declared that Oklahoma farmers now owe $60,000,000 to Oklahoma banks, $20,000,000 of which is usury. When asked for a remedy he suggested education and religion with a law against banks that practice usury. In face of his admission that the Oklahoma legislature has refused to pass an adequate usury law he declared that he was still a democrat and looked to the democratic party for relief for members of the organization that employs him as its counsel.
[He advised:]
Something should be done about the Indian land, too...The government gives land to the Indian and then he refuses to work. He rents to a white man and this is the way it works out: The white tenant sets to work and improves the place. Perhaps he sinks a well. The next year his Indian landlord says, "the place has a well on it now and it is worth more money than last year. I'm going to raise your rent." The incompetent Indian's land should be sold and his money invested for him by the government in good securities. The competent Indian's land should be sold and he should be compelled to shift for himself the same as the white man.
A note passed to Chairman Walsh suggested that perhaps Mr. Giddings could tell from whom the Indian landlord learned the trick of raising rents after tenants had improved the property, but Walsh failed to put the question.
Landlord Contradicts Others.
A. Tom Padgett, a landlord of Coleman county, Texas, told the commission that he owned 12,000 acres of Texas land, all of which is rented. He flatly contradicted most of the previous witnesses, saying that tenants have good chances of becoming owners and that landlords encourage and help them to enter the owning class. He told the commission he knew no defects in the present system of renting land and could suggest no improvements. In the next breath he admitted that both women and children work in his fields and that children begin contributing to his support when they reach the age of eight. He also declared that he made a special effort to get large families.
Chairman Walsh asked about housing conditions. "Are there any screens in the houses occupied by your tenants?" he questioned.
"No." sneered Padgitt, "screens wouldn't stay in the windows 24 hours if we put them there."
"How do you know? Have you tried it?" asked Walsh.
"We've tried-no, we've never tried it," weakly responded the landlord.
What Capitalism Fears.
It is such things as this, Chairman Walsh's effort to get the truth about conditions, that brings the rancor of capitalist papers upon him. Had he allowed Padgitt's statement to go unchallenged, leaving the inference that farm tenants prefer not to have screens in their houses he would be considered a "fair" chairman.
It was in 1912 that Padgitt refused to rent land to Socialists. This brought him into prominence in Texas land owning circles and was one of the reasons the commission questioned him. His testimony along this line will be given next week.
[Photograph added.]
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Herr Glessner Creel
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SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-May 1, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Plucked by Plutocrats from the
Tenant Farmer of Oct 1914
http://gateway.okhistory.org/...
Frank P. Walsh from Harpers Weekly
of Sept 27, 1913
http://books.google.com/...
Herr Glessner Creel
https://books.google.com/...
See also:
Tag: Tenant Farmers
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Industrial relations: final report and testimony
-United States. Commission on Industrial
Relations,
-Francis Patrick Walsh, Basil Maxwell Manly
D.C. Gov. Print. Office, 1916
Vol 9:
https://books.google.com/...
8949-The Land Question in the Southwest
https://books.google.com/...
Vol. 10
https://books.google.com/...
9057-9290-The Land Question in the Southwest-
Continued
https://books.google.com/...
9059-Testimony of Mr. Patrick S. Nagle.
https://books.google.com/...
9077-Testimony of Prof. Charles B. Austin
https://books.google.com/...
9095-Testimony of Mr. E. J. Giddings.
https://books.google.com/...
9102-Testimony of Mr. J. Tom Padgitt.
https://books.google.com/...
Appeal Socialist Classics, No. 8
Socialism and the Farmer
-ed by W. J. Ghent
Girard, Kansas, 1916
https://archive.org/...
Tricks of the Press, A Lecture
-by H. G. Creel
National Rip-Saw Publishing Co, 1911
https://books.google.com/...
More Books by Herr Glessner Creel
https://www.google.com/...
A letter from Debs to Creel
https://books.google.com/...
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We Have Fed You All For A Thousand Years-Jack Herranen and the Lower 9th Ward
We have fed you all for a thousand years-
For that was our doom, you know,
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike of a week ago.
You have taken our lives, and our babies and wives,
And we're told it's your legal share;
But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth
Good God! We have bought it fair.
-by Unknown Proletarian, 1908
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