24 NOVEMBER 1923, Page 3

" We got to have help," is his battle cry,

and the cry carries because it is true: - " We farmers (said Mr. Magnus Johnson in an interview with the New York Evening Post) bought land-and farm machinery and bor- rowed money when hogs were bringing 18 cents a pound and wheat 82.50 a bushel. It was a period. of speculation, and we speculated like everybody else. But now we got to pay for our land and farm machinery and our borrowings with hogs at 6 cents and wheat at 96 oents. We- can't do it. We got to have help.' want for the Government to fix a price so we can live, so we won't have to give up our farms and begin all over again, at something else. We don't want a subsidy. ; that's no good. But we got to have some emergency help."

That is. the whole trouble: The farmers bought land at inflated prices and equipped themselves with machinery with the help of inflated credit. Now the bottom has. fallen out of the market. Mr. Magnus Johnson,. apparently, takes no interest whatever in foreign markets. He says that the farmers have got all the market they want at home if they can command decent prices. It might be thought that so simple a man cannot be a very sharp political thorn in anybody's- flesh, but the fact is that the•Republican. Party has no hopes of winning, the: election next year without the help of the farmers.

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