UNITED STATES

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 21 June 1924, Page 5

UNITED STATES

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. FARMER-LABOUR NOMINEE. BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT * NEW YORK, June 19. According to a message from St. Paul, Minnesota, the Farmer-Labour Party convention ended with the nomination of Mr Duncan McDonald, a miner, for the Ptesidency, and Mr William Bouck, a farmer, for the vicePresidency. The platform mainly endorses the nationalisation of industries and the abolition of private titles to land, and advocates loans free of interest to farmers. These nominations, however, are merely provisional, because the national committee of the party mav cancel them if Senator M. La Foilette’s so-called Progressive National convention, scheduled for July 4, offers a workable plan of union. . convention, despite wide potentialities, ended as a disappointment, if not a failure. The membership consisted of such contradictory elements as to induce grave premonitions of failure. . Nevertheless, the farmers scarcely expected to be submerged by so-called Communist leaders, who captured control of the convention and practically dealt a death blow to the Parmer-Labour Partv.

However, Mr MacDonald, in accepting nomination, voiced the convention’s. cordial discontent with the major parties, saying: “I am not a Communist and am not a ‘Red,’ but I prefer to be called a Communist and ‘Red’ to being smeared with oil or gaining the approval of Morgan and others who name the candidates and direct the policies of the old parties. Never has organised wealth been so entrenched as in the United States today.”