AMERICAN ELECTIONS

Southland Times, Issue 19276, 21 June 1924, Page 5

AMERICAN ELECTIONS

FARMER LABOUR PARTY THE CONVENTION ENDS PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SELECTED. (By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright.) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) NEW YORK, June 20. (Received June 20, 8 pan.) According to a message from St. Paul, Minnesota, the Farmer Labour Party Convention ended with the nomination of Mr Duncan MacDonald, a miner, for the Presidency. The platform mainly endorses the nationalisation of industries, 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 may cancel them if Senator La Follette’s socalled Progressive National Convention, scheduled to be held on July 4, offers a workable plan for union. The Farmer Labourites’ Convention, despite its potentialities, ended as a disappointment, if not a failure. The membership consisted of such contradictory elements as to induce grave premonition ■ of failure. Nevertheless, Farmers are scarcely expected to be submerged by the so-called Communist leaders, who captured the control of the Convention, and practically dealt the death blow to the Farmer Labour Party. However, Mr MacDonald, in accepting nomination, voiced the Convention’s cordial discontent with the major parties, saying: “I am not a Communist, and not a Rod, but I prefer being called a Communist Red to being smeared with oil or gaining the approval of Morgan and others who name candidates and direct policies in the old parties. Never has organised wcj'th been so firmly entrenched as in the United States to-day.”