Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

by her people, and we heartily indorse the action of the Re publican Senate in twice passing bills for her admission. The refusal of the Democratic House of Representatives, for partisan purposes, favorably to consider these bills, is a willful violation of the sacred American principle of local selfgovernment, and merits the condemnation of all just men. The pending bills in the Senate for acts to enable the people of Washington, North Dakota and Montana Territories to form constitutions and establish State governments should be passed without unnecessary delay. The Republican party pledges itself to do all in its power to facilitate the admission of the Territories of New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho and Arizona to the enjoyment of self-government as States, such of them as are now qualified as soon as possible, and the others as soon as they become so.

The political power of the Mormon Church in the Territories as exercised in the past is a menace to free institutions, a danger no longer to be suffered. Therefore we pledge the Republican party to appropriate legislation asserting the sovereignity of the Nation in all Territories where the same is questioned, and in furtherance of that end to place upon the statute books legislation stringent enough to divorce the political from the ecclesiastical power, and thus stamp out the attendant wickedness of polygamy.

The Republican party is in favor of the use of both gold and silver as money, and condemns the policy of the Democratic administration in its efforts to demonetize silver.

We demand the reduction of letter postage to one cent per

ounce.

In a Republic like ours, where the citizen is the sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign-the people-should possess intelligence. The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us a free nation; therefore the State or Nation, or both combined, should support free institutions of learning sufficient to afford to every child growing up in the land the opportunity of a good common school education.

We earnestly recommend that prompt action be taken by Congress in the enactment of such legislation as will best secure the rehabilitation of our American merchant marine, and we protest against the passage by Congress of a free ship bill, as calculated to work injustice to labor by lessening the wages of those engaged in preparing materials as well as those directly employed in our ship-yards. We demand appropriations for the early rebuilding of our navy; for the construction of coast fortifications and modern ordnance and other approved modern means of defence for the protection of our defenceless harbors and cities; for the payment of just pensions to our soldiers; for the necessary works of national importance in the improvement of harbors and the channels of internal, coastwise and foreign commerce for the encouragement of the shipping interests of the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific States, as well as for the payment of the maturing public debt. This policy will give employment to our labor, activity to our various industries, increase the security of our

country, promote trade, open new and direct markets for our produce and cheapen the cost of transportation. We affirm this to be far better for our country than the Democratic policy of loaning the Goverment's money without interest to "pet banks."

The conduct of foreign affairs by the present Administration has been distinguished by its inefficiency and its cowardice. Having withdrawn from the Senate all pending treaties effected by Republican Administrations for the removal of foreign burdens and restrictions upon our commerce and for its extension into better markets, it has neither effected nor proposed any others in their stead. Professing adherence to the Monroe doctrine, it has seen with idle complacency the extension of foreign influence in Central America and of foreign trade everywhere among our neighbors. It has refused to charter, sanction or encourage any American organization for constructing the Nicaragua Canal, a work of vital importance to the maintenance of the Monroe doctrine, and of our national influence in Central and South America; and necessary for the development of trade with our Pacific territory, with South America and with the islands and further coasts of the Pacific Ocean.

We arraign the present Democratic Administration for its weak and unpatriotic treatment of the fisheries question, and its pusillanimous surrender of the essential privileges to which our fishing vessels are entitled in Canadian ports under the treaty of 1818, the reciprocal maritime legislation of 1830 and the comity of nations, and which Canadian fishing vessels receive in the ports of the United States. We condemn the policy of the present Administration and the Democratic majority in Congress toward our fisheries as unfriendly and conspicuously unpatriotic, and as tending to destroy a valuable national industry, and an indispensable resource of defence against a foreign enemy.

The name of American applies alike to all citizens of the Republic and imposes upon all alike the same obligation of obedience to the laws. At the same time that citizenship is and must be the panoply and safeguard of him who wears it, and protect him, whether high or low, rich or poor, in all his civil rights. It should and must afford him protection at home, and follow and protect him abroad in whatever land he may be on a lawful errand.

The men who abandoned the Republican party in 1884 and continue to adhere to the Democratic party have deserted not only the cause of honest government, of sound finance, of freedom, of purity of the ballot, but especially have deserted the cause of reform in the Civil Service. We will not fail to keep our pledges because they have broken theirs, or because their candidate has broken his. We therefore repeat our declaration of 1884, to wit: "The reform of the Civil Service auspiciously begun under the Republican Administration should be completed by the further extension of the reform system already established by law to all the grades of the service to which it is applicable. The spirit and purpose of the reform should be observed in all Executive appointments, and all laws at variance with the object of existing reform

legislation should be repealed, to the end that the dangers to free institutions which lurk in the power of official patronage may be wisely and effectually avoided."

The gratitude of the Nation to the defenders of the Union cannot be measured by laws. The legislation of Congress should conform to the pledge made by a loyal people, and be so enlarged and extended as to provide against the possibility that any man who honorably wore the Federal uniform should become the inmate of an almshouse, or dependent upon private charity. In the presence of an overflowing Treasury it would be a public scandal to do less for those whose valorous service preserved the Government. We denounce the hostile spirit of President Cleveland in his numerous vetoes of measures for pension relief, and the action of the Democratic House of Representatives in refusing even a consideration of general pension legislation.

In support of the principles herewith enunciated, we invite the co-operation of patriotic men of all parties, and especially of all workingmen, whose prosperity is seriously threatened by the free-trade policy of the present Administration.

We reaffirm our unswerving devotion to the personal rights and liberties of citizens. The first concern of all good government is the virtue and sobriety of the people and the purity of the home. The Republican party cordially sympathizes with all wise and well-directed efforts for the promotion of temperance and morality.

NATIONAL PROHIBITION PLATFORM.

ADOPTED AT INDIANAPOLIS, MAY 31, 1888.

The Prohibition party in National Convention assembled, acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all power in government, does hereby declare:

That the manufacture, importation, exportation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages shall be made public crimes and prohibited and punished as such.

That such prohibition must be secured through amendments of our National and State Constitutions, enforced by adequate laws adequately supported by administrative authority, and to this end the organization of the Prohibition party is imperatively demanded in State and Nation.

That any form of license, taxation or regulation of the liquor traffic is contrary to good government; that any party which supports regulation by license or tax enters into an alliance with such traffic and becomes the actual foe of the State's welfare, and that we arraign the Republican and Democratic parties for their persistent attitude in favor of the licensed iniquity, whereby they oppose the demand of the people for prohibition and through open complicity with the liquor cause defeat the enforcement of law.

For the immediate abolition of the internal revenue system, whereby our National Government is deriving support from our greatest national vice.

That an adequate public revenue being necessary, it may properly be raised by import duties, but import duties should be so reduced that no surplus shall be accumulated in the treasury, and the burdens of taxation should be removed from foods, clothing and other comforts and necessaries of life, and imposed on such other articles of import as will give protection to the manufacturing employer and producing laborer against the competition of the world.

That Civil Service appointments for all civil offices, chiefly clerical in their duties, should be based upon moral, intellectual and physical qualifications, and not upon party service or party necessity.

The right of suffrage rests on no mere circumstance of race, color, sex or nationality, and that where, from any cause, it has been withheld from citizens who are of suitable age and mentally and morally qualified for the exercise of an intelligent ballot, it should be restored by the people through the legislatures of the several States on such educational basis as they may deem wise.

For the abolition of polygamy and the establishment of uniform laws governing marriage and divorce.

For prohibiting all combinations of capital to control and to increase the cost of products for popular consumption.

For the preservation and defense of the Sabbath as a civil institution without oppressing any who religiously observe the same on any other day than the first day of the week.

That arbitration is the Christian, wise and economic method of settling national differences, and the same method should by judicious legislation be applied to the settlement of disputes between large bodies of employes and employers; that the abolition of the saloon would remove the burdens, moral, physical, pecuniary and social, which now oppress labor and rob it of its earnings, and would prove to be the wise and successful way of promoting labor reform; and we invite labor and capital to unite with us for the accomplishment thereof.

That monopoly in land is a wrong to the people, and public land should be reserved to actual settlers, and that men and women should receive equal wages for equal work.

That our immigration laws should be so enforced as to prevent the introduction into our country of all convicts, inmates of dependent institutions and others physically incapacitated for self-support, and that no person shall have the ballot in any State who is not a citizen of the United States.

Recognizing and declaring that the prohibition of the liquor traffic has become the dominant issue in national politics, we invite to full party followship all those who on this one dominant issue are with us agreed in the full belief that this party can and will remove sectional differences, promote national unity, and insure the best welfare of our native land.

PARTY PLATFORMS.

1892.

DEMOCRATIC, REPUBLICAN, PROHIBITION, PEOPLE'S.

NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM.

ADOPTED AT CHICAGO, JUNE 22, 1892.

The representatives of the Democratic party of the United States, in National Convention assembled, do reaffirm their allegiance to the principles of the party as formulated by Jefferson and exemplified by the long and illustrious line of nine of his successors in Democratic leadership from Madison to Cleveland.

We believe the public welfare demands that these principles be applied to the conduct of the Federal Government through the accession to power of the party that advocates them, and we solemnly declare that the need of a return to these fundamental principles of a free popular Government, based on home rule and individual liberty, was never more urgent than now, when the tendency to centralize all power at the Federal Capitol has become a menace to the reserved rights of the States, that strikes at the very roots of our Government under the Constitution as framed by the fathers of the Republic.

We warn the people of our common country, jealous for the preservation of their free institutions, that the policy of Federal control of elections, to which the Republican party has committed itself, is fraught with the gravest dangers, scarcely less momentous than would result from a revolution practically establishing monarchy on the ruins of the Republic. It strikes at the North as well as the South and injures the colored citizen even more than the white; it means a horde of deputy marshals at every polling place armed with Federal power, returning boards appointed and controlled by Federal authority, the outrage of the electoral rights of the people in the several States, the subjugation of the colored people to the control of the party in power and the reviving of race antagonisms, now happily abated, of the utmost peril to the safety and happiness of all; a measure deliberately and justly described by a leading Republican Senator as the most infamous bill that ever crossed the threshold of the Senate."

Such a policy, if sanctioned by law, would mean the dominance of a self-perpetuating oligarchy of office-holders, and the party first intrusted with its machinery could be dislodged from power

« ForrigeFortsett »