PROHIBITION PLATFORM.
The Prohibition party, in national convention assembled, acknowledging Almighty God as the Source of all true government, and His Law as the standard to which all human enactments must conform to secure the blessings of peace and prosperity, presents the following declaration of principles:LIQUOR TRAFFIC.
1. The liquor traffic is a foe to civilization, the arch enemy of popular government, and a public nuisance. It is the citadel of the forces that corrupt politics, promote poverty and crime, degrade the nation's home-life, thwart the will of the people, and deliver our country into the hands of rapacious class interests. All laws that, under the guise of regulation, legalize and protect this traffic, or make the government share its ill-gotten gains, are vicious in principle and powerless as a remedy."
We declare anew for the entire suppression of the manufacture, sale, importation, exportation, and transportation of alcoholic liquors as a beverage by federal and state legislation, and the full powers of the government should be exerted to secure this result. Any party that fails to recognize the dominant nature of this issue in American politics is undeserving of the support of the people.
SUFFRAGE.
2. No citizen should be denied the right to vote on account of sex, and equal labor should receive equal wages, without regard to sex.
MONEY.
3. The money of the country should consist of gold, silver, and paper, and be issued by the general government only in sufficient quantities to meet the demands of business and give full opportunity for the employment of labor. To this end an increase in the volume of money is demanded, and no individual or corporation should be allowed to make any profit through its issue. It should be made a legal tender for the payment of all debts, public and private. Its volume should be fixed at a definite sum per capita, and made to increase with our increase in population.
TARIFF.
4. Tariff should be levied only as a defense against the foreign governments which levy tariff upon or bar out our pro
ducts from their markets, revenue being incidental. The residue of means necessary to an economical administration of the government should be raised by levying a burden on what the people possess instead of upon what they consume.
GOVERNMENTAL CONTROL.
5. Railroad, telegraph, and other public corporations should be controlled by the government in the interest of the people, and no higher charges allowed than are necessary to give fair interest on the capital actually invested.
IMMIGRATION.
6. Foreign immigration has become a burden upon industry, one of the factors in depressing wages and causing discontent; therefore our immigration laws should be revised and strictly enforced. The time of residence for naturalization should be extended, and no naturalized person should be allowed to vote until one year after he becomes a citizen.
ALIEN OWNERSHIP.
7. Non-resident aliens should not be allowed to acquire land in this country, and we favor the limitation of individual and corporate ownership of land. All unearned grants of land to railroad companies or other corporations should be reclaimed.
MOB LAWS.
8. Years of inaction and treachery on the part of the Republican and Democratic parties have resulted in the present reign of mob law, and we demand that every citizen be protected in the right of trial by constitutional tribunals.
SABBATH.
9. All men should be protected by law in their right to one day's rest in seven.
ARBITRATION.
10. Arbitration is the wisest and most economical and humane method of settling national differences.
MARGINS, TRUSTS, AND COMBINES.
11. Speculation in margins, the cornering of grain, money, and products, and the formation of pools, trusts, and combinations for the arbitrary advancement of prices should be suppressed,
PENSIONS.
12. We pledge that the Prohibition party, if elected to power, will ever grant just pensions to disabled veterans of the Union Army and Navy, their widows and orphans.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
13. We stand unequivocally for the American public school, and are opposed to any appropriation of any public moneys for sectarian schools. We declare that only by united support of such common schools, taught in the English language, can we hope to become and remain a homogeneous and harmonious people.
NATIONAL ISSUES.
[ocr errors] 14. We arraign the Republican and Democratic parties as false to the standards reared by their founders; as faithless to the principles of the illustrious leaders of the past to whom they do homage with the lips; as recreant to the "higher law," which is as inflexible in political affairs as in personal life, and as no longer embodying the aspirations of the American people or inviting the confidence of enlightened progressive patriotism. Their protest against the admission of moral issues into politics is a confession of their own moral degeneracy. The declaration of an eminent authority that municipal misrule is 'the one conspicuous failure of American politics follows as a natural consequence of such degeneracy, and it is true alike of cities under Republican and Democratic control. Each accuses the other of extravagance in congressional appropriations, and both are alike guilty; both protest, when out of power, against the infraction of the civil-service laws, and each, when in power, violates those laws in letter and spirit; each professes fealty to the interests of the toiling masses, but both covertly truckle to the money power in their administration of public affairs. Even the tariff issue, as represented in the Democratic Mills Bill and the Republican McKinley Bill, is no longer treated by them as an issue upon great and divergent principles of government, but is a mere catering to different sectional and class interests. The attempt in many states to wrest the Australian ballot system from its true purpose, and to so deform it as to render it extremely difficult for new parties to exercise the rights of suffrage, is an outrage upon popular government. The competition of both parties for the vote of the slums, and their assiduous courting of the liquor power and subserviency to the money
power, have resulted in placing those powers in the position of practical arbiters of the destinies of the nation. We renew our protest against these perilous tendencies, and invite all citizens to join us in the upbuilding of a party that has shown in five national campaigns that it prefers temporary defeat to an abandonment of the claims of justice, sobriety, personal rights, and the protection of American homes.
PARTY FELLOWSHIP.
15. Recognizing and declaring that prohibition of the liquortraffic has become the dominant issue in national politics, we invite to full party fellowship 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 entire land.
WORLD'S FAIR.
Resolved, That we favor a liberal appropriation by the federal government for the World's Columbian Exposition, but only on the condition that the sale of intoxicating liquors on the grounds be prohibited and that the Exposition be kept closed on Sundays.