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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 human enactments must conform to
secure the blessings of peace and prosperity, presents the following declaration
of principles:
The money of the country should consist of
gold, silver, and paper, and be issued by the General Government only,
and in sufficient quantity 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 payument 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 should be levied only as a defense against
foreign governments which levy tariff upon or bar out our products 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. Railroad, telegraph, and other public corporations
should be controlled by the Government in the interest of the people,
and no higher charges allowed than necessary to give fair interest on
the capital actually invested. 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. Non-resident aliens should not be alloweed
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. 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. All men should be protected by law in their
right to one day's rest in seven. Arbitration is the wisest and most economical
and humane method of settling national differences. Speculations 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. 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. We stand unequivocally for the Amerian Public
School, and 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. 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 theirt 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; each protests 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
priniples 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 fgor new parties to exercise the right of suffrage,
is an outrage upon popular government. The competition of both the parties
for the vote of the slums, and their assiduous courting of the liquor
power and subvserviency to the money power, has resulted in placing those
powers in the position of pratical arbiters of the detinies 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. Recognizing and declaring that prohibition
of the liquor traffic 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 unityj, and insure the
best welfare of our entire land. 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 drinks upon the Exposition
grounds is prohibited, and that the Exposition be kept closed on Sunday. |