1904 Prohibition Party Platform

 The Prohibition party, in national convention assembled, at Indianapolis, June 30, 1904, recognizing that the chief end of all government is the establishment of those principles of righteousness and justice which have been revealed to men as the will of the ever-living God, desiring His blessing upon our national life, and believing in the perpetuation of the high ideals of government of the people, by the people and for the people, established by our fathers, makes the following declaration of principles and purposes:

 The widely prevailing system of the licensed and legalized sale of alcoholic beverages is so ruinous to individual interests, so inimical to public welfare, so destructive of national wealth and so subversive of the rights of great masses of our citizenship, that the destruction of the traffic is, and for years has been, the most important question in American politics.

 We denounce the lack of statesmanship exhibited by the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties in their refusal to recognize the paramount importance of this question, and the cowardice with which the leaders of these parties have courted the favor of those whose selfish interests are advanced by the continuation and augmentation of the traffic, until today the influence of the liquor traffic practically dominates national, State and local government throughout the nation.

 We declare the truth, demonstrated by the experience of half a century, that all methods of dealing with the liquor traffic which recognize its right to exist, in any form, under any system of license or tax or regulation, have proved powerless to remove its evils, and useless as checks upon its growth, while the insignificant public revenues which have accrued therefrom have seared the public conscience against a recognition of its iniquity.

 We call public attention to the fact, proved by the experience of more than fifty years, that to secure the enactment and enforcement of prohibitory legislation, in which alone lies the hope of the protection of the people from the liquor traffic, it is necessary that the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government should be in the hands of a political party in harmony with the prohibition principle, and pledged to its embodiment in law, and to the execution of those laws.

 We pledge the Prohibition party, wherever given power by the suffrages of the people, to the enactment and enforcement of laws prohibiting and abolishing the manufacture, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages.

 We declare that there is not only no other issue of equal importance before the American people to-day, but that the so-called issues, upon which the Democratic and Republican parties seek to divide the electorate of the country are, in large part, subterfuges under the cover of which they wrangle for the spoils of office.

 Recognizing that the intelligent voters of the country may properly ask our attitude upon other questions of public concern, we declare ourselves in favor of:

 The impartial enforcement of all law.

 The safeguarding of the people's rights by a rigid application of the principles of justice to all combinations and organizations of capital and labor.

 The recognition of the fact that the right of suffrage should depend upon the mental and moral qualifications of the citizen .

 A more intimate relation between the people and government, by a wise application of the principle of the initiative and referendum.

 Such changes in our laws as will place tariff schedules in the hands of an omnipartisan commission.

 The application of uniform laws to all our country and dependencies.

 The election of United States Senators by vote of the people.

 The extension and honest administration of the civil service laws.

 The safeguarding of every citizen in every place under the government of the people of the United States, in all the rights guaranteed by the laws and the Constitution.

 International arbitration, and we declare that our nation should contribute, in every manner consistent with national dignity, to the permanent establishment of peace between all nations.

 The reform of our divorce laws, the final extirpation of polygamy, and the total overthrow of the present shameful system of the illegal sanction of the social evil, with its unspeakable traffic in girls, by the municipal authorities of almost all our cities.