In referring to the Democratic party in this discussion we may save time
by simply saying that since it was born again at the St. Louis
convention it is near enough like its Republican ally to pass for a twin
brother.
The former party of the “common people” is no longer under the boycott
of the plutocracy since it has adopted the Wall street label and
renounced its middle class heresies.
The radical and progressive element of the former Democracy have been
evicted and must seek other quarters. They were an unmitigated nuisance
in the conservative counsels of the old party. They were for the “common
people” and the trusts have no use for such a party.
Where but to the Socialist party can these progressive people turn? They
are now without a party and the only genuine Democratic party in the
field is the Socialist party, and every true Democrat should thank Wall
street for driving him out of a party that is democratic in name only
and into one that is democratic in fact.
The St. Louis convention was a trust jubilee. The Wall street
reorganizers made short work of the free silver element. From first to
last it was a capitalistic convocation. Labor was totally ignored. As an
incident, two thousand choice chairs were reserved for the Business
Men’s League of St. Louis, an organization hostile to organized labor,
but not a chair was tendered to those whose labor had built the
convention hall, had clothed, transported, fed and wined the delegates
and whose votes are counted on as if they were so many dumb driven
cattle, to pull the ticket through in November.
As another incident, when Lieutenant Richmond Hobson dramatically
declared that President Cleveland had been the only president who had
ever been patriotic enough to use the federal troops to crush union
labor, the trust agents, lobbyists, tools and clackers screamed with
delight and the convention shook with applause.
The platform is precisely the same as the Republican platform in
relation to labor. It says nothing and means the same. A plank was
proposed condemning the outrages in Colorado under Republican
administration, but upon order from the Parryites it was promptly thrown
aside.
The editor of _American Industries_, organ of the Manufacturers’
Association, commented at length in its issue of July 15 on the triumph
of capital and the defeat of labor at both Republican and Democratic
national conventions. Among other things he said: “The two labor
lobbies, partly similar in make-up, were, to put it bluntly, thrown out
bodily in both places.” And that is the simple fact and is known of all
men who read the papers. The capitalist organs exult because labor, to
use their own brutal expression, was kicked bodily out of both the
Republican and Democratic national conventions.
What more than this is needed to open the eyes of workingmen to the fact
that neither of these parties is their party and that they are as
strangely out of place in them as Rockefeller and Vanderbilt would be in
the Socialist party?
And how many more times are they to be “kicked out bodily” before they
stay out and join the party of their class in which labor is not only
honored but is supreme, a party that is clean, that has conscience and
convictions, a party that will one day sweep the old parties from the
field like chaff and issue the Proclamation of Labor’s Emancipation?
Judge Alton B. Parker corresponds precisely to the Democratic platform.
It was made to order for him. His famous telegram in the expiring hour
removed the last wrinkle and left it a perfect fit.
Thomas W. Lawson, the Boston millionaire, charges that Senator Patrick
McCarren, who brought out Judge Parker for the nomination, is on the pay
roll of the Standard Oil Company as political master mechanic at twenty
thousand dollars a year, and that Parker is the chosen tool of Standard
Oil. Mr. Lawson offers Senator McCarren one hundred thousand dollars if
he will disprove the charge.
William Jennings Bryan denounced Judge Parker as a tool of Wall street
before he was nominated and declared that no self-respecting Democrat
could vote for him, and after his nomination he charged that it had been
dictated by the trusts and secured by “crooked and indefensible
methods.” Mr. Bryan also said that labor had been betrayed in the
convention and need look for nothing from the Democratic party. He made
many other damaging charges against his party and its candidates, but
when the supreme test came he was not equal to it, and instead of
denouncing the betrayers of the “common people” and repudiating their
made-to-order Wall street program, he compromised with the pirates that
scuttled his ship and promised with his lips the support his heart
refused and his conscience condemned.
The Democratic nominee for President was one of the Supreme Judges of
the State of New York who declared the eight-hour law unconstitutional
and this is an index of his political character.
In his address accepting the nomination he makes but a single allusion
to labor and in this he takes occasion to say that labor is charged with
having recently used dynamite in destroying property and that the
perpetrators should be subjected to “the most rigorous punishment known
to the law.” This cruel intimation amounts to conviction in advance of
trial and indicates clearly the trend of his capitalistically trained
judicial mind. He made no such reference to capital, nor to those
ermined rascals who use judicial dynamite in blowing up the constitution
while labor is looted and starved by capitalistic freebooters who
trample all law in the mire and leer and mock at their despoiled and
helpless victims.
It is hardly necessary to make more than passing reference to Henry G.
Davis, Democratic candidate for Vice-President. He is a coal baron,
railroad owner and, of course, an enemy to union labor. He has amassed a
great fortune exploiting his wage-slaves and has always strenuously
resisted every attempt to organize them for the betterment of their
condition. Mr. Davis is a staunch believer in the virtue of the
injunction as applied to union labor. As a young man he was in charge of
a slave plantation and his conviction is that wage-slaves should be kept
free from the contaminating influence of the labor agitator and render
cheerful obedience to their master.
Mr. Davis is as well qualified to serve his party as is Senator
Fairbanks to serve the Republican party and wage-workers should have no
trouble in making their choice between this pernicious pair of
plutocrats, and certainly no intelligent workingman will hesitate an
instant to discard them both and cast his vote for Ben Hanford, their
working class competitor, who is as loyally devoted to labor as
Fairbanks and Davis are to capital.