A vast body of American citizens have a deep concern in the temperance
cause, and are bound in conscience to do their utmost to give early
success to the movement for the legal suppression of the drinking
saloon, which they rightly regard as the fountain of intemperance.
Some of them are rich and some of them are poor. Some of them are
conservative and some of them of radical tendency as to questions
concerning wealth. They belong to the industrious, intelligent, moral,
and patriotic reserves of the country. With them in sympathy is the
motherhood of America. I think it is only fair to say, and that all
social reformers should see, that the radical prohibition
constituency--dispersed now in several political parties--is larger
than the following commanded by any other single reform idea, and it
is distinguished by exceptional persistency. There is also a large and
increasing body of American citizens absorbed in what is called the
labor question. Some of them are rich and some of them are poor. Some
of them are also on the side of prohibition and some of them are
hostile or indifferent.
The labor question is the question of social justice, and no question
can be higher than that. Stated in other terms, the labor question is
the question of how to approximate more nearly to an equal
distribution of wealth, not so much of the wealth already amassed by
society as of the wealth that is to be produced by labor in the
future. Now, while there are very few people who think that entire
equality of fortune in this world is either possible or desirable;
every free democracy will wish to work towards equality of social
condition, looking forward to a glorious time when uninvited poverty
shall be outgrown, when manhood shall be of more social weight than
wealth.
There is as much high moral sentiment put into the labor question
to-day, as ever was put into any crusade against any form of
oppression or evil.
If, however, only the radicals with fixed convictions and unflagging
zeal were counted, neither of these humane causes would have a
majority of American voters. Deeply interested in both, I frankly
confess that I do not believe either prohibition or labor can win
alone. As we study our political history, we find that political
issues are not carried except in combination, and as part of the
policy of a political party to the cohesion and the power of which
many issues and many forces contribute. We are not under the Swiss
referendum; we are a representative republic, with two legislative
chambers, each constituted in a peculiar way. Our national life is
complex. To hold in party association the six millions or more of
American men whose support, continued for years, is necessary to carry
a great measure, requires the proper connection with the past, and
trenchant dealing with the present which is full of imperious demands.
Abraham Lincoln was not borne into the presidency in 1860 solely by
the strength of the anti-slavery issue, but found necessary support in
Pennsylvania from the committal of the Republicans to the protective
principle, while in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and the West
generally, he was greatly aided by the homestead issue. Several
distinct issues have usually been involved in our presidential
elections. Exceptions are presented by the victories of sentiment or
tendency under the extraordinary leadership of Jefferson in 1800, and
in the extraordinary demonstration for General Jackson and Democracy
in 1828.
Successful parties in the United States, as in England, have generic
rather than specific names. Federalist, Democratic-Republican, Whig,
Democratic, and Republican; all represent popular triumphs and
administrations of the government. Anti-Masonic, Liberty, American,
Free Soil, Greenback, Prohibition, Labor,--these party names represent
no partisan victories. In the Cabinet of the first President of the
Republic, Thomas Jefferson was Secretary of State, and Alexander
Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury. To each of them Washington
submitted the question whether Congress had power to incorporate a
bank. Jefferson, believing popular liberty safe only in a strict
construction of the Constitution, denied the power to create a bank
because no such power is expressed, or is strictly necessary to the
exercise of any power expressly granted. Hamilton, believing that a
liberal construction of the Constitution was essential to the
development of America, answered that Congress had the power, that the
power was incidental to the national character of the government. He
construed the grant of "necessary" powers in these words: "It is a
common mode of expression to say that it was necessary for a
government or a person to do this or that thing, when nothing more is
intended or understood than that interests of the government or person
require or may be promoted by the doing of this or that thing. The
imagination can be at no loss for exemplifications on the use of the
word in this sense. And it is the true one, in which it is to be
understood as used in the Constitution." The Supreme Court, quoting
these very words with approval, has adopted Hamilton's construction.
With the writing of those two opinions in the Cabinet of Washington,
the enduring lines of party division in America were drawn. There
ought to be early recognition of the fact, that in case a new party of
the people shall be formed, a party determined upon reform of existing
abuses and oppressions, upon the suppression of the liquor traffic as
we know it, upon the overthrow of every semblance of plutocracy, upon
opening to every child of the American democracy an equality of
opportunity as yet unknown, resort must be had to those broad,
liberal, and constructive constitutional doctrines which the existing
Democratic party steadily opposes, and which the Republican party does
not sufficiently apply for the benefit of the masses. It is the duty
and opportunity of the prohibitionists to make such a party. A party
going to Thomas Jefferson for a baptism of Democratic feeling, and
content with no sprinkling, and to the school of Hamilton for its
constitutionalism, can supplant the Republicans, and only such a party
can meet the case of labor. The woollen manufacturers of Massachusetts
have just remonstrated against further reduction of the hours of labor
unless the reduction be uniform in all the manufacturing States, and
they made the significant suggestion that Congress has power to
establish uniform hours of labor. Congress does have that power as a
part of the power to regulate commerce. The eight-hour day can only
come in this country by act of Congress, and the construction that
sustains such an act sustains national regulation of the liquor
traffic. The general welfare of the Union is involved in each case.
American industry is a unit so far as the interests of American homes
require the rule of uniformity, and the home life of America is a unit
so far as it needs that protection which, in order to be complete,
must come from the national authority. I venture to suggest that one
thing that has hindered the cementing of the alliance between labor
and prohibition, is the tendency of the prohibitionists while
recognizing the importance of labor problems to insist that
prohibition must come first. The labor men will never go into any
party that puts it quite in that way. Is it not sufficient to claim
urgency for the prohibition issue, to say that no work should take
precedence of prohibition in party performance? I think the time has
come when this issue can be taken up by a political party and I
recommend a party that shall declare for prohibition with the same
emphasis with which the Republican party declared for protection in
1884 and in 1888. I think, however, that the party that carries a bill
for national control of the manufacture and traffic in liquors through
Congress, to be signed by a President chosen with a knowledge of his
prohibition principles, will have to have a good running mate for its
prohibition issue. Yet I believe the prohibition plank in the platform
of the great progressive party, lineally descending, would be the
centre of attraction and of repulsion. I grant that. But the balance
will be so kept that multitudes who take, at first at least, a
livelier interest in some other measure which also is promoted by
party ascendancy, will vote for partisan prohibition because it is the
policy of the party of human progress with which they are keeping
step.
I refrain from going at length into a discussion of labor issues.
Shall prohibitionists come out for State Socialism, shall they pledge
themselves to make that economic nationalism which is now only a
prophecy and an ideal, a political fact when they came into
administration? No political party should do this. But the word
socialism is a word of good meaning. It means fraternity, industry
upon a Christian basis. In the discussion that impends in this
country, concerning the rights and the wrongs of the wage-earners, and
concerning the demands for relief, constantly growing louder, of the
agricultural producing classes, the question arises in the mind at
the outset, whether our policy, state and national, shall be based
upon the _laissez faire_ doctrine, the "let alone" principle; or upon
the principle of the intervention of public opinion through the agency
of government to effect the ends of justice and of aid to the weaker
classes whether by regulative laws, or by the assumption by the public
(through local, state, or national government, as the nature of the
case may require,) of such business or industrial enterprises as are
natural monopolies or can be best performed by the people
collectively. I say this question arises in the mind at the outset,
but after all, it is, I think, not a question requiring much argument
in this day of the world; because, although there are some men more
busy with their own daily duties than attentive to the world's
progress who are apt, from time to time, to raise this question,
appealing in favor of the "let alone" principle, it is really a
question already decided. The people both in England and in America
have grown quite away from _laissez faire_ doctrine, the tendency is
strong and constantly increasing in the direction of increase of
governmental intervention to redress the social balance. I believe it
is impossible that this tendency should be arrested. I believe it
would not be in the interest of humanity to arrest it. There is a vast
field for individualism, and in that field it is eminently useful.
There is a field also for society, for the State. The needs of the
people in this country to-day are such, the thought of the masses is
advancing so rapidly in the direction indicated that no political
party can long hold power that does not accept the socialistic
tendency and prudently experiment in that direction. There is, in
point of fact, no other possible direction in which society can move,
and it cannot stand still. From the necessity for some intervention in
aid of the weaker classes against the operation of the laws of demand
and supply, it follows that "no class legislation" is not a good cry
for a labor party.
The land question should have a distinct recognition as a true reform
issue, and while committal to the policy signified by the term single
tax, in its entirety, should be avoided, land speculation and monopoly
should be condemned as a monstrous evil, and against that evil should
be directed such special taxation of land values as will check and
ultimately destroy it, without too rudely disturbing existing values.
Government ownership of railroads, telegraphs, and of the anthracite
coal mines, should be favored.
Gas, electric lights, and street railroads should be municipalized.
Legislation, reducing gradually and prudently the hours of labor,
should be given urgency.
National aid to education, unwisely neglected by the Republicans, is
strong with labor, and will be stronger the more it is discussed.
Prohibitionists should advocate universal suffrage with universal
education.
Educational tests for the suffrage offer too easy a repose for the
conservatism of wealth, and to advocate them is to touch the wrong
note, that of distrust rather than trust in the masses. Stand with
Jefferson for Democracy and education, not for education first and the
ballot afterwards. Go to the magnificent oration of Wendell Phillips,
"The Scholar in a Republic," for the courage and wisdom to say with
that friend of prohibition and labor, that "crime and ignorance have
the same right to vote that virtue has.... The right to choose your
governor rests on precisely the same foundation as the right to choose
your religion." "Thank God for His method of taking bonds of wealth
and culture to share all their blessings with the humblest soul He
gives to their keeping." "Universal suffrage,--God's church, God's
school, God's method of gently binding men into commonwealths in order
that they may at last melt into brothers." All attempts to identify
prohibition or labor with free trade should be abandoned.
No large extension of our market for manufactures in Spanish America
or in other foreign countries is possible, if we are to reduce hours
of labor, abolish child labor, call married women from factory to
home, and raise wages in America, regardless of the effect upon the
cost of production. Labor reform, the socialistic tendency require a
rigid adherence to the protective system. But reliance upon the home
market will not only make labor legislation possible, but will be
economic wisdom as well, for by education, by suppressing the saloon,
by shortening hours, by increasing wages, we can indefinitely increase
the capacity of our own people to consume. The McKinley tariff will
work out its own salvation; for the friends of labor or prohibition to
attack it is a fatal mistake. Prohibition, labor reform, and
protection are natural allies, and in the party of the future will be
united. Whoever wishes to form a new party for prohibition and for
labor, will do well to appropriate rather than discard the historic
Republican issues. Let the reformers catch the Republicans bathing and
steal their clothes, albeit they already have some garments of their
own which are very good. If a Democrat, for the sake of temperance or
labor, or any issue, will leave the Democratic party, he has outgrown
the constitutional doctrines of that party, and will not cling to its
economic theories. If he brings a traditional prejudice in favor of
government by the masses rather than by classes, he brings what is
needed. When the period of political readjustment, not yet surely
begun, is over, the Republican party will have been supplanted by a
party inheriting many distinguishing articles of its creed; but the
Democratic party will remain as the party of obstruction, claiming
descent from Jefferson but not the true representative of the eternal
truths with which his name is associated. Around the anti-national
idea the ultra-conservatives, the cormorants of society, the panderers
to vice, the white-liners of the South will rally. The true Democrats,
with a unanimity hitherto unknown, will appreciate the utility of the
national idea and will demonstrate that our Constitution was indeed
intended "to live and take effect in all successions of ages." The
popular party, at once conservative and radical, will demonstrate by
its habitual self-restraint, by its scrupulous regard for justice, by
the honorable methods which it shall observe and exact, by its
prudence in legislation, that the Democracy in the plentitude of its
powers, is most truly conservative of all that vast store of good
which the past hands down.