We protest against its destruction, as proposed by the President and
his party. They serve the interests of Europe; we will support the
interests of America. We accept the issue, and confidently appeal
to the people for their judgment. The protective system must be
maintained. Its abandonment has always been followed by disaster to
all interests, except those of the usurer and the sheriff. We denounce
the Mills bill as destructive to the general business, the labor, and
the farming interests of the country, and we heartily endorse the
consistent and patriotic action of the Republican representatives
in Congress opposing its passage. We condemn the proposition of
the Democratic party to place wool on the free list, and we insist
that the duties thereon shall be adjusted and maintained so as to
furnish full and adequate protection to that industry. The Republican
party would effect all needed reduction of the national revenue by
repealing the taxes upon tobacco, which are an annoyance and burden
to agriculture, and the tax upon spirits used in the arts, and for
mechanical purposes, and by such revision of the tariff laws as will
tend to check imports of such articles as are produced by our people,
the production of which gives employment to our labor, and release
from import duties those articles of foreign production, except
luxuries, the like of which cannot be produced at home. If there shall
still remain a larger revenue than is requisite for the wants of the
Government, we favor the entire repeal of internal taxes, rather than
the surrender of any part of our protective system, at the joint
behest of the whiskey trusts and the agents of foreign manufacturers.
We declare our hostility to the introduction into this country
of foreign contract labor, and of Chinese labor, alien to our
civilization and our Constitution, and we demand the rigid enforcement
of the existing laws against it, and favor such immediate legislation
as will exclude such labor from our shores.
We declare our opposition to all combinations of capital, organized
in trusts or otherwise, to control arbitrarily the condition of
trade among our citizens, and we recommend to Congress and the State
Legislatures, in their respective jurisdictions, such legislation
as will prevent the execution of all schemes to oppress the people
by undue charges on their supplies, or by unjust rates for the
transportation of their products to market. We approve the legislation
by Congress to prevent alike unjust burdens and unfair discriminations
between the States.
We reaffirm the policy of appropriating the public lands of the
United States to be homesteads for American citizens and settlers,
not aliens, which the Republican party established in 1862, against
the persistent opposition of the Democrats in Congress, and which has
brought our great Western domain into such magnificent development.
The restoration of unearned railroad land grants to the public
domain for the use of actual settlers, which was begun under the
administration of President Arthur, should be continued. We deny that
the Democratic party has ever restored one acre to the people, but
declare that by the joint action of the Republicans and Democrats
about fifty millions of acres of unearned lands, originally granted
for the construction of railroads, have been restored to the public
domain, in pursuance of the conditions inserted by the Republican
party in the original grants. We charge the Democratic administration
with failure to execute the laws securing to settlers title to their
homestead, and with using appropriations made for that purpose to
harass innocent settlers with spies and prosecutions under the false
pretence of exposing frauds and vindicating the law.
The government by Congress of the Territories is based upon
necessity only, to the end that they may become States in the
Union; therefore, whenever the conditions of population, material
resources, public intelligence, and morality are such as to insure
a stable local government therein, the people of such Territories
should be permitted, as a right inherent in them, the right to form
for themselves constitutions and State governments, and be admitted
into the Union. Pending the preparation for statehood, all officers
thereof should be selected from the bona-fide residents and citizens
of the Territory wherein they are to serve. South Dakota should, of
right, be immediately admitted as a State under the constitution
framed and adopted by her people, and we heartily endorse the action
of the Republican Senate in twice passing bills for her admission.
The refusal of the Democratic House of Representatives, for partisan
purposes, favorably to consider these bills is a wilful violation of
the sacred American principle of local self-government, and merits
the condemnation of all just men. The pending bills in the Senate for
acts to enable the people of Washington, North Dakota, and Montana
Territories to form constitutions and establish State governments
should be passed without unnecessary delay. The Republican party
pledges itself to do all in its power to facilitate the admission
of the Territories of New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho and Arizona to
the enjoyment of self-government as States, such of them as are now
qualified as soon as possible, and the others as soon as they become
so.
The political power of the Mormon Church in the Territories as
exercised in the past is a menace to free institutions, a danger no
longer to be suffered; therefore, we pledge the Republican party to
appropriate legislation, asserting the sovereignty of the nation in
all Territories where the same is questioned, and in furtherance of
that end to place upon the statute books legislation stringent enough
to divorce the political from the ecclesiastical power, and thus stamp
out the attendant wickedness of polygamy.
The Republican party is in favor of the use of both gold and silver as
money, and condemns the policy of the Democratic administration in its
efforts to demonetize silver.
We demand the reduction of letter postage to one cent per ounce.
In a Republic like ours, where the citizen is the sovereign, and the
official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will
of the people, it is important that the sovereign and the people
should possess intelligence. The free school is the promoter of that
intelligence which is to preserve us a free nation, therefore the
State or nation, or both combined, should support free institutions of
learning, sufficient to afford to every child growing up in the land
the opportunity of a good common school education.
We earnestly recommend that prompt action be taken by Congress in the
enactment of such legislation as will best secure the rehabilitation
of our American merchant marine; and we protest against the passage by
Congress of a free-ship bill, as calculated to work injustice to labor
by lessening the wages of those engaged in preparing materials as well
as those directly employed in our shipyards.
We demand appropriations for the early rebuilding of our navy; for the
construction of coast fortifications and modern ordnance, and other
approved modern means of defence for the protection of our defenceless
harbors and cities; for the payment of just pensions to our soldiers;
for necessary works of national importance in the improvement of
harbors and the channels of internal, coastwise, and foreign commerce;
for the encouragement of the shipping interests of the Atlantic, Gulf,
and Pacific States, as well as for the payment of the maturing public
debt. This policy will give employment to our labor; activity to our
various industries; increase the security of our country; promote
trade; open new and direct markets for our produce, and cheapen the
cost of transportation. We affirm this to be far better for our
country than the Democratic policy of loaning the Government’s money,
without interest, to “pet banks.”
The conduct of foreign affairs by the present administration has
been distinguished by its inefficiency and its cowardice. Having
withdrawn from the Senate all pending treaties effected by Republican
administration for the removal of foreign burdens and restrictions
upon our commerce, and for its extension into better markets, it has
neither effected nor proposed any others in their stead. Professing
adherence to the Monroe Doctrine, it has seen, with idle complacency,
the extension of foreign influence in Central America and of foreign
trade everywhere among our neighbors. It has refused to charter,
sanction or encourage any American organization for constructing the
Nicaragua Canal—a work of vital importance to the maintenance of the
Monroe Doctrine, and of our national influence in Central and South
America, and necessary for the development of trade with our Pacific
territory, with South America and with the islands and farther coasts
of the Pacific Ocean.
We arraign the present Democratic administration for its weak and
unpatriotic treatment of the fisheries question, and its pusillanimous
surrender of the essential privileges to which our fishing vessels
are entitled in Canadian ports under the treaty of 1818, the
reciprocal maritime legislation of 1830, and the comity of nations,
and which Canadian fishing vessels receive in the ports of the United
States. We condemn the policy of the present administration and the
Democratic majority in Congress toward our fisheries as unfriendly
and conspicuously unpatriotic, and as tending to destroy a valuable
national industry and an indispensable resource of defence against a
foreign enemy.
The name of American applies alike to all citizens of the Republic
and imposes upon all alike the same obligation of obedience to the
laws. At the same time that citizenship is and must be the panoply and
safeguard of him who wears it, and protects him, whether high or low,
rich or poor, in all his civil rights, it should and must afford him
protection at home and follow and protect him abroad, in whatever land
he may be, on a lawful errand.
The men who abandoned the Republican party in 1884, and continue to
adhere to the Democratic party, have deserted not only the cause of
honest government, of sound finance, of freedom, of purity of the
ballot, but especially have deserted the cause of reform in the civil
service. We will not fail to keep our pledges because they have broken
theirs, nor because their candidate has broken his. We therefore
repeat our declaration of 1884, to wit: “The reform of the civil
service auspiciously begun under the Republican administration should
be completed by the further extension of the reform system already
established by law, to all the grades of the service to which it is
applicable. The spirit and purpose of the reform should be observed in
all executive appointments, and all laws at variance with the object
of existing reform legislation should be repealed, to the end that
the dangers to free institutions, which lurk in the power of official
patronage, may be wisely and effectively avoided.”
The gratitude of the nation to the defenders of the Union cannot be
measured by laws. The legislation of Congress should conform to the
pledge made by a loyal people, and be so enlarged and extended as to
provide against the possibility that any man who honorably wore the
Federal uniform shall become an inmate of an almshouse, or dependent
upon private charity. In the presence of an overflowing treasury, it
would be a public scandal to do less for those whose valorous services
preserved the Government. We denounce the hostile spirit shown by
President Cleveland, in his numerous vetoes of measures for pension
relief, and the action of the Democratic House of Representatives in
refusing even a consideration of general pension legislation.
In support of the principles herewith enunciated, we invite the
co-operation of patriotic men of all parties, and especially of all
workingmen, whose prosperity is seriously threatened by the free-trade
policy of the present administration.
The first concern of all good government is the virtue and sobriety
of the people, and the purity of their homes. The Republican party
cordially sympathizes with all wise and well-directed efforts for the
promotion of temperance and morality.
There were two distinct Labor parties in existence in 1888, and they
both called their national conventions to meet at Cincinnati on the
15th of May. The Union Labor party was the only one whose candidate
figured in the contest. Mr. Streeter, its nominee for President,
received 146,935 votes, with only 2418 for Cowdrey, who was the
candidate of the United Labor party. The Union Labor Convention had
representatives from twenty States, and John Seitz was permanent
president. There was no ballot for President, as Alson J. Streeter, of
Illinois, was nominated by acclamation, and Samuel Evans, of Texas,
was selected for Vice-President on the 1st ballot, receiving 124
votes, to 44 for T. P. Rynders, of Pennsylvania, and 32 for Charles R.
Cunningham, of Arkansas. The following platform was unanimously adopted:
General discontent prevails on the part of the wealth-producer.
Farmers are suffering from a poverty which has forced most of them to
mortgage their estates, and the prices of products are so low as to
offer no relief, except through bankruptcy, and laborers are sinking
into greater dependence. Strikes are resorted to without bringing
relief, because of the inability of employers, in many cases, to pay
living wages, while more and more are driven into the street. Business
men find collections almost impossible, and, meantime, hundreds of
millions of idle public money, which is needed for relief, is locked
up in the United States Treasury, or placed without interest in
favored banks in grim mockery of distress. Land monopoly flourishes as
never before, and more owners of the soil are daily becoming tenants.
Great transportation corporations still succeed in extorting their
profits on watered stock through unjust charges. The United States
Senate has become an open scandal, its membership being purchased
by the rich in open defiance of the popular will. Various efforts
are made to squander the public money, which are designed to empty
the Treasury without paying the public debt. Under these and other
alarming conditions, we appeal to the people of our country to come
out of old party organizations, whose indifference to the public
welfare is responsible for this distress, and aid the Union Labor
party to repeal existing class legislation, and relieve the distress
of our industries by establishing the following principles:
_Land._—While we believe that the proper solution of the financial
question will greatly relieve those now in danger of losing their
homes by mortgages and foreclosures, and enable all industrious
persons to secure a home as the highest result of civilization, we
oppose land monopoly in every form, demand the forfeiture of unearned
grants, the limitation of land ownership, and such other legislation
as will stop speculations in lands, and holding it unused from those
whose necessities require it.
We believe the earth was made for the people, and not to enable an
idle aristocracy to subsist, through rents, upon the toil of the
industrious, and that corners in land are as bad as corners in food,
and that those who are not residents or citizens should not be allowed
to own lands in the United States. A homestead should be exempt, to a
limited extent, from execution or taxation.
_Transportation._—The means of communication and transportation should
be owned by the people, as is the United States postal service.
_Money._—The establishment of a national monetary system in the
interest of the producer, instead of the speculator and usurer,
by which the circulating medium, in necessary quantity and full
legal tender, shall be issued directly to the people, without the
intervention of banks, or loaned to citizens upon land security at a
low rate of interest, to relieve them from extortions of usury and
enable them to control the money supply. Postal savings banks should
be established. While we have free coinage of gold, we should have
free coinage of silver. We demand the immediate application of all the
money in the United States Treasury to the payment of the bonded debt,
and condemn the further issue of interest-bearing bonds, either by the
National Government or by States, Territories, or municipalities.
_Labor._—Arbitration should take the place of strikes and other
injurious methods of settling labor disputes. The letting of convict
labor to contractors should be prohibited, the contract system
be abolished in public works, the hours of labor in industrial
establishments be reduced, commensurate with the increased production
by labor-saving machinery, employés protected from bodily injury,
equal pay for equal work for both sexes, and labor, agricultural,
and co-operative associations be fostered and encouraged by law. The
foundation of a republic is in the intelligence of its citizens, and
children who are driven into workshops, mines, and factories are
deprived of the education which should be secured to all by proper
legislation.
_Pensions._—We demand the passage of a service pension bill to every
honorably discharged soldier and sailor of the United States.
_Income Tax._—A graduated income tax is the most equitable system
of taxation, placing the burden of Government on those who can best
afford to pay, instead of laying it on the farmers and producers, and
exempting millionaire bondholders and corporations.
_United States Senate._—We demand a constitutional amendment making
United States Senators elective by a direct vote of the people.
_Contract Labor._—We demand the strict enforcement of laws prohibiting
the importation of subjects of foreign countries under contract.
_Chinese._—We demand the passage and enforcement of such legislation
as will absolutely exclude the Chinese from the United States.
_Woman Suffrage._—The right to vote is inherent in citizenship,
irrespective of sex, and is properly within the province of State
legislation.
_Paramount Issues._—The paramount issues to be solved in the interests
of humanity are the abolition of usury, monopoly, and trusts, and
we denounce the Democratic and Republican parties for creating and
perpetuating these monstrous evils.
The United Labor party had a limited attendance at its convention.
William B. Ogden was made president, and Rev. Edward McGlynn, of New
York, a priest noted for his discussion of labor problems, prepared and
reported the platform. Robert H. Cowdrey, of Illinois, was nominated
for President, and W. H. T. Wakefield, of Kansas, for the second place
on the ticket without the formality of a ballot. The following platform
was unanimously adopted:
We, the delegates of the United Labor party of the United States, in
national convention assembled, hold that the corruptions of Government
and the impoverishment of the masses result from neglect of the
self-evident truths proclaimed by the founders of this Republic, that
all men are created equal and are endowed with inalienable rights.
We aim at the abolition of the system which compels men to pay their
fellow-creatures for the use of the common bounties of nature, and
permits monopolizers to deprive labor of natural opportunities for
employment.
We see access to farming land denied to labor, except on payment of
exorbitant rent or the acceptance of mortgage burdens, and labor,
thus forbidden to employ itself, driven into the cities. We see the
wage-workers of the cities subjected to this unnatural competition,
and forced to pay an exorbitant share of their scanty earnings for
cramped and unhealthful lodgings. We see the same intense competition
condemning the great majority of business and professional men to a
bitter and often unavailing struggle to avoid bankruptcy; and that,
while the price of all that labor produces ever falls, the price of
land ever rises.
We trace these evils to a fundamental wrong—the making of the
land on which all must live the exclusive property of but a portion
of the community. To this denial of natural rights are due want of
employment, low wages, business depressions, that intense competition
which makes it so difficult for the majority of men to get a
comfortable living, and that wrongful distribution of wealth which is
producing the millionaire on one side and the tramp on the other.
To give all men an interest in the land of their country; to enable
all to share in the benefits of social growth and improvement;
to prevent the shutting out of labor from employment by the
monopolization of natural opportunities; to do away with the one-sided
competition which cuts down wages to starvation rates; to restore
life to business, and prevent periodical depressions; to do away
with that monstrous injustice which deprives producers of the fruits
of their toil while idlers grow rich; to prevent the conflicts which
are arraying class against class, and which are fraught with menacing
dangers to society—we propose so to change the existing system of
taxation that no one shall be taxed on the wealth he produces, nor any
one suffered to appropriate wealth he does not produce by taking to
himself the increasing values which the growth of society adds to land.
What we propose is not the disturbing of any man in his holding
or title; but, by taxation of land according to its value and not
according to its area, to devote to common use and benefit those
values which arise, not from the exertion of the individual, but from
the growth of society, and to abolish all taxes on industry and its
products. This increased taxation of land values must, while relieving
the working farmer and small homestead owner of the undue burdens now
imposed upon them, make it unprofitable to hold land for speculation,
and thus throw open abundant opportunities for the employment of labor
and the building up of homes. We would do away with the present unjust
and wasteful system of finance which piles up hundreds of millions of
dollars in treasury vaults while we are paying interest on an enormous
debt; and we would establish in its stead a monetary system in which
a legal tender circulating medium should be issued by the Government,
without the intervention of banks.
We wish to abolish the present unjust and wasteful system of ownership
of railroads and telegraphs by private corporations—a system which,
while failing to supply adequately public needs, impoverishes the
farmer, oppresses the manufacturer, hampers the merchant, impedes
travel and communication, and builds up enormous fortunes and
corrupting monopolies that are becoming more powerful than the
Government itself. For this system we would substitute Government
ownership and control for the benefit of the whole people instead of
private profit.
While declaring the foregoing to be the fundamental principles and
aims of the United Labor party, and while conscious that no reform can
give effectual and permanent relief to labor that does not involve
the legal recognition of equal rights to natural opportunities, we,
nevertheless, as measures of relief from some of the evil effects of
ignoring those rights, favor such legislation as may tend to reduce
the hours of labor, to prevent the employment of children of tender
years, to avoid the competition of convict labor with honest industry,
to secure the sanitary inspection of tenements, factories, and mines,
and to put an end to the abuse of conspiracy laws.