assembled, do reaffirm our allegiance to those great essential
principles of justice and liberty, upon which our institutions are
founded, and which the Democratic party has advocated from Jefferson’s
time to our own—freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of
conscience, the preservation of personal rights, the equality of all
citizens before the law, and the faithful observance of constitutional
limitations.
During all these years the Democratic party has resisted the tendency
of selfish interests to the centralization of governmental power, and
steadfastly maintained the integrity of the dual scheme of government
established by the founders of this republic of republics. Under its
guidance and teachings, the great principle of local self-government
has found its best expression in the maintenance of the rights of the
States, and in its assertion of the necessity of confining the General
Government to the exercise of the powers granted by the Constitution
of the United States.
The Constitution of the United States guarantees to every citizen the
rights of civil and religious liberty. The Democratic party has always
been the exponent of political liberty and religious freedom, and it
renews its obligations and reaffirms its devotion to these fundamental
principles of the Constitution.
Recognizing that the money question is paramount to all others at this
time, we invite attention to the fact that the Federal Constitution
names silver and gold together as the money metals of the United
States, and that the first coinage law passed by Congress under the
Constitution made the silver dollar the money unit, and admitted gold
to free coinage at a ratio based upon the silver dollar unit.
We declare that the act of 1873 demonetizing silver without the
knowledge or approval of the American people has resulted in the
appreciation of gold and a corresponding fall in the prices of
commodities produced by the people; a heavy increase in the burden of
taxation and of all debts, public and private; the enrichment of the
money-lending class at home and abroad; the prostration of industry
and impoverishment of the people.
We are unalterably opposed to monometallism, which has locked fast the
prosperity of an industrial people in the paralysis of hard times.
Gold monometallism is a British policy, and its adoption has brought
other nations into financial servitude to London. It is not only
un-American, but anti-American, and it can be fastened on the United
States only by the stifling of that spirit and love of liberty which
proclaimed our political independence in 1776 and won it in the war of
the Revolution.
We demand the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at
the present legal ratio of sixteen to one without waiting for the aid
or consent of any other nation. We demand that the standard silver
dollar shall be a full legal tender, equally with gold, for all debts,
public and private, and we favor such legislation as will prevent for
the future the demonetization of any kind of legal tender money by
private contract.
We are opposed to the policy and practice of surrendering to the
holders of the obligations of the United States the option reserved by
law to the Government of redeeming such obligations in either silver
coin or gold coin.
We are opposed to the issuing of interest-bearing bonds of the United
States in time of peace, and condemn the trafficking with banking
syndicates, which, in exchange for bonds and at enormous profit to
themselves, supply the Federal Treasury with gold to maintain the
policy of gold monometallism.
Congress alone has the power to coin and issue money, and President
Jackson declared that this power could not be delegated to
corporations or individuals. We therefore denounce the issuance
of notes intended to circulate as money by national banks as in
derogation of the Constitution, and we demand that all paper which
is made a legal tender for public and private debts, or which is
receivable for duties to the United States, shall be issued by the
Government of the United States and shall be redeemable in coin.
We hold that tariff duties should be levied for purposes of revenue,
such duties to be so adjusted as to operate equally throughout the
country, and not discriminate between class or section, and that
taxation should be limited by the needs of the Government honestly and
economically administered.
We denounce as disturbing to business the Republican threat to restore
the McKinley law, which has twice been condemned by the people in
national elections, and which, enacted under the false plea of
protection to home industry, proved a prolific breeder of trusts and
monopolies, enriched the few at the expense of the many, restricted
trade, and deprived the producers of the great American staples of
access to their natural markets.
Until the money question is settled we are opposed to any agitation
for further changes in our tariff laws, except such as are necessary
to meet the deficit in revenue caused by the adverse decision of the
Supreme Court on the income tax. But for this decision by the Supreme
Court, there would be no deficit in the revenue under the law passed
by a Democratic Congress in strict pursuance of the uniform decisions
of that court for nearly one hundred years, that court having in that
decision sustained constitutional objections to its enactment which
had previously been overruled by the ablest judges who have ever sat
on that bench. We declare that it is the duty of Congress to use
all the constitutional power which remains after that decision, or
which may come from its reversal by the court as it may hereafter
be constituted, so that the burdens of taxation may be equally and
impartially laid, to the end that wealth may bear its due proportion
of the expenses of the Government.
We hold that the most efficient way of protecting American labor is
to prevent the importation of foreign pauper labor to compete with
it in the home market, and that the value of the home market to our
American farmers and artisans is greatly reduced by a vicious monetary
system which depresses the prices of their products below the cost
of production, and thus deprives them of the means of purchasing the
products of our home manufactories; and, as labor creates the wealth
of the country, we demand the passage of such laws as may be necessary
to protect it in all its rights.
We are in favor of the arbitration of differences between employers
engaged in interstate commerce and their employés, and recommend such
legislation as is necessary to carry out this principle.
The absorption of wealth by the few, the consolidation of our leading
railroad systems, and the formation of trusts and pools require a
stricter control by the Federal Government of those arteries of
commerce. We demand the enlargement of the powers of the interstate
commerce commission, and such restrictions and guarantees in the
control of railroads as will protect the people from robbery and
oppression.
We denounce the profligate waste of the money wrung from the people by
oppressive taxation and the lavish appropriations of recent Republican
Congresses, which have kept taxes high, while the labor that pays them
is unemployed and the products of the people’s toil are depressed in
price till they no longer repay the cost of production. We demand
a return to that simplicity and economy which befits a democratic
government and a reduction in the number of useless offices, the
salaries of which drain the substance of the people.
We denounce arbitrary interference by Federal authorities in local
affairs as a violation of the Constitution of the United States
and a crime against free institutions, and we especially object
to government by injunction as a new and highly dangerous form of
oppression by which Federal judges, in contempt of the laws of the
States and rights of citizens, become at once legislators, judges,
and executioners; and we approve the bill passed at the last session
of the United States Senate, and now pending in the House of
Representatives, relative to contempts in Federal courts and providing
for trials by jury in certain cases of contempt.
No discrimination should be indulged in by the Government of the
United States in favor of any of its debtors. We approve of the
refusal of the Fifty-third Congress to pass the Pacific Railroad
Funding bill, and denounce the effort of the present Republican
Congress to enact a similar measure.
Recognizing the just claims of deserving Union soldiers, we heartily
endorse the rule of the present Commissioner of Pensions, that no name
shall be arbitrarily dropped from the pension roll; and the fact of
enlistment and service should be deemed conclusive evidence against
disease and disability before enlistment.
We favor the admission of the Territories of New Mexico, Arizona, and
Oklahoma into the Union as States, and we favor the early admission
of all the Territories having the necessary population and resources
to entitle them to statehood, and, while they remain Territories, we
hold that the officials appointed to administer the government of
any Territory, together with the District of Columbia and Alaska,
should be _bonâ fide_ residents of the Territory or district in which
the duties are to be performed. The Democratic party believes in
home rule, and that all public lands of the United States should be
appropriated to the establishment of free homes for American citizens.
We recommend that the Territory of Alaska be granted a delegate in
Congress, and that the general land and timber laws of the United
States be extended to said Territory.
The Monroe Doctrine, as originally declared and as interpreted by
succeeding Presidents, is a permanent part of the foreign policy of
the United States, and must at all times be maintained.
We extend our sympathy to the people of Cuba in their heroic struggle
for liberty and independence.
We are opposed to life tenure in the public service, except as
provided in the Constitution. We favor appointments based upon merit,
fixed terms of office, and such an administration of the civil service
laws as will afford equal opportunities to all citizens of ascertained
fitness.
We declare it to be the unwritten law of this Republic, established by
custom and usage of a hundred years, and sanctioned by the examples
of the greatest and wisest of those who founded and have maintained
our Government, that no man should be eligible for a third term of the
Presidential office.
The Federal Government should care for and improve the Mississippi
River and other great waterways of the Republic, so as to secure for
the interior States easy and cheap transportation to tidewater. When
any waterway of the Republic is of sufficient importance to demand aid
of the Government, such aid should be extended upon a definite plan of
continuous work until permanent improvement is secured.
Confiding in the justice of our cause and the necessity of its success
at the polls, we submit the foregoing declaration of principles and
purposes to the considerate judgment of the American people. We invite
the support of all citizens who approve them, and who desire to have
them made effective, through legislation, for the relief of the people
and the restoration of the country’s prosperity.
A minority of the Committee on Resolutions, consisting of the members
from sixteen States, submitted a dissenting report, expressing their
inability to give their assent to “many declarations” of the platform.
“Some are ill-considered and ambiguously phrased, while others are
extreme and revolutionary of the well-recognized principles of the
party.” They offered two amendments, the first a substitute for the
financial plank, as follows:
We declare our belief that the experiment on the part of the United
States alone of free silver coinage and a change in the existing
standard of value, independently of the action of other great nations,
would not only imperil our finances, but would retard, or entirely
prevent, the establishment of international bimetallism, to which the
efforts of the Government should be steadily directed.
It would place this country at once upon a silver basis, impair
contracts, disturb business, diminish the purchasing power of the
wages of labor, and inflict irreparable evils upon our nation’s
commerce and industry.
Until international co-operation among leading nations for the
coinage of silver can be secured, we favor the rigid maintenance of
the existing gold standard as essential to the preservation of our
national credit, the redemption of our public pledges, and the keeping
inviolate of our country’s honor.
We insist that all our paper currency shall be kept at a parity with
gold. The Democratic party is the party of hard money, and is opposed
to legal tender paper money as a part of our permanent financial
system, and we therefore favor the gradual retirement and cancellation
of all United States notes and treasury notes, under such legislative
provisions as will prevent undue contraction.
We demand that the national credit shall be resolutely maintained at
all times and under all circumstances.
The People’s party, then better known as the Populists, and the Free
Silver party, held their conventions at St. Louis on the 22d of July.
The cheap-money elements were divided into two extreme factions, with
a third that was known as the “Middle-of-the-Road” men. The Populist
convention was presided over by Senator Butler, of North Carolina,
as temporary chairman, and Senator Allen, of Nebraska, as permanent
president, and the question of acting with the Democratic party in
support of the Chicago platform and candidate for President, was
settled by the preliminary motion to proceed to the nomination of a
candidate for Vice-President. It was adopted by 785 to 615. That meant
the nomination of Bryan, but the rejection of Sewall. A single ballot
was had for Vice-President, resulting as follows:
Thomas E. Watson, Ga. 539-3/4
Arthur Sewall, Maine 257-1/8
Frank Burkett, Miss. 190-3/4
Harry Skinner, N. C. 142-1/4
A. L. Mims, Tenn. 118-5/16
Mann Page, Virginia 89-5/16
Watson lacked over 100 of the majority, but a sufficient number of
delegates promptly changed their votes to make him the nominee. After
nominating the candidate for Vice-President, the convention proceeded
to ballot for President, as follows:
William J. Bryan, Neb. 1,042
S. F. Norton, Ill. 321
Eugene B. Debs, Ind. 8
Ignatius Donnelly, Minn. 3
J. S. Coxey, Ohio 1
The following platform was adopted after three minority reports had
been rejected:
The People’s party, assembled in national convention, reaffirms
its allegiance to the principles declared by the founders of the
Republic, and also to the fundamental principles of just government as
enunciated in the platform of the party in 1892.
We recognize that through the connivance of the present and preceding
administrations the country has reached a crisis in its national life
as predicted in our declaration four years ago, and that prompt and
patriotic action is the supreme duty of the hour. We realize that
while we have political independence our financial and industrial
independence is yet to be attained by restoring to our country the
constitutional control and exercise of the functions necessary to a
people’s government, which functions have been basely surrendered by
our public servants to corporate monopolies. The influence of European
money-changers has been more potent in shaping legislation than the
voice of the American people. Executive power and patronage have been
used to corrupt our Legislatures and defeat the will of the people,
and plutocracy has been enthroned upon the ruins of democracy. To
restore the Government intended by the fathers and for the welfare and
prosperity of this and future generations, we demand the establishment
of an economic and financial system which shall make us masters of our
own affairs, and independent of European control, by the adoption of
the following declaration of principles:
1. We demand a national money, safe and sound, issued by the General
Government only, without the intervention of banks of issue, to
be a full legal tender for all debts, public and private; a just,
equitable, and efficient means of distribution direct to the people
and through the lawful disbursements of the Government.
2. We demand the free and unrestricted coinage of silver and gold at
the present legal ratio of sixteen to one, without waiting for the
consent of foreign nations.
3. We demand that the volume of circulating medium be speedily
increased to an amount sufficient to meet the demands of business
and population and to restore the just level of prices of labor and
production.
4. We denounce the sale of bonds and the increase of the
interest-bearing debt made by the present administration as
unnecessary and without authority of law, and demand that no more
bonds be issued except by specific act of Congress.
5. We demand such legislation as will prevent the demonetization of
the lawful money of the United States by private contract.
6. We demand that the Government, in payment of its obligations, shall
use its option as to the kind of lawful money in which they are to be
paid, and we denounce the present and preceding administrations for
surrendering this option to the holders of Government obligations.
7. We demand a graduated income tax, to the end that aggregated wealth
shall bear its just proportion of taxation; and we regard the recent
decision of the Supreme Court relative to the income tax law as a
misinterpretation of the Constitution, and an invasion of the rightful
powers of Congress over the subject of taxation.
8. We demand that postal savings banks be established by the
Government for the safe deposit of the savings of the people and to
facilitate exchange.
9. Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity,
Government should own and operate the railroads in the interests of
the people and on a non-partisan basis, to the end that all may be
accorded the same treatment in transportation, and that the tyranny
and political power now exercised by the great railroad corporations,
which result in the impairment, if not the destruction, of the
political rights and personal liberties of the citizen, may be
destroyed. Such ownership is to be accomplished gradually, in a manner
consistent with sound public policy.
10. The interest of the United States in the public highways, built
with public moneys, and the proceeds of extensive grants of land to
the Pacific railroads should never be alienated, mortgaged, or sold,
but guarded and protected for the general welfare as provided by the
laws organizing such railroads. The foreclosure of existing liens of
the United States on these roads should at once follow default in
the payment thereof by the debtor-companies; and at the foreclosure
sales of said roads the Government shall purchase the same if it
become necessary to protect its interests therein, or if they can be
purchased at a reasonable price; and the Government shall operate
said railroads as public highways for the benefit of the whole
people, and not in the interest of the few, under suitable provisions
for protection of life and property, giving to all transportation
interests equal privileges and equal rates for fares and freight.
11. We denounce the present infamous schemes for refunding these
debts, and demand that the laws now applicable thereto be executed and
administered according to their true intent and spirit.
12. The telegraph, like the post-office system, being a necessity
for the transmission of news, should be owned and operated by the
Government in the interest of the people.
13. The true policy demands that national and State legislation shall
be such as will ultimately enable every prudent and industrious
citizen to secure a home, and therefore the lands should not be
monopolized for speculative purposes. All lands now held by railroads
and other corporations in excess of their actual needs should by
lawful means be reclaimed by the Government and held for actual
settlers only, and subject to the right of every human being to
acquire a home upon the soil, and private land monopoly, as well as
alien ownership, should be prohibited.
14. We condemn the frauds by which the land grants to the Pacific
Railroad companies have, through the connivance of the Interior
Department, robbed multitudes of actual _bonâ fide_ settlers of
their homes and miners of their claims, and we demand legislation by
Congress which will enforce the exemption of mineral land from such
grants after as well as before the patent.
15. We demand that _bonâ fide_ settlers on all public lands be granted
free homes as provided in the National Homestead law, and that no
exception be made in the case of Indian reservations when opened for
settlement, and that all lands not now patented come under this demand.
We favor a system of direct legislation through the initiative and
_referendum_ under proper constitutional safeguards.
1. We demand the election of President, Vice-President, and United
States Senators by a direct vote of the people.
2. We tender to the patriotic people of Cuba our deepest sympathy in
their heroic struggle for political freedom and independence, and we
believe the time has come when the United States, the great Republic
of the world, should recognize that Cuba is and of right out to be a
free and independent State.
3. We favor home rule in the Territories and the District of Columbia,
and the early admission of Territories as States.
4. All public salaries should be made to correspond to the price of
labor and its products.
5. In times of great industrial depression, idle labor should be
employed on public works as far as practicable.
6. The arbitrary course of the courts in assuming to imprison citizens
for indirect contempt, and ruling by injunction, should be prevented
by proper legislation.
7. We favor just pensions for our disabled Union soldiers.
8. Believing that the elective franchise and an untrammelled ballot
are essential to a government of, for, and by the people, the People’s
party condemn the wholesale system of disfranchisement adopted in some
of the States as unrepublican and undemocratic, and we declare it to
be the duty of the several State Legislatures to take such action as
will secure a full, free, and fair ballot and an honest count.
9. While the foregoing propositions constitute the platform upon which
our party stands, and for the vindication of which its organization
will be maintained, we recognize that the great and pressing issue of
the present campaign upon which the present Presidential election will
turn is the financial question, and upon this great and specific issue
between the parties we cordially invite the aid and co-operation
of all organizations and citizens agreeing with us upon this vital
question.
The National Silver party held its convention at the same time and
place, with Frank G. Newlands, of Nevada, as temporary chairman, and
William P. St. John, of New York, as permanent president. No time
during the proceedings of the convention was a vote had to indicate the
number of delegates. William J. Bryan, of Nebraska, was nominated for
President, and Arthur Sewall, of Maine, for Vice-President, both by
acclamation. The following platform was adopted:
The National Silver party of America, in convention assembled, hereby
adopts the following declaration of principles:
First, the paramount issue at this time in the United States is
indisputably the money question. It is between the British gold
standard, gold bonds, and bank currency on the one side, and the
bimetallic standard, no bonds, Government currency, and an American
policy on the other.