User:Ariostos/List of United States political party platforms

This is a list detailing the political platforms of the various political parties over the years in the United States, sorted by party. In the case of parties that have contested more than ten elections on the national level, they are given a separate listing so as to ease access.

Democratic Party (1828–Present)

Listed Here.

Whig Party (1833–1860)

1844

Resolved, That, in presenting to the country the names of Henry Clay for president, and of Theodore Frelinghuysen for vice-president of the United States, this Convention is actuated by the conviction that all the great principles of the Whig party—principles inseparable from the public honor and prosperity—will be maintained and advanced by these candidates.

Resolved, That these principles may be summed as comprising, a well-regulated currency; a tariff for revenue to defray the necessary expenses of the government, and discriminating with special reference to the protection of the domestic labor of the country; the distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands; a single term for the presidency; a reform of executive usurpations;—and, generally—such an administration of the affairs of the country as shall impart to every branch of the public service the greatest practicable efficiency, controlled by a well regulated and wise economy.

Resolved, That the name of Henry Clay needs no eulogy; the history of the country since his first appearance in public life is his history; its brightest pages of prosperity and success are identified with the principles which he has upheld, as its darkest and more disastrous pages are with every material departure in our public policy from those principles.

Resolved, That in Theodore Frelinghuysen we present a man pledged alike by his revolutionary ancestry and his own public course to every measure calculated to sustain the honor and interest of the country. Inheriting the principles as well as the name of a father who, with Washington, on the fields of Trenton and of Monmouth, perilled life in the contest for liberty, and afterwards, as a senator of the United States, acted with Washington in establishing and perpetuating that liberty, Theodore Frelinghuysen, by his course as Attorney-General of the State of New Jersey for twelve years, and subsequently as a senator of the United States for several years, was always strenuous on the side of law, order, and the constitution, while as a private man, his head, his hand, and his heart have been given without stint to the cause of morals, education, philanthropy, and religion.

1848

Resolved, That the Whigs of the United States, here assembled by their Representatives, heartily ratify the nominations of General Zachary Taylor as President and Millard Fillmore as Vice-President of the United States, and pledge themselves to their support.

Resolved, That the choice of General Taylor as the Whig candidate for President we are glad to discover sympathy with a great popular sentiment throughout the nation—a sentiment which, having its origin in admiration of great military success, has been strengthened by the development, in every action and every word, of sound conservative opinions, and of true fidelity to the great example of former days, and to the principles of the Constitution as administered by its founders.

Resolved, That General Taylor, in saying that, had he voted in 1844, he would have voted the Whig ticket, gives us the assurance—and no better is needed from a consistent and truth-speaking man—that his heart was with us at the crisis of our political destiny, when Henry Clay was our candidate and when not only Whig principles were well defined and clearly asserted, but Whig measures depended on success. The heart that was with us then is with us now, and we have a soldier's word of honor, and a life of public and private virtue, as the security.

Resolved, That we look on General Taylor's administration of the Government as one conducive of Peace, Prosperity, and Union. Of Peace—because no one better knows, or has greater reason to deplore, what he has seen sadly on the field of victory, the horrors of war, and especially of a foreign and aggressive war. Of Prosperity—now more than ever needed to relieve the nation from a burden of debt, and restore industry—agricultural, manufacturing and commercial—to its accustomed and peaceful functions and influences. Of Union—because we have a candidate whose very position as a Southwestern man, reared on the banks of the great stream whose tributaries, natural and artificial, embrace the whole Union, renders the protection of the interests of the whole country his first trust, and whose various duties in past life have been rendered, not on the soil or under the flag of any State or section, but over the wide frontier, and under the broad banner of the Nation

Resolved, That standing, as the Whig Party does, on the broad and firm platform of the Constitution, braced up by all its inviolable and sacred guarantees and compromises, and cherished in the affections because protective of the interests of the people, we are proud to have, as the exponent of our opinions, one who is pledged to construe it by the wise and generous rules which Washington applied to it, and who has said, (and no Whig desires any other assurance) that he will make Washington's Administration the model of his own.

Resolved, That as Whigs and Americans, we are proud to acknowledge our gratitude for the great military services which, beginning at Palo Alto, and ending at Buena Vista, first awakened the American people to a just estimate of him who is now our Whig Candidate. In the discharge of a painful duty—for his march into the enemy's country was a reluctant one; in the command of regulars at one time and volunteers at another, and of both combined; in the decisive though punctual discipline of his camp, where all respected and beloved him; in the negotiations of terms for a dejected and desperate enemy; in the exigency of actual conflict, when the balance was perilously doubtful—we have found him the same—brave, distinguished and considerate, no heartless spectator of bloodshed, no trifler with human life or human happiness, and we do not know which to admire most, his heroism in withstanding the assaults of the enemy in the most hopeless fields of Buena Vista—mourning in generous sorrow over the graves of Ringgold, of Clay, or of Hardin—or in giving in the heat of battle, terms of merciful capitulation to a vanquished foe at Monterey, and not being ashamed to avow that he did it to spare women and children, helpless infancy, and more helpless age, against whom no American soldier ever wars. Such a military man, whose triumphs are neither remote nor doubtful, whose virtues these trials have tested, we are proud to make our Candidate.

Resolved, That in support of this nomination we ask our Whig friends throughout the nation to unite, to co-operate zealously, resolutely, with earnestness in behalf of our candidate, whom calumny cannot reach, and with respectful demeanor to our adversaries, whose Candidates have yet to prove their claims on the gratitude of the nation.

1852

The Whigs of the United States, in Convention assembled, firmly adhering to the great conservative principles by which they are controlled and governed, and now as ever relying upon the intelligence of the American people, with an abiding confidence in their capacity for self-government, and their devotion to the Constitution and the Union, do proclaim the following as the political sentiments and determination for the establishment and maintenance of which their national organization as a party was effected:

First: The Government of the United States is of a limited character, and it is confined to the exercise of powers expressly granted by the Constitution, and such as may be necessary and proper for carrying the granted powers into full execution, and that all powers not granted or necessarily implied are expressly reserved to the States respectively and to the people.

Second: The State Governments should be held secure in their reserved rights, and the General Government sustained on its constitutional powers, and that the Union should be revered and watched over as the palladium of our liberties.

Third: That while struggling freedom everywhere enlists the warmest sympathy of the Whig party, we still adhere to the doctrines of the Father of his Country, as announced in his Farewell Address, of keeping ourselves free from all entangling alliances with foreign countries, and of never quitting our own to stand upon foreign ground, that our mission as a republic is not to propagate our opinions, or impost on other countries our form of government by artifice or force; but to teach, by example, and show by our success, moderation and justice, the blessings of self-government, and the advantages of free institutions.

Fourth: That, as the people make and control the Government, they should obey its constitution, laws and treaties, as they would retain their self-respect, and the respect which they claim and will enforce from foreign powers.

Fifth: Revenue sufficient for the expenses of an economical administration of the Government in time of peace ought to be derived from a duty on imports, and not just from direct taxation; and in laying such duties, sound policy requires a just discrimination, whereby suitable encouragement may be afforded to American industry, equally to all classes, and to all parts of the country.

Sixth: The Constitution vests in Congress the power to open and repair harbors, and remove obstructions from navigable rivers, whenever such improvements are necessary for the common defence, and for the protection and facility of commerce with foreign nations, or among the States, said improvements being, in every instance, national and general in character.

Seventh: The Federal and State Governments are parts of one system, and alike necessary for the common prosperity, peace and security, and ought to be regarded alike with a cordial, habitual and immovable attachment. Respect for the authority of each and acquiescence in the just constitutional measures of each, are duties required by the plainest considerations of national, state, and individual welfare.

Eighth: That the series of acts of the Thirty-first Congress, - the act known as the Fugitive Slave Law, included - are received and acquiesced in by the Whig Party of the United States as a settlement in principle and substance, of the dangerous and exciting question which they embrace; and, so far as they are concerned, we will maintain them, and insist upon their strict enforcement, until time and experience shall demonstrate the necessity of further legislation to guard against the evasion of the law on one hand, and the abuse of their powers on the other, not impairing their present efficiency; and we deprecate all further agitation of the question thus settled, as dangerous to our peacel and will discountenance all efforts to continue or renew such agitation whenever, wherever, or however the attempt may be made; and we will maintain this system as essential to the nationality of the Whig party and of the Union.

1856

Resolved, That the Whigs of the United States are assembled here by reverence for the Constitution, and unalterable attachment to the National Union, and a fixed determination to do all in their power to preserve it for themselves and posterity. They have no new principles to announce - no new platform to establish, but are content broadly to rest where their fathers have rested upon the Constitution of the United States, wishing no safer guide, no higher law.

Resolved, That we regard with the deepest anxiety the present disordered condition of our national affairs. a portion of the country being ravaged by civil war and large sections of our population embittered by mutual recriminations, and we distinctly trace these calamities to the culpable neglect of duty by the present National Administration.

Resolved, That the Government of these United States was formed by the conjunction in political unity of widespread geographical sections, materially differing not only in climate and products, but in their social and domestic institutions, and that any cause shall permanently array these sections in political hostility and organized parties, founded only on geographical distinctions must inevitably prove fatal to the continuance of the National Union.

Resolved, That the Whigs of the United States have declared as a fundamental article of their political faith, the absolute necessity for avoiding geographical parties; that the danger so clearly discerned by the "Father of his Country," founded on geographical distinction, has now become fearfully apparent in the agitation convulsing the nation, which must be arrested at once if we would preserve our Constitutional Union from dismemberment, and the name of America from being blotted out from the family of civilized nations.

Resolved, That all who revere the Constitution and Union, must look with alarm at the parties in the field in the present Presidential campaign - one claiming only to represent sixteen Northern States, and the other appealing to the passions and prejudices of the Southern States - that the success of either faction must add fuel to the flame which now threatens to wrap our dearest interest in a common ruin.

Resolved, That the only remedy for an evil so appalling is to support the candidate pledged to neither geographical section nor arrayed in political antagonism, but holding both in just and equal regard; that we congratulate the friends of the Union that such a candidate exists in Millard Fillmore.

Resolved, That, without adopting or referring to the peculiar principles of the party which has already selected Millard Fillmore as their candidate, we look to him as a well-tried and faithful friend of the Constitution and the Union, eminent alike for his wisdom and firmness, for his justice and moderation in foreign relations, for his calm and pacific temperament, well becoming a great and enlightened Government. For his devotion to the Constitution in its true spirit, of being representative to neither of the two sectional parties now struggling for political supremacy.

Resolved, That in the present exigency of political affairs, we are not called upon to discuss subordinate questions of administration in exercising the Constitutional powers of government. It is enough to know that civil war is raging, and the Union is in peril; and proclaim a conviction that the restoration of the Fillmore Presidency will furnish the best if not the only means of restoring peace.

American Party (1845–1860)

1856

I. An humble acknowledgement to the Supreme Being who rules one universe, for His protecting care vouchsafed to our fathers in their revolutionary struggle, and hitherto manifested to us, their descendents, in the preservation of the liberties, the independence and the union of these states.

II. The perpetuation of the Federal Union, as the palladium of our civil and religious liberties, and the only sure bulwark of American independence.

III. Americans must rule America; and to this end, native-born citizens should be selected for all state, federal, or municipal offices of government employment, in preference to naturalized citizens - nevertheless.

IV. Persons born of American parents residing temporarily abroad, shall be entitled to all the rights of native-born citizens; but

V. No person should be selected for political station (whether of native or foreign birth), who recognizes any alliance or obligation of any description to any foreign prince, potentate or power, who refuses to recognize the federal and state constitutions (each within its own sphere), as paramount to all other laws, as rules of particular [political] action.

VI. The unequalled recognition and maintenance of the reserved rights of the several states, and the cultivation of harmony and fraternal goodwill between the citizens of the several states, and to this end, non-interference by Congress with questions appertaining solely to individual states, and non-intervention by each state with the affairs of any other state.

VII. The recognition of the right of the native-born and naturalized citizens of the United States, permanently residing in any territory thereof, to frame their constitutions and laws, and to regulate domestic and social affairs in their own mode, subject only to the provisions of the federal Constitution, with the right of admission into the Union whenever they have the requisite population for one representative in Congress. Provided, always, That none but those who are citizens of the United States, under the Constitution and laws thereof, and who have a fixed residence in any such territory, are to participate in the formation of the constitution, or in the enactment of laws for said territory or state.

VIII. An enforcement of the principles that no state or territory can admit other than native-born citizens to the right of suffrage, or of holding political office unless such persons shall have been naturalized according to the laws of the United States.

IX. A change in the laws of naturalization, making a continued residence of twenty-one years, of all not heretofore provided for, an indispensable requisite for citizenship hereafter, and excluding all paupers or persons convicted of crime from landing upon our shores; but no interference with the vested rights of foreigners.

X. Opposition to any union between Church and State; no interference with religious faith or worship, and no test oathes for office, except those indicated in the 5th section of this platform.

XI. Free and thorough investigation into any and all alleged abuses of public functionaries, and a strict economy in public expenditures.

XII. The maintenance and enforcement of all laws until said laws shall be repealed, or shall be declared null and void by competent judicial authority.

XIII. Opposition to the reckless and unwise policy of the present administration in the general management of our national affairs, and more especially as shown in removing "Americans" (by designation) and conservatives in principle, from office, and placing foreigners and ultraists in their places, as shown in a truckling subserviency to the stronger, and an insolent and cowardly bravado toward the weaker powers; as shown in reopening sectional agitation, by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; as shown in granting to unnaturalized foreigners the right of suffrage in Kansas and Nebraska, as shown in its vacillating course on the Kansas and Nebraska question; as shown in the removal of Judge Bronson from the collectorship of New York upon false and untenable grounds; as shown in the corruptions which pervade some of the departments of the government; as shown in disgracing meritorious naval officers through prejudice or caprice; as shown in the blundering mismanagement of our foreign relations.

XIV. Therefore, to remedy our existing evils, and prevent the disastrous consequences otherwise resulting therefrom, we would build up the "American Party" upon the principles hereinbefore stated eschewing all sectional questions, and uniting upon those purely national, and admitting into said party all American citizens (referred to in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th sections) who openly avow the principles and opinions heretofore expressed, and who will subscribe their names to this platform. - Provided nevertheless, that a majority of those members present at any meeting of a local council where an applicant applies for membership in the American party, may, for any reason by them deemed sufficient, deny admission to such applicant.

XV. A free and open discussion of all political principles embraced in our platform.

Free Soil Party (1848–1854)

1848

Whereas, We have assembled in Convention, as a union of Freemen, for the sake of Freedom, forgetting all past political differences in a common resolve to maintain the rights of Free Labor against the aggression of the Slave Power, and to secure Free Soil for Free People:

And whereas, the political Conventions recently assembled at Baltimore and Philadelphia, the one stifling the voice of a great constituency entitled to be heard in its deliberations, and the other abandoning its distinctive principles for mere availability, have dissolved the national party organizations heretofore existing, by nominating for the Chief Magistracy of the United States, under Slaveholding dictation, candidates, neither of whom can be supported by the opponents of Slavery-extension, without a sacrifice of consistency, duty, and self-respect.

And whereas, These nominations, so made, furnish the occasion and demonstrate the necessity of the union of the People under the banners of Free Democracy, in a solemn and formal declaration of their independence of the Slave Power, and of their fixed determination to rescue the Federal Government from its control:

Resolved, therefore, that we, the people here assembled, remembering the example of our fathers in the days of the first Declaration of Independence, putting our trust in God for the triumph of our cause, and invoking the guidance in our endeavors to advance it, do now plant ourselves upon the NATIONAL PLATFORM OF FREEDOM, in opposition to the Sectional Platform of Slavery.

Resolved, That Slavery in the several States of this Union which recognize its existence, depends upon the State laws alone, which cannot be repealed or modified by the Federal Government, and for which laws that Government is not responsible. We therefore propose no interference by Congress with Slavery within the limits of any State.

Resolved, That the PROVISO of Jefferson, to prohibit the existence of Slavery, after 1800 in all the Territories of the United States, Southern and Northern; the votes of six States, sixteen delegates, in the Congress of 1784, for the Proviso, to three States and seven delegates against it; the actual exclusion of Slavery from the Northwestern Territory by the ORDINANCE OF 1787, unanimously adopted by the States in Congress, and the entire history of the period, clearly show it was the settled policy of the nation, not to extend, nationalize, or encourage, but to limit, localize, and discourage, Slavery; and to this policy which should never have been departed from, the Government ought to return.

Resolved, That our fathers ordained the Constitution of the United States, in order, among other great national objects, to establish justice, promote general welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty; but expressly denied to the Federal Government, which they created, all constitutional power to deprive any person of life, liberty, property; without legal due process.

Resolved, That in the judgement of this Convention, Congress has no more power to make a SLAVE than to make a KING; no more power to institute or establish SLAVERY, than to institute or establish a MONARCHY. No such power can be found among those specifically conferred by the Constitution, or derived by just implication from them.

Resolved, THAT IT IS THE DUTY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO RELIEVE ITSELF FROM ALL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE EXISTENCE OR CONTINUANCE OF SLAVERY WHEREVER THAT GOVERNMENT POSSESS CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS TO LEGISLATE ON THAT SUBJECT, AND IS THUS RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS EXISTENCE.

Resolved, That the true, and, in the judgement of this Convention, the only safe means of preventing the extension of Slavery into territory now free, is to prohibit its existence in all such territory by an act of Congress.

Resolved, That we accept the issue which the Slave Power has forced upon us, and to their demand for more Slave States and more Slave Territory, our calm but final answer is: No more Slave States and no more Slave Territory. Let the soil of our extensive domains be kept free, for the hardy pioneers of our own land, and the oppressed and banished if other lands seeking homes of comfort and fields of enterprise in the New World.

Resolved, That the bill lately reported by the Committee of Eight in the Senate of the United States, was no compromise, but an absolute surrender of the rights of the non-slaveholders of the States; and while we rejoice to know that a measure which, while opening the door for the introduction of Slavery into Territories now free, would also have opened the door to litigation and strife among the future inhabitants thereof, to the ruin of their peace and prosperity, was defeated in the House of Representatives, - its passage, in hot haste, by a majority, embracing several Senators who voted in open violation of the known will of their constituents, should warn the People to see to it, that their representatives be not suffered to betray them. There must be no more compromise with Slavery: if made, they must be repealed.

Resolved, That we demand Freedom and established institutions for our brethren in Oregon, now exposed to hardships, peril, and massacre, by the reckless hostility of the Slave Power to the establishment of Free Government for Free Territories - and not only for them, but for our new brethren in California and New Mexico.

And whereas, It is due not only to this occasion, but to the whole people of the United States, that we should also declare ourselves on certain other questions of national policy, therefore,

Resolved, That we demand CHEAP POSTAGE for the people, a retrenchment of the expenses and patronage of the Federal Government; the abolition of all unnecessary offices and salaries; and the election by the People of all civil officers in the service of the Government, so far as the same may be practicable.

Resolved, That river and harbor improvements, when demanded by the safety and convenience of commerce with foreign nations, or among the several States, are objects of national concern; and that it is the duty of Congress, in the exercise of its constitutional powers, to provide therefor.

Resolved, That the FREE GRANT TO ACTUAL SETTLERS, in consideration of the expenses they incur in making actual settlements in the wilderness, which are usually fully equal to their actual cost, and of the public benefits resulting therefrom, of reasonable portions of the public lands, under suitable limitations, is a wise and just measure of public policy, which will promote, in various ways, the interest of all the States of this Union; and we therefore recommend it to the favorable consideration of the American People.

Resolved, That the obligations of honor and patriotism require the earlier practical payment of the national debt, and we are therefore in favor of such tariff of duties as will raise revenue adequate to defray the necessary expenses of the Federal Government, and to pay annual installments of our debt and the interest thereon.

Resolved, That we inscribe on our banner, "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men," and under it we will fight on, and fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions.

1852

Having assembled in National Convention as the delegates of the Free Democracy of the United States, united by a common resolve to maintain right against wrongs, and freedom against slavery; confiding in the intelligence, patriotism, and discriminating justice of the American people, putting our trust in God for the triumph for our cause, and invoking is guidance in our endeavors to advance it, we now submit to the candid judgement of all men in the following declaration of principles and measures:

I. That Governments, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, are instituted among men to secure to all, those inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, with which they are endowed by their Creator, and of which none can be deprived by valid legislation, except for crime.

II. That the true mission of American Democracy is to maintain the liberties of the people the sovereignty of the States, and the perpetuity of the Union, by the impartial application to public affairs, without sectional discriminations, of the fundamental principles of equal rights, strict justice, and economical administration.

III. That the Federal Government is one of limited powers, derived solely from the Constitution, and the grants of power therein ought to be strictly construed by all the departments and agents of the Government, and it is inexpedient and dangerous to exercise doubtful constitutional power.

IV. That the Constitution of the United States, ordained to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, and secure the blessings of liberty, expressly denies to the General Government all power to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; and therefore the Government, having no more power to make a slave than to make a king, and no more power to establish slavery than to establish monarchy, should at once proceed to relieve itself from all responsibility for the existence of slavery wherever it possesses constitutional power to legislate for its extinction.

V. That, to the persevering and importunate demands of the slave power for more slave States, new slave Territories, and the nationalization of slavery, our distinct and final answer is - no more slave States, no slave Territory, no nationalized slavery, and no national legislation for the extradition of slaves.

VI. That slavery is a sin against God and a crime against man, which no human enactment nor usage can make right; and that Christianity, humanity, and patriotism, alike demand its abolition.

VII. That the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is repugnant to the Constitution, to the principles of the common law, to the spirit of Christianity, and to the sentiments of the civilized world. We therefore deny its binding force upon the American People, and demand its immediate and total repeal.

VIII. That the doctrine that any human law is a finality, and not subject to modification or repeal, is not in accordance with the creed of the founders of our Government, and is dangerous to the liberties of the people.

IX. That the acts of Congress known as the Compromise measures of 1850, by making the admission of a sovereign State contingent upon the adoption of other measures demanded by the special interest of slavery; by their omission to guarantee freedom in free Territories; by their attempt to impose unconstitutional limitations on the power of Congress and the people to admit new States; by their provisions for the assumption of five millions of the State debt of Texas, and for the payment of five millions more and the cession of a large territory to the same State under menace, as an inducement to the relinquishment of a groundless claim, and by their invasion of the sovereignty of the States and liberties of the people through the enactment of an unjust, oppressive, and unconstitutional Fugitive Slave Law, are proved to be inconsistent with all the principles and maxims of Democracy, and wholly inadequate to the settlement of the questions of which they are claimed to be an adjustment.

X. That no permanent settlement of the slavery question can be look for, except in the practical recognition of the truth, that slavery is sectional, and freedom national; by the total separation of the General Government from slavery, and the exercise of its legitimate and constitutional influence on the side of freedom; and by leaving to the States the whole subject of slavery and extradition of fugitives from service.

XI. That all men have a natural right to a portion of the soil; and that, as the use of the soil is indispensable to life, the right of all men to the soil is as sacred as their right to life itself.

XII. That the public lands of the United States belong to the people, and should not be sold to individuals nor granted to corporations, but should be held as a sacred trust for the benefit of the people, and should be granted in limited quantities, free of cost, to landless settlers.

XIII. That a due regard for the Federal Constitution, and sound administrative policy, demand that the funds of the General Government be kept separate from banking institutions; that inland and ocean postage should be reduced to the lowest possible point; that no more revenue should be raised than is required to defray the strictly necessary expenses of the public service, and to pay off the public debt; and that the power and patronage of the Government should be diminished by the abolition of all unnecessary offices, salaries, and privileges, and by the election by the people of all civil officers in the service of the United States, so far as may be consistent with the prompt and efficient transaction of the public business.

XIV. That river and harbor improvements, when necessary to the safety and convenience of commerce with foreign nations or among the several States, are objects of national concern, and it is the duty of Congress in the exercise of its constitutional powers to provide for the same.

XV. That emigrants and exiles from the Old World should find a cordial welcome to homes of comfort and fields of enterprise in the New; and every attempt to abridge their privilege of becoming citizens and owners of the soil among us ought to be resisted with inflexible determination.

XVI. That every nation has a clear right to alter or change its own Government, and to administer its own concerns in such a manner as may best secure the rights and promote the happiness of its people; and foreign interference with that right is a dangerous violation of the law of nations, against which all independent Governments should protest, and endeavor by all proper means to prevent; and especially is it the duty of the American Government, representing the chief republic of the world, to protest against and by all proper means to prevent intervention of Kings and Emperors against nations seeking to establish for themselves republican or constitutional Governments.

XVII. That the independence of Hayti ought to be recognized by our Government, and our commercial relations with it placed on the footing of the most favored nations.

XVIII. That as, by the Constitution, "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States," the practice of imprisoning colored seamen of other States, while the vessels to which they belong lie in port, and refusing to exercise the right to bring such cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, to test the legality of such proceedings, is a flagrant violation of the Constitution, and an invasion of the rights of citizens of other States, utterly inconsistent with the professions made by the slaveholders, that they wish the provisions of the Constitution faithfully observed by every State in the Union.

XIX. That we recommend the introduction into all treaties, hereafter to be negotiated between the United States and foreign nations, of some provision for the amicable settlement of difficulties by a resort to decisive arbitration.

XX. That the Free Democratic party is not organized to aid either the Whig or Democratic wing of the great Slave Compromise party of the nation, but to defeat them both; and that repudiating and renouncing both, as hopelessly corrupt, and utterly unworthy of confidence, the purpose of the Free Democracy is to take possession of the Federal Government, and administer it for the better protection of the rights and interests of the whole people.

XXI. That we inscribe on our banner, Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men, and under it will fight on and fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions.

XXII. That upon this Platform the Convention presents to the American People, as a candidate for the office of President of the United States, JOHN P. HALE, of New Hampshire, and as a candidate for the office of Vice President of the United States, George W. Julian, of Indiana, and earnestly commends them to the support of all freemen and parties.

Republican Party (1854–Present)

Listed Here.

Constitutional Union Party (1859–1860)

1860

Whereas, Experience has demonstrated that Platforms adopted by the partisan Conventions of the country have had the effect to mislead and deceive the people, and at the same time to widen the political divisions of the country, by the creation and encouragement of geographical and sectional parties; therefore

Resolved, that it is both the part of patriotism and of duty to recognize no political principle other than THE CONSTITUTION OF THE COUNTRY, THE UNION OF THE STATES, AND THE ENFORCEMENT OF THE LAWS, and that, as representatives of the Constitutional Union men of the country, in National Convention assembled, we hereby pledge ourselves to maintain, protect, and defend, separately and unitedly, these great principles of public liberty and national safety, against all enemies, at home and abroad; believing that thereby peace may once more be restored to the country; the rights of the People and of the States re-established, and the Government again placed in that condition of justice, fraternity and equality, which, under the example and Constitution of our fathers, has solemnly bound every citizen of the United States to maintain a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Prohibition Party (1869–Present)

Listed Here.

Liberal Republican Party (1870–1872)

1872

We, the Liberal Republicans of the United States in National Convention assembled at Cincinnati, proclaim the following principles as essential to just government.

First: We recognize the equality of all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of Government in its dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all of whatever nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political.

Second: We pledge ourselves to maintain the union of these States, emancipation, and enfranchisement, and to oppose any re-opening of the questions settled by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

Third: We demand the immediate and absolute removal of all disabilities imposed on account of the Rebellion, which was finally subdued seven years ago, believing that universal amnesty will result in complete pacification in all sections of the country.

Fourth: Local self-government, with impartial suffrage, will guard the rights of all citizens more securely than any centralized power. The public welfare requires the supremacy of the civil over the military authority, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus. We demand for the individual the largest liberty consistent with public order; for the State, self-government, and for the nation a return to the methods of peace and the constitutional limitations of power.

Fifth: The Civil Service of the Government has become a mere instrument of partisan tyranny and personal ambition and an object of selfish greed. It is a scandal and reproach upon free institutions and breeds a demoralization dangerous to the perpetuity of republican government. We therefore regard such thorough reforms of the Civil Service as one of the most pressing necessities of the hour; that honesty, capacity, and fidelity constitute the only valid claim to public employment; that the offices of the Government cease to be a matter of and patronage, and that public station become again a post of honor. To this end it is imperatively required that no President shall be a candidate for re-election.

Sixth: We demand a system of Federal taxation which shall not unnecessarily interfere with the industry of the people, and which shall provide the means necessary to pay the expenses of the Government economically administered, the pensions, the interest on the public debt, and a moderate reduction annually of the principal thereof; and, recognizing that there are in our midst honest but irreconcilable differences of opinion with regard to the respective systems of Protection and Free Trade, we remit the discussion of the subject to the people in their Congress Districts, and to the decision of Congress thereon, wholly free of Executive interference or dictation.

Seventh: The public credit must be sacredly maintained, and we denounce repudiation in every form and guise.

Eighth: A speedy return to specie payment is demanded alike by the highest considerations of commercial morality and honest government.

Ninth: We remember with gratitude the heroism and sacrifices of the soldiers and sailors of the Republic, and no act of ours shall ever detract from their justly-earned fame or the full reward of their patriotism.

Tenth: We are opposed to all further grants of lands to railroads or other corporations. The public domain should be held sacred to actual settlers.

Eleventh: We hold that it is the duty of the Government, in its intercourse with foreign nations to cultivate the friendship of peace, by treating with all on fair and equal terms, regarding it alike dishonorable either to demand what is not right, or to submit to what is wrong.

Twelfth: For the promotion and success of these vital principles and the support of the candidates nominated by this Convention, we invite and cordially welcome the co-operation of all patriotic citizens, without regard to previous affiliations.

Greenback Party (1874–1889)

1876

The Independent party is called into existence by the necessities of the people whose industries are prostrated, whose labor is deprived of its just reward by a ruinous policy which the Republican and Democratic parties refuse to change, and in view of the failure of these parties to furnish relief to the depressed industries of the country, thereby disappointing just hopes and expectations of the suffering people, we declare our principles and invite all independent and patriotic men to join our ranks in this movement for financial reform and industrial emancipation:

First. We demand the immediate and unconditional repeal of the Specie-Resumption act of January 14, 1875, and the rescue of our industries from ruin and disaster resulting from its enforcement; and we call upon all patriotic men to organize in every Congressional district of the country with a view of electing representatives to Congress who will carry out the wishes of the people in this regard, and stop the present suicidal and destructive policy of contraction.

Second. We believe that a United States note, issued directly by the Government and convertible on demand into United States obligations bearing a rate of interest not exceeding one cent a day on each $100, and exchangeable for United States notes at par, will afford the best circulating medium ever devised; such United States notes should be full legal-tender for all purposes except for payment of such obligations as are by existing contracts expressly made payable in coin; and we hold that it is the duty of the Government to provide such circulating medium, and insist in the language of Thomas Jefferson, that "bank paper must be suppressed and circulation restored to the nation, to whom it belongs."

Third. It is the paramount duty of the Government in all its legislation to keep in view the full development of all legitimate business, - agricultural, mining, manufacturing and commercial.

Fourth. We most earnestly protest against any further issue of gold bonds for sale in foreign markets, by which we would be made for a long period "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to foreigners, especially as the American people would gladly and promptly take at par all bonds the Government may need to sell, provided they are made payable at the option of the holder, and bearing interest at 3.65 per cent per annum, or even a lower rate.

Fifth. We further protest against the sale of Government bonds for the purpose of purchasing silver to be used as a substitute for our more convenient and less fluctuating fractional currency, which, although well calculated to enrich owners of silver mines, yet in operation it will still further oppress in taxation an already overburdened people.

1880

Civil government should guarantee the divine right of every laborer to the results of his toil, thus enabling the producers of wealth to provide themselves with the mans for physical comfort, and the facilities for mental, social and moral culture; and we condemn as unworthy of our civilization barbarism which imposes upon the wealth-producers a state of perpetual drudgery as the price of bare animal existence. Notwithstanding the enormous increase of productive power, and the universal introduction of labor-saving machinery, and the discovery of new agents for the increase of wealth, the task of the laborer is scarcely lightened, the hours of toil are but little shortened; and few producers are lifted from poverty into comfort and pecuniary independence. The associated monopolies, the international syndicate and other income classes demand dear money and cheap labor: a "strong government," and hence a weak people.

Corporate control of the volume of money has been the means of dividing society into hostile classes, of the unjust distribution of the products of labor, and of building up monopolies of associated capital endowed with power to confiscate private property. It has kept money scare, and scarcity of money enforces debt, trade and public and corporate loans. Debt engenders usury, and usury ends in the bankruptcy of the borrower. Other results are deranged markets, uncertainty in manufacturing enterprise and agriculture, precarious and intermittent employment of laborers, industrial war, increasing pauperism and crime, and the consequent intimidation and disfranchisement of the producer and a rapid declension into corporate feudalism; therefore, we declare:

First - That the right to make and issue money is a sovereign power to be maintained by the people for the common benefit. The delegation of this right to corporations is a surrender of the central attribute of sovereignty, (void) of constitutional sanction, conferring upon a subordinate and irresponsible power absolute dominion over industry and commerce. All money, whether metallic or paper, should be issued and its volume controlled by the Government, and not by or through banking corporations, and when so issued should be full legal-tender for all debts, public and private.

Second - That the bonds of the United States should not be refunded, but paid as rapidly as practicable, according to contract. To enable the Government to meet these obligations, legal-tender currency should be substituted for the notes of the National banks, the National banking system abolished, and the unlimited coinage of silver, as well as gold, established by law.

Third - That labor should be so protected by National and State authority as to equalize the burdens and insure a just distribution of its results; the eight-hour law of Congress should be enforced, the sanitary condition of industrial establishments placed under rigid control; the competition of contract labor abolished, a bureau of labor statistics established, factories, mines, and workshops inspected, the employment of children under fourteen years of age forbidden, and wages paid in cash.

Fourth - Slavery being simply cheap labor, and cheap labor being simple slavery, the importation and presence of Chinese serfs necessarily tends to brutalize and degrade American labor, therefore immediate steps should be taken to abrogate the Burlingame Treaty.

Fifth - Railroad land grants forfeited by reason of non-fulfillment of contract should be immediately reclaimed by the Government, and henceforth the public domain reserved exclusively as homes for actual settlers.

Sixth - It is the duty of Congress to regulate inter-State commerce. All lines of communication and transportation should be brought under such legislative control as shall secure moderate, fair and uniform rates for passenger and freight traffic.

Seventh - We denounce as destructive to prosperity and dangerous to liberty, the action of the old parties in fostering and sustaining gigantic land, railroad, and money corporations and monopolies, invested with, and exercising powers belonging to the Government, and yet not responsible to it for the manner of their exercise.

Eighth - That the Constitution, in giving Congress the power to borrow money, to declare war, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, never intended that the men who loaned their money for an interest consideration should be preferred to the soldier and sailor who perilled their lives and shed their blood on land and sea in defense of their country, and we condemn the cruel class legislation of the Republican party, which, while professing great gratitude to the soldier, has most unjustly discriminated against him in favor of the bondholder.

Ninth - All property should bear its just proportion of taxation, and we demand a graduated income tax.

Tenth - We denounce as most dangerous the efforts everywhere manifested to restrict the right of suffrage.

Eleventh - We are opposed to an increase of the standing army in times of peace, and the insidious scheme to establish an enormous military power under the guise of militia laws.

Twelfth - We demand absolute democratic rule for the government of Congress, placing all representatives of the people upon an equal footing, and taking away from committees a veto power greater than that of the President.

Thirteenth - We demand a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, instead of a government of the bondholder, by the bondholder, and for the bondholder; and we denounce every attempt to stir up sectional strife as an effort to conceal monstrous crimes against the people.

Fourteenth - In the furtherance of these ends we ask the co-operation of all fair-minded people. We have no quarrel with individuals, wage no war upon classes, but only against vicious institutions. We are not content to endure further discipline from our present actual rulers, who, having dominion over money, over transportation, over land and labor, and largely over the press and machinery of Government, wield unwarrantable power over our institutions, and over our life and property.

Resolved - That every citizen of due age, sound mind, and not a felon, be fully enfranchised, and that this resolution be referred to the States, with recommendation for their favorable consideration.

1884

Eight years ago our young party met in this city for the first time, and proclaimed to the world its immortal principles, and placed before the American people as a presidential candidate that great philanthropist and spotless statesmen, Peter Cooper. Since that convention our party has organized all over the Union, and through discussion and agitation has been educating the people to a sense of their rights and duties to themselves and their country. These labors have accomplished wonders. We now have a great, harmonious party, and thousands who believe in our principles in the ranks of other parties.

"We point with pride to our history." We forced the remonetization of the silver dollar; prevented the refunding of the public debt into long-time bonds; secured the payment of the bonds, until the "best banking system the world ever saw" for robbing the producer now totters because of its contracting foundation; we have stopped the wholesale destruction of the greenback currency, and secured a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States establishing forever the right of the people to issue their own money.

Notwithstanding all this, never in our history have the banks, land-grant railroads, and other monopolies, been more insolent in their demands for further privileges - still more class legislation. In this emergency the dominant parties are arrayed against the people, and are the abject tools of the corporate monopolies.

In the last Congress they repealed over $12,000,000 of annual taxes for the banks, throwing the burden upon the people to pay or pay interest thereon.

Both old parties in the present Congress vie with each other in their efforts to further repeal taxes in order to stop the payment of the public debt, and save the banks whose charters they have renewed for twenty years. Notwithstanding the distress of business, the shrinkage of wages and panic, they persist in locking up, on various pretexts, $400,000,000 of money, every dollar of which the people pay interest upon, and need, and most of which should be promptly applied to pay bonds now payable.

The old parties are united - as they cannot agree what taxes to repeal - in efforts to squander the income of the Government upon every pretext rather than pay the debt.

A bill has already passed the United States Senate making the banks a present of over $50,000,000 more of the people's money in order to enable them to levy a still greater burden of interest-taxes.

A joint effort is being made by the old party leaders to overthrow the sovereign constitutional power of the people to control their own financial affairs and issue their own money, in order to forever enslave the masses to bankers and other business. The House of Representatives has passed bills reclaiming nearly 100,000,000 acres of lands granted to and forfeited by railroad companies. These bills have gone to the Senate, a body composed largely of aristocratic millionaires, who, according to their own party papers, generally purchased their elections in order to protect great monopolies which they represent. This body has thus far defied the people and the House, and refused to act upon these bills in the interest of the people.

Therefore, we, the National party of the United States, in national convention assembled, this 29th day of May A.D. 1884, declare:

1. That we hold the late decision of the Supreme Court on the legal-tender question to be a full vindication of the theory which our party has always advocated on the right and authority of Congress over the issue of legal-tender notes, and we hereby pledge ourselves to uphold said decision, and to defend the Constitution against alterations or amendments intended to deprive the people of any rights or privileges conferred by that instrument. We demand the issue of such money in sufficient quantities to supply the actual demand of trade and commerce, in accordance with the increase of population and the development of our industries. We demand the substitution of greenbacks for national bank notes and prompt payment of the public debt. We want that money which saved our country in time of war and which has given it prosperity and happiness in peace. We condemn the retirement of the fractional currency and the small denominations of greenbacks, and demand their restoration. We demand the issue of the hoards of money now locked up in the United States Treasury, by applying them to the payment of the public debt now due.

2. We denounce, as dangerous to our republican institution, those methods and policies of the Democratic and Republican parties which have sanctioned or permitted the establishment of land, railroad, money and other gigantic corporate monopolies; and we demand such government action as may be necessary to take from such monopolies the powers they have so corruptly and unjustly usurped, and restore them to the people, to whom they belong.

3. The public lands, being the natural inheritance of the people, we denounce that policy which has granted to corporations vast tracts of land, and we demand that immediate and vigorous measures be taken to reclaim from such corporations, for the people's use and benefit, all such land grants as have been forfeited by reason of non-fulfillment of contract, or that may have been wrongfully acquired by corrupt legislation, and that such reclaimed lands and other public domain be henceforth held as a sacred trust, to be granted only to actual settlers in limited quantities; and we also demand that the alien ownership of land, individual or corporate, shall be prohibited.

4. We demand Congressional regulation of inter-State commerce. We denounce "pooling," stock watering and discrimination in rates and charges, and demand that Congress shall correct these abuses, even, if necessary, by the construction of national railroads. We also demand the establishment of a government postal telegraph system.

5. All private property, all forms of money and obligations to pay money, should bear their just proportion of the public taxes. We demand a graduated income tax.

6. We demand the amelioration of the condition of labor by enforcing the sanitary laws in industrial establishments, by the abolition of the convict labor system, by a rigid inspection of mines and factories, by a reduction of the hours of labor in industrial establishments, by fostering educational institutions, and by abolishing child labor.

7. We condemn all importations of contract labor, made with a view of reducing to starvation wages the workingmen of this country, and demand laws for its prevention.

8. We insist upon a constitution amendment reducing the terms of United States Senators.

9. We demand such rules for the government of Congress as shall place all Representatives of the people upon an equal footing, and take away committees a veto power greater than that of the President.

10. The question as to the amount of duties to be levied upon various articles of import has been agitated and quarreled over and has divided communities for nearly a hundred years. It is not now and never will be settled unless by the abolition of indirect taxation. It is a convenient issue - always raised when the people are excited over abuses in their midst. While we favor a wise revision of tariff laws, with a view to raising revenue from luxuries rather than necessaries, we insist that as an economic question its importance is insignificant as compared with financial issues; for whereas we have suffered our worst panics under low and also under high tariff, we have never suffered from a panic nor seen our factories and workshops closed while the volume of money in circulation was adequate to the needs of commerce. Give our farmers and manufacturers money as cheap as you now give it to bankers, and they can pay high wages to labor, and compete with all the world.

11. For the purpose of testing the sense of the people upon the subject, we are in favor of submitting to a vote of the people an amendment to the Constitution in favor of suffrage regardless of sex, and also on the subject of the liquor traffic.

12. All disabled soldiers of the late war should be equitably pensioned, and we denounce the policy of keeping a small army of office-holders whose only business is to prevent, on technical grounds, deserving soldiers from obtaining justice from the government they helped to save.

13. As our name indicates, we are a National party, knowing no East, no West, no North, no South. Having no sectional prejudices, we can properly place in nomination for the high offices of state as candidates, men from any section of the Union.

14. We appeal to all people who believe in our principles to aid us by voice, pen and votes.

American Party (1880–1888)

1888

Believing that the time has arrived when a due regard for the present and future prosperity of our country makes it imperative that the people of the United States of America should take full and entire control of their government, to the exclusion of revolutionary and incendiary foreigners, now seeking our shores from every quarter of the glove, and recognizing that the first and most important duty of an American citizen is to maintain the Government in all attainable purity and strength, we make the following declaration of principles:

Resolved, That all law-abiding citizens of the United States of America, whether native or foreign born, are political equals (except provided by the Constitution), and all are entitled to and should receive the full protection of the laws.

Whereas, There are seventeen states in this Union wherein persons are allowed to vote at all elections without being citizens of the United States; and

Whereas, Such a system tends to place the management of the Government in the hands of those who owe no allegiance to our political institutions' therefore,

Resolved, That the Constitution of the United States should be so amended as to prohibit the Federal and State governments from conferring upon any person the right to vote unless such person be a citizen of the United States.

Resolved, That we are in favor of fostering and encouraging American industries of every class and kind, and declare that the assumed issue "Protection" vs. "Free Trade" is fraud and a snare. The best "protection" is that which protects the labor and life blood of the republic from degrading competition with and contaminations by imported foreigners; and the most dangerous "free trade" is that in paupers, criminals, communists, and anarchists, in which the balance has always been against the United States.

Whereas, One of the greatest evils of unrestricted foreign immigration is the reduction of the wages of the American workingman and workingwoman to the level of the underfed and underpaid labor of foreign countries: therefore,

Resolved, That we demand that no immigrant shall be admitted into the United States without a passport obtained from the American Consul at the port from which he sails; that no passport shall be issued to any pauper, criminal, or insane person, or to any person who, in the judgement of the consul, is not likely to become a desirable citizen of the United States; and that for each immigrant passport there shall be collected by the Consul issuing the same the sum of one hundred dollars ($100), to be by him paid into the Treasury of the United States.

Resolved, That the present naturalization laws of the United States should be unconditionally repealed.

Resolved, That the soil of America should belong to Americans; That no alien non-resident should be permitted to own real estate in the United States, and that the realty possessions of the resident alien should be limited in value and area.

Resolved, That we favor educating the boys and girls of American citizens as mechanics and artisans, thus fitting them for the places now filled by foreigners, who supply the greater part of our skilled labor, and thereby almost entirely control the great industries of our country, save, perhaps, that of agriculture alone; and that our boys and girls may be taught trades, we demand the establishment and maintenance of free technical schools.

Resolved, That universal education is a necessity of our Government, and that our American free school system should be preserved and maintained as the safeguard of American liberty.

Resolved, That no language except the English shall be taught in the common schools supported at the public expense.

Whereas, an unemployed population is the greatest evil that can befall any nation, and in this country it cannot be eliminated by European methods, such as extra police and standing armies, therefore,

Resolved, That the surplus in the Treasury should be devoted tot he material improvement of our coast and frontier defences, and the construction of an American navy in American workshops, by American labor.

Resolved, That we demand the enactment of a law which shall require all persons having charge in any way of any department, bureau, or division of the Government to forthwith dismiss from the public service all persons employed in or about any such department, bureau, or division in any way or manner who are not citizens of the United States; that no person shall be appointed to or hold office or place in the service of the United States who is not a citizen of the United States either by nativity or by full naturalization, according to law.

Resolved, That after the year 1898 it shall be required of every voter before he exercises the right of suffrage to be able to read the written or printed Constitution of the United States, in the English language, and to write his own name upon the register, to show that he is fitted to share in the administration of the government of the republic.

Resolved, That we recognize the right of labor to organize for its protection, by all lawful and peaceful means to secure itself the greatest reward for its thrift and industry; and we believe in governmental arbitration in the settlement of industrial differences.

Resolved, That we are in favor of such legislation by Congress as will reestablish the American marine.

Resolved, That no flag shall float on any public buildings, municipal, State, or National, in the United States, except the Municipal, State, or National flag of the United States - the flag of the Stars and Stripes.

Resolved, That we reassert the American principles of absolute freedom of religious worship and belief, the permanent separation of Church and State; and we oppose the appropriation of public money or property to any church or institution administered by the church.

We maintain that all church property should be subject to taxation.

Resolved, That the Presidential term shall be extended to six years, and the President shall be ineligible to re-election.

Resolved, That the American Party declares that it recognizes no North, no South, no East, no West in these United States, but one people, pledged to the general welfare and to liberty and independence.

People's Party (1891–1908)

1892

Assembled upon the 116th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the People's Party of America in their first national convention, invoking upon their action the blessing of Almighty God, put forth in the name and on behalf of the people of this country, the following preamble and declaration of principles:

Preamble

The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self-protection; imported pauperized labor beats down their wages, a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of these, in turn despise the Republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires.

The national power to create money is appropriated to enrich bond-holders; a vast public debt payable in legal tender currency has been funded into gold-bearing bonds, thereby adding millions to the burdens of the people.

Silver, which has been accepted as coin since the dawn of history, has been demonetized to add to the purchasing power of gold by decreasing the value of all forms of property as well as human labor, and the supply of currency is purposely abridged to fatten usurers, bankrupt enterprise, and enslave industry. A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the world. If not met and overthrown at once, it forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or the establishment of an absolute despotism.

We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering people. We charge that the controlling influence dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they now promise us any substantial reform. They have agreed together to ignore, in the coming campaign, every issue but one. They propose to drown the outcries of a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle over the tariff, so that capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, the demonetization of silver and the oppressions of the usurers may all be lost sight of. They propose to sacrifice our homes, lives, and children on the altar of mammon; to destroy the multitude in order to secure corruption funds from the millionaires.

Assembled on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation, and filled with the spirit of the grand general and chief who established our independence, we seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of "the plain people," with which class it originated. We assert our purposes to be identical with the purposes of the National Constitution, to form a more perfect union and establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

We declare that this Republic can only endure as a free government while built upon the love of the whole people for each other and for the nation; that it cannot be pinned together by bayonets; that the civil war is over and that every passion and resentment which grew out of it must die with it, and that we must be in fact, as we are in name, one united brotherhood of free men.

Our country finds itself confronted by conditions for which there is no precedent in the history of the world; our annual agricultural productions amount to billions of dollars in value, which must, within a few weeks or months be exchanged for billions of dollars' worth of commodities consumed in their production; the existing currency supply is wholly inadequate to make this exchange; the results are falling prices, the formation of combines and rings, the impoverishment of the producing class. We pledge ourselves that, if given power, we will labor to correct these evils by wise and reasonable legislation, in accordance with the terms of our platform.

We believe that the power of government—in other words, of the people—should be expanded (as in the ease of the postal service) as rapidly and as far as the good sense of an intelligent people and the teachings of experience shall justify, to the end that oppression, injustice and poverty, shall eventually cease in the land.

While our sympathies as a party of reform are naturally upon the side of every proposition which will tend to make men intelligent, virtuous and temperate, we nevertheless regard these questions, important as they are, as secondary to the great issues now pressing for solution, and upon which not only our individual prosperity, but the very existence of free institutions depend; and we ask all men to first help us to determine whether we are to have a republic to administer, before we differ as to the conditions upon which it is to be administered, believing that the forces of reform this day organized will never cease to move forward, until every wrong is remedied, and equal rights and equal privileges securely established for all the men and women of this country.

Platform

We declare, therefore,

First—That the union of the labor forces of the United States this day consummated shall be permanent and perpetual; may its spirit enter into all hearts for the salvation of the Republic and the uplifting of mankind.

Second—Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an equivalent is robbery. "If any will not work, neither shall he eat." The interests of rural and civic labor are the same; their enemies are identical.

Third—We believe that the time has come when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people must own the railroads, and should the government enter upon the work of owning and managing all railroads, we should favor an amendment to the Constitution by which all persons engaged in the government service shall be placed under a civil service regulation of the most rigid character, so as to prevent the increase of the power of the national administration by the use of such additional government employees.

Finance—We demand a national currency, safe, sound, and flexible, issued by the general government only, a full legal tender for all debts, public and private, and that without the use of banking corporations, a just, equitable and efficient means of distribution direct to the people, at a tax not to exceed 2 per cent per annum, to be provided as set forth by the sub-treasury plan of the Farmers' Alliance, or a better system; also by payments in discharge of its obligations for public improvements.

1. We demand free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1.

2. We demand that the amount of circulating medium be speedily increased to not less than $50 per capita.

3. We demand a graduated income tax.

4. We believe that the money of the country should be kept as much as possible in the hands of the people, and hence we demand that all State and national revenues shall be limited to the necessary expenses of the government, economically and honestly administered.

5. We demand that postal savings banks be established by the government for the safe deposit of the earnings of the people and to facilitate exchange.

Transportation—Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people. The telegraph and telephone, 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.

Land—The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people, and should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land should be prohibited. All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens, should be reclaimed by the government and held for actual settlers only.

1896

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 moneychangers 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 thereby 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:

THE FINANCES

1. We demand a National money, safe and sound, issued by the General Government only, without the intervention of banks of issue, to be 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 16 to 1, 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 demand of the 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 public 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 obligation, 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 the option to the holders of Government obligation.

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 the postal savings-banks be established by the Government for the safe deposit of the savings of the people and to facilitate exchange.

RAILROAD AND TELEGRAPH

1. Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the Government should own and operate the railroads in the interest 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 citizens, may be destroyed. Such ownership is to be accomplished gradually, in a manner consistent with sound policy.

2. The interest of the United States in the public highways built with public moneys, and the proceeds of 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 the existing liens of the United States on these roads should at once follow default in the payment thereof by the debtor companies; and that the foreclosure sales of said roads the Government shall purchase the same, if it becomes 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.

3. 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 intent and spirit.

4. The telegraphy, 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.

THE PUBLIC LANDS

1. True policy demands that the National and State legislation shall be such as will ultimately enable every prudent and industrious citizen to secure a home, and therefore the land 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 private land monopoly, as well as alien ownership, should be prohibited.

2. We condemn the land grant frauds by which the Pacific railroad companies have, through the connivance of the Interior Department, robbed multitudes of bona-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.

3. We demand that bona-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 the Indian reservations when opened for settlement, and that all lands not now patented come under this demand.

THE REFERENDUM

We favor a system of direct legislation through the initiative and referendum, under proper Constitutional safeguards.

DIRECT ELECTION OF PRESIDENT AND SENATORS BY THE PEOPLE

We demand the election of President, Vice President, and United States Senators by a direct vote of the people.

SYMPATHY FOR CUBA

We tender to the patriotic people of Cuba our deepest sympathy for 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 ought to be, a free and independent state.

THE TERRITORIES

We favor home rule in the Territories and the District of Columbia, and the early admission of the Territories as States.

PUBLIC SALARIES

All public salaries should be made to correspond to the price of labor and its products.

EMPLOYMENT TO BE FURNISHED BY GOVERNMENT

In times of great industrial depression, idle labor should be employed on public works as far as practicable.

ARBITRARY JUDICIAL ACTION

The arbitrary course of the courts in assuming to imprison citizens for direct contempt and ruling by injunction should be prevented by proper legislation.

PENSIONS

We favor just pensions for our disabled Union soldiers.

A FAIR BALLOT

Believing that the elective franchise and an untrammeled ballot are essential to a government of, for, and by the people, the People's party condemns the wholesale system of disfranchisement adopted in some 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.

THE FINANCIAL QUESTION "THE PRESSING ISSUE"

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 pending campaign, upon which the present 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.

1900 (Fusion Faction)

The People's party of the United States, in convention assembled, congratulating its supporters on the wide extension of its principles in all directions, does hereby reaffirm its adherence to the fundamental principles proclaimed in its two prior platforms and calls upon all who desire to avert the subversion of free institutions by corporate and imperialistic power to unite with it in bringing the Government back to the ideals of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln.

It extends to its allies in the struggle for financial and economic freedom, assurances of its loyalty to the principles which animate the allied forces and the promise of honest and hearty cooperation in every effort for their success.

To the people of the United States we offer the following platform as the expression of our unalterable convictions:

That we denounce the act of March 14, 1900, as the culmination of a long series of conspiracies to deprive the people of their constitutional rights over the money of the nation and relegate to a gigantic money trust the control of the purse and hence the people.

We denounce the act, first, for making all money obligations, domestic and foreign, payable in gold coin or its equivalent, thus enormously increasing the burdens of the debtors and enriching the creditors.

For refunding "coin bonds" not to mature for years into long-time gold bonds, so as to make their payment improbable and our debt perpetual.

For taking from the Treasury $50,000,000 in a time of war and presenting it, at a premium, to bond-holders, to accomplish the refunding of bonds not due.

For doubling the capital of bankers by returning to them the face value of their bonds in current money notes so that they may draw one interest from the Government and another from the people.

For allowing banks to expand and contract their circulation at pleasure, thus controlling prices of all products.

For authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to issue new gold bonds to an unlimited amount whenever he deems it necessary to replenish the gold hoard, thus enabling usurers to secure more bonds and more bank currency by drawing gold from the Treasury, thereby creating an "endless chain" for perpetually adding to a perpetual debt.

For striking down the greenback in order to force the people to borrow $346,000,000 more from the banks at an annual cost of over $20,000,000.

While barring out the money of the Constitution this law opens the printing mints of the Treasury to the free coinage of bank paper money, to enrich the few and impoverish the many.

We pledge anew the People's party never to cease the agitation until this great financial conspiracy is blotted from the statue-books, the Lincoln greenback restored, the bonds all paid, and all corporation money forever retired.

We affirm the demand for the reopening of the mints of the United States to the free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, the immediate increase in the volume of solver coins and certificates thus created to be substituted, dollar for dollar, for the bank notes issued by private corporations under special privilege granted by law of March 14, 1900, and prior National banking laws, the remaining portion of the banks notes to be replaced with full legal-tender Government paper money, and its volume so controlled as to maintain at all times a stable money market and a stable price-level.

We demand a graduated income and inheritance tax, to the end that aggregated wealth shall bear its just proportion of taxation.

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.

With Thomas Jefferson we declare the land, including all natural sources of wealth, the inalienable heritage of the people. Government should so act as to secure homes for the people and prevent land monopoly. The original homestead policy should be enforced, and future settlers upon the public domain should be entitled to a free homestead, while all who have paid an acreage price to the Government under existing laws should have their homestead rights restored.

Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the Government should own and operate the railroads in the interest 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 extortion, 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 in a manner consistent with sound public policy.

Trusts, the overshadowing evil of the age, are the result and culmination of the private ownership and control of the three great instruments of commerce - money, transportation, and the means of transmission of information - which instruments of commerce are public functions, and which our forefathers declared in the Constitution should be controlled by the people through their Congress for the public welfare. The one remedy for the trusts is that the ownership and control be assumed and exercised by the people.

We further demand that all tariffs on goods controlled by a trust shall be abolished.

To cope with the trust evil, the people must act directly, without the intervention of representatives, who may be controlled or influenced. We therefore demand direct legislation, giving the people the law-making and veto power under the initiative and referendum. A majority of the people can never be corruptly influenced.

Applauding the valor of our army and navy in the Spanish war, we denounce the conduct of the Administration in changing a war for humanity into a war of conquest. The action of the Administration in the Philippines is in conflict with all the precedents of our National life; at war with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the plain precepts of humanity. Murder and arson have been our response to the appeals of the people who asked only to establish a free government in their own land. We demand a stoppage of this war of extermination by the assurance to the Philippines of independence and protection under a stable government of their own creation.

The Declaration of the Independence, the Constitution, and the American flag are one and inseparable. The island of Porto Rico is a part of the territory of the United States, and by levying special and extraordinary customs duties on the commerce of that island the Administration has violated the Constitution, abandoned the fundamental principles of American liberty, and has striven to give the lie to the contention of our forefathers that there should be no taxation without representation.

Out of the Imperialism which would force an undesired domination of the people of the Philippines springs the un-American cry for a large standing army. Nothing in the character or purposes of our people justifies us in ignoring the plain lesson of history and putting our liberties in jeopardy by assuming the burden of militarism, which is crushing the people of the Old World.

We denounce the Administration for its sinister efforts to substitute a standing army for the citizen solidery, which is the best safeguard of the Republic.

We extend to the brave Boers of South Africa our sympathy and moral support in their patriotic struggle for the right of self-government, and we are unalterably opposed to any alliance, open or covert, between the United States and any other nation that will tend to the destruction of human liberty.

And a further manifestation of imperialism is to be found in the mining districts of Idaho. In the Coeur d'Alene soldiers have been used to overawe miners striving for a greater measure of industrial independence. And we denounce the State Government of Idaho and the Federal Government for employing the military arm of the Government to abridge the civil rights of the people, and to enforce an infamous permit system which denies laborers their inherent liberty and compels them to forswear their manhood and their rights before being permitted to seek employment.

The importation of Japanese and other laborers under contract to serve monopolistic corporations is a notorious and flagrant violation of the immigration laws. We demand that the Federal Government shall take the cognizance of this menacing evil and repress it under existing laws. We further pledge ourselves to strive for the enactment of more stringent laws for the exclusion of Mongolian and Malayan immigration.

We indorse municipal ownership of public utilities, and declare that the advantages which have been accrued to the public under that system would be multiplied a hundredfold by its extension to natural inter-State monopolies.

We denounce the practice of issuing injunctions in the cases of dispute between employers and employees, making criminal acts by organizations which are not criminal when performed by individuals, and demand legislation to restrain the evil.

We demand that United States Senators and all other officials as far as practicable be elected by direct vote of the people, believing that the elective franchise and untrammeled ballot are essential to a government for and by the people.

The People's party condemns the wholesale system of disfranchisement by coercion and intimidation, adopted in some 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.

We favor home rule in the Territories and the District of Columbia, and the early admission of the Territories as States.

We denounce the expensive red-tape system, political favoritism, cruel and unnecessary delay and criminal evasion of the statues in the management of the Pension Office, and demand the simple and honest execution of the law, and the fulfillment by the nation of its pledges of service pension to all its honorably discharged veterans.

1904

The People's party reaffirms its adherence to the basic truths of the Omaha platform of 1892, and of the subsequent platforms of 1896 and 1900. In session in its fourth national convention on July 4, 1904, in the city of Springfield, Ill., it draws inspiration from the day that saw the birth of the nation as well as its own birth as a party, and also from the soul of him who lives at its present place of meeting. We renew our allegiance to the old-fashioned American spirit that gave this nation existence, and made it distinctive among the peoples of the earth. We again sound the key-note of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal in a political sense, which was the sense in which that instrument, being a political document, intended that utterance should be understood. We assert that the departure from the fundamental truth is responsible for the ills which we suffer as a nation, that the giving of special privileges to the few has enabled them to dominate the many, thereby tending to destroy the political equality which is the corner-stone of democratic government.

Holding fast to the truths of the fathers we vigorously protest against the spirit of mammonism and of thinly veiled monarchy that is invading certain sections of our national life, and of the very administration itself. This is a nation of peace, and we deplore the appeal to the spirit of force and militarism which is shown in an ill-advised and vainglorious boasting and in more harmful ways in the denial of the rights of man under martial law.

A political democracy and an industrial despotism cannot exist side by side; and nowhere is this truth more plainly shown than in the gigantic transportation monopolies which have bred all sorts of kindred trusts, subverted the government of many of the States, or established their official agents in the National Government. We submit that it is better for the Government to own the railroads than for the railroads to own the Government, and that one or the other alternative seems inevitable.

We call the attention of our fellow-citizens to the fact that the surrender of both of the old parties to corporative influences leaves the People's party the only party of reform in the nation.

Therefore we submit the following platform of principles to the American people: -

The issuing of money is a function of government, and should never be delegated to corporations or individuals. The Constitution gives to Congress alone the power to issue money and regulate its value.

We therefore demand that all money shall be issued by the Government in such quantity as shall maintain stability in prices, every dollar to be full legal tender, none of which shall be a debt redeemable in other money.

We demand that postal-savings banks be established by the Government for the safe deposit of savings of the people.

We believe in the right of labor to organize for the benefit and protection of those who toil: and pledge the efforts of the People's party to preserve this right inviolate. Capital is organized and has no right to deny labor the privilege which it claims for itself. We feel that intelligent organization of labor is essential; that it raises the standard of workmanship; promoted the efficiency, intelligence, independence and character of the wage earner. We believe with Abraham Lincoln that labor is prior to capital, and is not its slave, but its companion, and we plead for that broad spirit of toleration and justice which will promote industrial peace through the observance of the principles of voluntary arbitration.

We favor the enactment of legislation looking to the improvement of conditions for wage earners, the abolition of child labor, the suppression of sweat shops, and of convict labor in competition with free labor, and the exclusion from American shores of foreign pauper labor.

We favor the shorter work day, and declare that is eight hours constitute a day's labor in Government service, that eight hours should constitute a day's labor in factories, workshops and mines.

As a means of placing all public questions directly under the control of the people, we demand that legal provision be made under which the people may exercise the initiative, referendum and proportional representation and direct vote for all public officers with the right of recall.

Land, including all the natural resources of wealth, is a heritage of all the people, and should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land should be prohibited.

We demand a return to the original interpretation of the Constitution and a fair and impartial enforcement of laws under it, and denounce government by injunction and imprisonment without the right of trial by jury.

To prevent unjust discrimination and monopoly the Government should own and control the railroads, and those public utilities which in their nature are monopolies. To perfect the postal service, the Government should own and operate the general telegraph and telephone systems and provide a parcels post.

As to these trusts and monopolies which are not public utilities or natural monopolies, we demand that those special privileges which they now enjoy, and which alone enables them to exist, should be immediately withdrawn. Corporations being the creatures of government should be subjected to such governmental regulations and control as will adequately protect the public. We demand taxation of monopoly privileges, while they remain in private hands, to the extent of the value of the privileges granted.

We demand that Congress shall enact a general law uniformly regulating the power and duties of all incorporated companies doing interstate business.

1908

The People's Party of the United States, in convention assembled, at St. Louis, Mo., this 2nd day of April, 1908, with increased confidence in its contentions, reaffirms the declarations made by its first national convention at Omaha, in 1892.

The admonitions of Washington's farewell address; the state papers of Jefferson, and the words of Lincoln, are the teachings of our greatest apostles of human rights and political liberty. There has been a departure from the teachings of these great patriots during recent administrations. The Government has been controlled so as to place the rights of property above the rights of humanity, and has brought the country to a condition that is full of danger to our national wellbeing. Financial combinations have had too much power over Congress, and too much influence with the administrative departments of the Government.

Prerogatives of the government have been unwisely and often corruptly surrendered to corporate monopoly and aggregations of predatory wealth. The supreme duty of the hour is for the people insist that these functions of government be exercised in their own interest. Not the giver of the "thirty pieces of silver" has been condemned, but the "Judas" who received them, has been execrated through the ages. The sycophants of monopoly deserve no better fate.

The issuance of money is a function of the government and should not be delegated to corporation or individual. The Constitution gives Congress alone the power to issue money and regulate the value thereof; we, therefore, demand tha all money shall be issued by the Government direct to the people without the intervention of banks, and shall be full legal tender for all debts, public and private, and in quantity sufficient to supply the needs of the country.

The issuance and distribution of full legal tender money from the Treasury, shall not be through private banks, preferred or otherwise, but direct to the people without interest, for the construction and purchase of Federal and internal improvements and utilities, and for the employment of labor.

We demand that postal savings banks be established by the Government for the safe deposit of the savings of the people.

The public domain is a sacred heritage of all people and should be held for homesteads for actual settlers only. Alien ownership should be forbidden, and lands now held by aliens or by corporations, who have violated the conditions of their grants, should be restored to the public domain.

To prevent unjust discrimination and monopoly, the Government should own and control the railroads and those public utilities, which in their nature are monopolies. To perfect the postal service, the Government should own and operate the general telegraph and telephone systems and provide a parcels post.

As to those trusts and monopolies which are not public utilities or national monopolies, we demand that those special privileges which they now enjoy, and which alone enable them to exist, shall be immediately withdrawn.

Corporations being the creatures of government, should be subjected to such governmental regulation and control as will adequately protect the public.

We demand the taxation of monopoly privileges while they remain in private hands, to the extent of the value of the privileges granted.

We demand that Congress shall enact a general law uniformly regulating the powers and duties of all incorporated companies doing interstate business.

As a means of placing all public questions directly under the control of the people, we demand that legal provision be made under which the people may exercise the initiative and referendum, proportional representation, and direct vote for all public officers, with the right of recall.

We recommend a Federal statue that will recognize the principle of the initiative and referendum, and thereby restore to voters the right to instruct their national representatives.

We believe in the right of those who labor, to organize for their mutual protection and benefit, and pledge the efforts of the People's party to preserve this right inviolate.

We condemn the recent attempt to destroy the power of trade unions through the unjust use of the Federal injunction, substituting government by injunction for free government.

We favor the enactment of legislation looking to the improvement of conditions for wage earners.

We demand the abolition of child labor in factories and mines, and the suppression of sweatshops.

We oppose the use of convict labor in competition with free labor.

We demand the exclusion from American shores of foreign pauper labor, imported to beat down the wages of intelligent American workingmen.

We favor the eight hour work day, and legislation protecting the lives and limbs of workmen through the use of safety appliances.

We demand the enactment of an employer's liability act within constitutional bounds.

We declare against the continuation of the criminal carelessness in the operation of mines, through which thousands of miners have lost their lives to increase the dividends of stockholders, and demand the immediate adoption of precautionary measures to prevent a repetition of such horrible catastrophes.

We declare that in times of depression, when workingmen are thrown into enforced idleness, that works of public improvement should be at once inaugurated and work provided for those who cannot otherwise secure employment.

We especially emphasize the declaration of the Omaha platform, that "Wealth belongs to him who creates it and every dollar taken from industry without a just equivalent is robbery."

We congratulate the farmers of the country upon the enormous growth of their splendid organizations, and the good already accomplished through them, securing higher prices for farm products and better conditions generally, for those engaged in agricultural pursuits. We urge the importance of maintaining these organizations and extending their power and influence.

We condemn all unwarranted assumption of authority by inferior Federal courts, in annulling, by injunction, the laws of the States, and demand legislative action by Congress, which will prohibit such usurpation, and will restrict to the Supreme Court of the United States, the exercise of power in cases involving State legislation.

We are opposed to gambling in futures.

We present to all people the foregoing declaration of principles and policies as our deep, earnest, and abiding convictions; and now, before the country and in the name of the great moral, but eternal power in the universe, that makes for right thinking and right living and determines the destiny of nations, this convention pledges that the People's Party will stand by these principles and policies in success and in defeat; that never again will the party by the siren songs and false promises of designing politicians, be tempted to change in course, or be drawn again upon the treacherous rocks of fusion.

National Silver Party (1892–1911)

1896

We, the national silver party, in convention assembled, hereby adopt 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 gold standard, gold bonds, and bank currency on the one side, and the bimetallic standard, no bonds, and government currency on the other.

On this issue we declare ourselves to be in favor of a distinctively American financial system.

We are unalterably opposed to single gold standard, and demand an immediate return to the constitutional standard of gold and silver, by restoration by this government, independently of any foreign power, of the unrestricted coinage of both gold and silver into standard money at a ratio of 16 to 1, and upon terms of exact equality as they existed prior to 1873; the silver coin to be a full legal tender equally with gold, for all debts and dues, public and private.

We favor such legislation as will prevent for the future the demonetization of any kind of legal-tender by private contract. We hold the power to control and regulate paper currency is inseparable from the power to coin money, and hence all currency intended to circulate as money should be issued and its volume controlled by the general government only and should be legal tender.

We are unalterably opposed to the issue by the United States of interest-bearing bonds in time of peace, and we denounce as a blunder worse than a crime, the present treasury policy, concurred in by a republican house, of plunging the country in debt by hundreds of millions in a vain attempt to maintain the gold standard by borrowing gold.

We demand the payment of all coin obligations of the United States as provided by existing laws, in either gold or silver coin, at the option of the government, and not at the option of the creditor.

The demonetization of silver of 1873 enormously increased the demand of gold, enhancing its purchasing power and lowering all prices measured by that standard, and since that unjust indefensible act, the prices of American products have fallen, upon an average of nearly 50 per cent, carrying down with them, proportionately, the money value of all other forms of property.

Such a fall of prices destroyed the profits of legitimate industry, injuring the producer for the benefit of the non-producer, increasing the burden of the debtor, swelling the gains of creditors, paralyzing the productive energies of sending shadows of despair into the home of the honest toiler, filling the land with tramps and paupers, and building up colossal fortunes at the money centers to maintain the gold standard. The country has within the last two years, in a time of profound peace and plenty been loaded down with $262,000,000 additional interest-bearing debt, under such circumstances as to allow a syndicate of native and foreign bankers to realize a net profit of millions on a single deal.

It stands confessed that a gold standard can only be upheld by so depleting our paper currency as to force the prices of our products below the European and even below the Asiatic level, to enable us to sell in foreign markets, this aggravating the very evils of which our people so bitterly complain, degrading American labor and striking at the foundations of our civilization itself.

Advocates of gold standard persistently claim that the cause of our distress is overproduction - that we have produced so much that it made us poor - which implies that the true remedy is to close the factory, abandon the farm and throw a multitude of people out of employment, a doctrine that leaves us unnerved and disheartened, and absolutely without hope for the future. We affirm it to be unquestioned that there can be no such economic paradox as overproduction and at the same time tens of thousands of our fellow citizens remain half clothed and half fed, and who are piteously clamoring for the common necessities of life.

Second. That over and above all other questions of policy, we are in favor of restoring to the people of the United States the time-honored money of the Constitution - gold and silver, not one, but both - the money of Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Monroe, Jackson, and Lincoln, to the end that the American people may receive honest pay for an honest product; that an American debtor may pay his just obligations in honest standard, and not in a standard that has appreciated one hundred per cent above all the great staples of the country, and to the end, further, that silver standard countries may be deprived of the unjust advantage they now enjoy in the difference in exchange between gold and silver - an advantage which tariff legislation alone cannot overcome.

We, therefore, confidently appeal to the people of the United States to leave in abeyance for the moment all other questions, however important and even momentous though they may be, to sunder, if need be, all former party ties and affiliations, and unite in one supreme effort to free themselves and their children from the domination of the money power - a power more destructive than any which has ever been fastened upon the civilized men of any race or in any age, and upon the consummation of our desires and efforts we invoke the aid of all patriotic American citizens, and the gracious favor of Divine Providence.

Inasmuch as the patriotic majority of the Chicago convention embodied in the financial plank of its platform the principles enunciated in the platform of the American bimetallic party, promulgated at Washington, D.C., January 22, 1896, and herein reiterated, which is not only the paramount, but the only real issue in the pending campaign, therefore recognizing that their nominees embody these patriotic principles, we recommend that this convention nominate William J. Bryan, of Nebraska, for President, and Arthur Sewall, of Main, for Vice-President.

National Democratic Party (1896–1900)

1896

This convention has assembled to uphold the principles upon which depend the honor and welfare of the American people in order that Democrats throughout the Union may unite their patriotic efforts to avert disaster from their country and ruin from their party.

The Democratic party is pledged to equal and exact justice to all men of every creed and condition; to the largest freedom of the individual consistent with good government; to the preservation of the Federal government in its constitutional vigor, and to the support of the States in all their just rights; to economy in the public expenditures; to the maintenance of the public faith and sound money; and it is opposed to paternalism and all class legislation.

The declarations of the Chicago convention attack individual freedom, the right of private contract, the independence of the judiciary and the authority of the President to enforce Federal laws. They advocate a reckless attempt to increase the price of silver by legislation to the debasement of our monetary standard, and threaten unlimited issues of paper money by the government. They abandon for Republican allies the Democratic cause of tariff reform to court the favor of protectionists to their fiscal heresy.

In view of these and other grave departures from Democratic principles, we cannot support the candidates of that convention nor be bound by its acts. The Democratic party has survived defeats, but could not survive a victory won in behalf of the doctrine and policy proclaimed in its name at Chicago.

The conditions, however, which made possible such utterances from a national convention are the direct result of class-legislation by the Republican party. It still proclaims, as it has for years, the power and duty of government to rais and maintain priced by law; and it proposed no remedy for existing evils except oppressive and unjust taxation.

DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES

The National Democracy here reconvened, therefore renews its declaration of faith in Democratic principles, especially as applicable to the conditions of the times.

Taxation, tariff, excise or direct, is rightfully imposed only for public purposes, and not for private gain. Its amount is justly measured by public expenditures, which should be limited by scrupulous economy. The sum derived by the treasury from tariff and excise levies is affected by the state of trade and volume of consumption. The amount required by the treasury is determined by the appropriations made by Congress. The demand of the Republican party for an increase in tariff taxation has as its pretext in the deficiency of the revenue, which has its causes in the stagnation of trade and reduced consumption, due entirely to the loss of confidence that has followed the Populist threat of free coinage and depreciation of our money and Republican practice of extravagant appropriations beyond the needs of good government. We arraign and condemn the Populistic conventions of Chicago and St. Louis for their co-operation with the Republican party in creating these conditions, which are pleaded in justification of a heavy increase of the burdens of the people by further resort to protection. We, therefore, denounce protection and its ally, free coinage of silver, as schemes for the personal profit of a few at the expense of the masses, and oppose the two parties which stand for these schemes as hostile to the people of the Republic, whose food and shelter, comfort and prosperity are attacked by higher taxes and depreciated money.

TARIFF

In fine, we reaffirm the historic Democratic doctrine of tariff for revenue only.

We demand that henceforth modern and liberal policies toward American shipping shall take the place of our imitation of the restricted statutes of the eighteenth century, which were long ago abandoned by every maritime power but the United States, and which, to the nation's humiliation, has driven American capital and enterprise to the use of alien flags and alien crews, have made the stars and stripes an almost unknown emblem in foreign ports, and have virtually extinguished the race of American seamen. We oppose the pretense that discriminating duties will promote shipping; that scheme is an invitation to commercial warfare upon the United States, un-American in the light of our great commercial treaties, offering no gain whatever to American shipping, while increasing ocean freights on our agricultural and manufactured products.

FOR A GOLD STANDARD

The experience of mankind has shown that by reason of their natural qualities gold is the necessary money of the large affairs of commerce and business, while silver is conveniently adapted to minor transactions, and the most beneficial use of both together can be insured only by the adoption of the former as a standard of monetary measure, and the maintenance of silver at a parity of gold by its limited coinage under suitable safeguards of law. Thus the largest possible enjoyment of both metals is gained with a value universally accepted throughout the world, which constitutes the only practical bimetallitc currency, assuring the most stable standard, and especially the best and safest money for all who earn their livelihood by labor or produce of husbandry. They cannot suffer when paid in the best money known to man, but are the peculiar and most defenseless victims of a debased and fluctuating currency, which offers continual profits to the money-changer at their cost.

Realizing these truths, demonstrated by long public inconvenience and loss, the Democratic party, in the interests of the masses and of equal justice to all, practically established by the legislation of 1834 and 1853 the gold standard of monetary measurement, and likewise entirely divorced the government from banking and currency issues. To this long-established Democratic policy we adhere, and insist upon the maintenance of the gold standard and of the parity therewith of every dollar issued by the government, and are firmly opposed to the free and unlimited coinage of silver and to the compulsory purchase of silver bullion. But we denounce also the further maintenance of the present costly patchwork system of national paper currency as a constant source of injury and peril.

We assert the necessity of such intelligent currency reform as will confine the government to its legitimate functions, completely separated from the banking business, and afford to all sections of our country a uniform, safe and elastic bank currency under government supervision, measured in volume by the needs of business.

THE ADMINISTRATION

The fidelity, patriotism and courage with which President Cleveland has fulfilled his great public trust, the high character of his administration, its wisdom and energy in the maintenance of civil order and the enforcement of the laws, its equal regard for the rights of every class every session, its firm and dignified conduct of foreign affairs, and its sturdy persistence in upholding the credit and honor of the nation, are fully recognized by the Democratic party, and will secure to him a place in history beside the Fathers of the Republic.

We also commend the administration for the great progress made in the reform of the public service, and we indorse its efforts to extend the merit system still further. We demand that no backward step be taken, but that the reform be supported and advanced until the un-Democratic spoils system of appointments shall be eradicated.

OTHER AFFAIRS

We demand strict economy in the appropriations and in the administration of the government.

We favor arbitration for the settlement of international disputes.

We favor a liberal policy of pensions to deserving soldiers and sailors of the United States.

The Supreme Court of the United States was wisely established by the framers of our Constitution as one of the three co-ordinate branches of the government. Its independence and authority to interpret the law of the land, without fear or favor, must be maintained. We condemn all efforts to degrade that tribunal, or impair the confidence and respect which it has deservedly held.

The Democratic party ever has maintained, and ever will maintain, the supremacy of law, the independence of its judicial administration, the inviolability of contracts, and the obligations of all good citizens to resist every illegal trust, combination or attempt against the just rights of property and the good order of society, in which are bound up the peace and happiness of our people.

Believing in these principles to be essential to the well-being of the Republic, we submit them to consideration of the American people.

American Anti-Imperialist League (1898–1921)

1899

We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends towards militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it has become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that all men, whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We maintain that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We insist that the subjugation of any people is "criminal aggression" and open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our Government.

we earnestly condemn the policy of the present National Administration in the Philippines. It seeks to extinguish the spirit of 1776 in those islands. We deplore the sacrifice of our soldiers and sailors, whose bravery deserves admiration even in an unjust war. We denounce the slaughter of the Filipinos as a needles horror. We protest against the extension of American sovereignty by Spanish methods.

We demand the immediate cessation of the war against liberty, begun by Spain and continued by us. We urge that Congress be promptly convened to announce to the Filipinos our purpose to concede to them the independence for which they have so long fought and which of right is theirs.

The United States have always protested against the doctrine of international law which permits the subjugation of the weak by the strong. A self-governing state cannot accept sovereignty over an unwilling people. The United States cannot act upon the ancient heresy that might makes right.

Imperialists assume that with the destruction of self-government in the Philippines by American hands, all opposition here will cease. This is a grievous error. Much as we abhor the war of "criminal aggression" in the Philippines, greatly as we regret that the blood of the Filipinos is on American hands, we more deeply resent the betrayal of American institutions at home. The real firing line is not in the suburbs of Manila. The foe is of our own household. The attempt of 1861 was to divide the country. That of 1899 is to destroy the fundamental principles and noblest ideals.

Whether the ruthless slaughter of the Filipinos shall end next month or next year is but an incident in a contest that must go on until the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States are rescued from the hands of their betrayers. Those who dispute about standards of value while the foundation of the Republic is undermined will be listened to as little as those who would wrangle about the small economies of the household while the house is on fire. The training of a great people for a century, the aspirations for liberty of a vast immigration are forces that will hurl aside those who in the delirium of conquest seek to destroy the character of our institutions.

We deny that the obligation of all citizens to support their Government in times of grave National peril applies to the present situation. If an Administration may with impunity ignore the issues upon which it was chosen, deliberately create a condition of war anywhere on the face of the globe, debauch the civil service for spoils to promote the adventure, organize a truth-suppressing censorship and demand of all citizens a suspension of judgement and their unanimous support while it chooses to continue the fighting, representative government itself imperiled.

We propose to contribute to the defeat of any person or party that stands for the forcible subjugation of any people. We shall oppose for reelection all who in the White House or in Congress betray American liberty in pursuit of un-American ends. We will hope that both of our great political parties will support and defend the Declaration of Independence in the closing campaign of this century.

We hold, with Abraham Lincoln, that "no man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent. When the white man governs himself, that is self-government, but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government - that is despotism." Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it."

We cordially invite the cooperation of all men and women who remain loyal to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

Socialist Party of America (1901–1972)

Listed Here.

Progressive Party (1912–1916)

1912

The conscience of the people, in a time of grave national problems, has called into being a new party, born of the nation's sense of justice. We of the Progressive party here dedicate ourselves to the fulfillment of the duty laid upon us by our fathers to maintain the government of the people, by the people and for the people whose foundations they laid.

We hold with Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln that the people are the masters of their Constitution, to fulfill its purposes and to safeguard it from those who, by perversion of its intent, would convert it into an instrument of injustice. In accordance with the needs of each generation the people must use their sovereign powers to establish and maintain equal opportunity and industrial justice, to secure which this Government was founded and without which no republic can endure.

This country belongs to the people who inhabit it. Its resources, its business, its institutions and its laws should be utilized, maintained or altered in whatever manner will best promote the general interest.

It is time to set the public welfare in the first place.

The Old Parties

Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people.

From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

The deliberate betrayal of its trust by the Republican party, the fatal incapacity of the Democratic party to deal with the new issues of the new time, have compelled the people to forge a new instrument of government through which to give effect to their will in laws and institutions.

Unhampered by tradition, uncorrupted by power, undismayed by the magnitude of the task, the new party offers itself as the instrument of the people to sweep away old abuses, to build a new and nobler commonwealth.

A Covenant With the People

This declaration is our covenant with the people, and we hereby bind the party and its candidates in State and Nation to the pledges made herein.

The Rule of the People

The National Progressive party, committed to the principles of government by a self-controlled democracy expressing its will through representatives of the people, pledges itself to secure such alterations in the fundamental law of the several States and of the United States as shall insure the representative character of the government.

In particular, the party declares for direct primaries for the nomination of State and National officers, for nation-wide preferential primaries for candidates for the presidency; for the direct election of United States Senators by the people; and we urge on the States the policy of the short ballot, with responsibility to the people secured by the initiative, referendum and recall.

Amendment of Constitution

The Progressive party, believing that a free people should have the power from time to time to amend their fundamental law so as to adapt it progressively to the changing needs of the people, pledges itself to provide a more easy and expeditious method of amending the Federal Constitution.

Nation and State

Up to the limit of the Constitution, and later by amendment of the Constitution, it found necessary, we advocate bringing under effective national jurisdiction those problems which have expanded beyond reach of the individual States.

It is as grotesque as it is intolerable that the several States should by unequal laws in matter of common concern become competing commercial agencies, barter the lives of their children, the health of their women and the safety and well being of their working people for the benefit of their financial interests.

The extreme insistence on States' rights by the Democratic party in the Baltimore platform demonstrates anew its inability to understand the world into which it has survived or to administer the affairs of a union of States which have in all essential respects become one people.

Equal Suffrage

The Progressive party, believing that no people can justly claim to be a true democracy which denies political rights on account of sex, pledges itself to the task of securing equal suffrage to men and women alike.

Corrupt Practices

We pledge our party to legislation that will compel strict limitation of all campaign contributions and expenditures, and detailed publicity of both before as well as after primaries and elections.

Publicity and Public Service

We pledge our party to legislation compelling the registration of lobbyists; publicity of committee hearings except on foreign affairs, and recording of all votes in committee; and forbidding federal appointees from holding office in State or National political organizations, or taking part as officers or delegates in political conventions for the nomination of elective State or National officials.

The Courts

The Progressive party demands such restriction of the power of the courts as shall leave to the people the ultimate authority to determine fundamental questions of social welfare and public policy. To secure this end, it pledges itself to provide:

1. That when an Act, passed under the police power of the State is held unconstitutional under the State Constitution, by the courts, the people, after an ample interval for deliberation, shall have an opportunity to vote on the question whether they desire the Act to become law, notwithstanding such decision.

2. That every decision of the highest appellate court of a State declaring an Act of the Legislature unconstitutional on the ground of its violation of the Federal Constitution shall be subject to the same review by the Supreme Court of the United States as is now accorded to decisions sustaining such legislation.

Administration of Justice

The Progressive party, in order to secure to the people a better administration of justice and by that means to bring about a more general respect for the law and the courts, pledges itself to work unceasingly for the reform of legal procedure and judicial methods.

We believe that the issuance of injunctions in cases arising out of labor disputes should be prohibited when such injunctions would not apply when no labor disputes existed.

We also believe that a person cited for contempt in labor disputes, except when such contempt was committed in the actual presence of the court or so near thereto as to interfere with the proper administration of justice, should have a right to trial by jury.

Social and Industrial Justice

The supreme duty of the Nation is the conservation of human resources through an enlightened measure of social and industrial justice. We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in State and Nation for:

Effective legislation looking to the prevention of industrial accidents, occupational diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, and other injurous effects incident to modern industry;

The fixing of minimum safety and health standards for the various occupations, and the exercise of the public authority of State and Nation, including the Federal Control over interstate commerce, and the taxing power, to maintain such standards;

The prohibition of child labor;

Minimum wage standards for working women, to provide a "living wage" in all industrial occupations;

The general prohibition of night work for women and the establishment of an eight hour day for women and young persons;

One day's rest in seven for all wage workers;

The eight hour day in continuous twenty-four hour industries;

The abolition of the convict contract labor system; substituting a system of prison production for governmental consumption only; and the application of prisoners' earnings to the support of their dependent families;

Publicity as to wages, hours and conditions of labor; full reports upon industrial accidents and diseases, and the opening to public inspection of all tallies, weights, measures and check systems on labor products;

Standards of compensation for death by industrial accident and injury and trade disease which will transfer the burden of lost earnings from the families of working people to the industry, and thus to the community;

The protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use;

The development of the creative labor power of America by lifting the last load of illiteracy from American youth and establishing continuation schools for industrial education under public control and encouraging agricultural education and demonstration in rural schools;

The establishment of industrial research laboratories to put the methods and discoveries of science at the service of American producers;

We favor the organization of the workers, men and women, as a means of protecting their interests and of promoting their progress.

Department of Labor

We pledge our party to establish a department of labor with a seat in the cabinet, and with wide jurisdiction over matters affecting the conditions of labor and living.

Country Life

The development and prosperity of country life are as important to the people who live in the cities as they are to the farmers. Increase of prosperity on the farm will favorably affect the cost of living, and promote the interests of all who dwell in the country, and all who depend upon its products for clothing, shelter and food.

We pledge our party to foster the development of agricultural credit and co-operation, the teaching of agriculture in schools, agricultural college extension, the use of mechanical power on the farm, and to re-establish the Country Life Commission, thus directly promoting the welfare of the farmers, and bringing the benefits of better farming, better business and better living within their reach.

High Cost of Living

The high cost of living is due partly to worldwide and partly to local causes; partly to natural and partly to artificial causes. The measures proposed in this platform on various subjects such as the tariff, the trusts and conservation, will of themselves remove the artificial causes.

There will remain other elements such as the tendency to leave the country for the city, waste, extravagance, bad system of taxation, poor methods of raising crops and bad business methods in marketing crops.

To remedy these conditions requires the fullest information and based on this information, effective government supervision and control to remove all the artificial causes. We pledge ourselves to such full and immediate inquiry and to immediate action to deal with every need such inquiry discloses.

Health

We favor the union of all the existing agencies of the Federal Government dealing with the public health into a single national health service without discrimination against or for any one set of therapeutic methods, school of medicine, or school of healing with such additional powers as may be necessary to enable it to perform efficiently such duties in the protection of the public from preventable diseases as may be properly undertaken by the Federal authorities, including the executing of existing laws regarding pure food, quarantine and cognate subjects, the promotion of vital statistics and the extension of the registration area of such statistics, and co-operation with the health activities of the various States and cities of the Nation.

Business

We believe that true popular government, justice and prosperity go hand in hand, and, so believing, it is our purpose to secure that large measure of general prosperity which is the fruit of legitimate and honest business, fostered by equal justice and by sound progressive laws.

We demand that the test of true prosperity shall be the benefits conferred thereby on all the citizens, not confined to individuals or classes, and that the test of corporate efficiency shall be the ability better to serve the public; that those who profit by control of business affairs shall justify that profit and that control by sharing with the public the fruits thereof.

We therefore demand a strong National regulation of inter-State corporations. The corporation is an essential part of modern business. The concentration of modem business, in some degree, is both inevitable and necessary for national and international business efficiency. But the existing concentration of vast wealth under a corporate system, unguarded and uncontrolled by the Nation, has placed in the hands of a few men enormous, secret, irresponsible power over the daily life of the citizen--a power insufferable in a free Government and certain of abuse.

This power has been abused, in monopoly of National resources, in stock watering, in unfair competition and unfair privileges, and finally in sinister influences on the public agencies of State and Nation. We do not fear commercial power, but we insist that it shall be exercised openly, under publicity, supervision and regulation of the most efficient sort, which will preserve its good while eradicating and preventing its ill.

To that end we urge the establishment of a strong Federal administrative commission of high standing, which shall maintain permanent active supervision over industrial corporations engaged in inter-State commerce, or such of them as are of public importance, doing for them what the Government now does for the National banks, and what is now done for the railroads by the Inter-State Commerce Commission.

Such a commission must enforce the complete publicity of those corporation transactions which are of public interest; must attack unfair competition, false capitalization and special privilege, and by continuous trained watchfulness guard and keep open equally all the highways of American commerce.

Thus the business man will have certain knowledge of the law, and will be able to conduct his business easily in conformity therewith; the investor will find security for his capital; dividends will be rendered more certain, and the savings of the people will be drawn naturally and safely into the channels of trade.

Under such a system of constructive regulation, legitimate business, freed from confusion, uncertainty and fruitless litigation, will develop normally in response to the energy and enterprise of the American business man.

We favor strengthening the Sherman Law by prohibiting agreement to divide territory or limit output; refusing to sell to customers who buy from business rivals; to sell below cost in certain areas while maintaining higher prices in other places; using the power of transportation to aid or injure special business concerns; and other unfair trade practices.

Patents

We pledge ourselves to the enactment of a patent law which will make it impossible for patents to be suppressed or used against the public welfare in the interests of injurious monopolies.

Inter-State Commerce Commission

We pledge our party to secure to the Inter-State Commerce Commission the power to value the physical property of railroads. In order that the power of the commission to protect the people may not be impaired or destroyed, we demand the abolition of the Commerce Court.

Currency

We believe there exists imperative need for prompt legislation for the improvement of our National currency system. We believe the present method of issuing notes through private agencies is harmful and unscientific.

The issue of currency is fundamentally a Government function and the system should have as basic principles soundness and elasticity. The control should be lodged with the Government and should be protected from domination or manipulation by Wall Street or any special interests.

We are opposed to the so-called Aldrich currency bill, because its provisions would place our currency and credit system in private hands, not subject to effective public control.

Commercial Development

The time has come when the Federal Government should co-operate with manufacturers and producers in extending our foreign commerce. To this end we demand adequate appropriations by Congress, and the appointment of diplomatic and consular officers solely with a view to their special fitness and worth, and not in consideration of political expediency.

It is imperative to the welfare of our people that we enlarge and extend our foreign commerce.

In every way possible our Federal Government should co-operate in this important matter. Germany's policy of co-operation between government and business has, in comparatively few years, made that nation a leading competitor for the commerce of the world.

Conservation

The natural resources of the Nation must be promptly developed and generously used to supply the people's needs, but we cannot safely allow them to be wasted, exploited, monopolized or controlled against the general good. We heartily favor the policy of conservation, and we pledge our party to protect the National forests without hindering their legitimate use for the benefit of all the people.

Agricultural lands in the National forests are, and should remain, open to the genuine settler. Conservation will not retard legitimate development. The honest settler must receive his patent promptly, without hindrance, rules or delays.

We believe that the remaining forests, coal and oil lands, water powers and other natural resources still in State or National control (except agricultural lands) are more likely to be wisely conserved and utilized for the general welfare if held in the public hands.

In order that consumers and producers, managers and workmen, now and hereafter, need not pay toll to private monopolies of power and raw material, we demand that such resources shall be retained by the State or Nation, and opened to immediate use under laws which will encourage development and make to the people a moderate return for benefits conferred.

In particular we pledge our party to require reasonable compensation to the public for water power rights hereafter granted by the public.

We pledge legislation to lease the public grazing lands under equitable provisions now pending which will increase the production of food for the people and thoroughly safeguard the rights of the actual homemaker. Natural resources, whose conservation is necessary for the National welfare, should be owned or controlled by the Nation.

Good Roads

We recognize the vital importance of good roads and we pledge our party to foster their extension in every proper way, and we favor the early construction of National highways. We also favor the extension of the rural free delivery service.

Alaska

The coal and other natural resources of Alaska should be opened to development at once. They are owned by the people of the United States, and are safe from monopoly, waste or destruction only while so owned.

We demand that they shall neither be sold nor given away, except under the Homestead Law, but while held in Government ownership shall be opened to use promptly upon liberal terms requiring immediate development.

Thus the benefit of cheap fuel will accrue to the Government of the United States and to the people of Alaska and the Pacific Coast; the settlement of extensive agricultural lands will be hastened; the extermination of the salmon will be prevented and the just and wise development of Alaskan resources will take the place of private extortion or monopoly.

We demand also that extortion or monopoly in transportation shall be prevented by the prompt acquisition, construction or improvement by the Government of such railroads, harbor and other facilities for transportation as the welfare of the people may demand.

We promise the people of the Territory of Alaska the same measure of legal self-government that was given to other American territories, and that Federal officials appointed there shall be qualified by previous bona-fide residence in the Territory.

Waterways

The rivers of the United States are the natural arteries of this continent. We demand that they shall be opened to traffic as indispensable parts of a great Nation-wide system of transportation, in which the Panama Canal will be the central link, thus enabling the whole interior of the United States to share with the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards in the benefit derived from the canal.

It is a National obligation to develop our rivers, and especially the Mississippi and its tributaries, without delay, under a comprehensive general plan covering each river system from its source to its mouth, designed to secure its highest usefulness for navigation, irrigation, domestic supply, water power and the prevention of floods.

We pledge our party to the immediate preparation of such a plan, which should be made and carried out in close and friendly co-operation between the Nation, the States and the cities affected.

Under such a plan, the destructive floods of the Mississippi and other streams, which represent a vast and needless loss to the Nation, would be controlled by forest conservation and water storage at the headwaters, and by levees below; land sufficient to support millions of people would be reclaimed from the deserts and the swamps, water power enough to transform the industrial standings of whole States would be developed, adequate water terminals would be provided, transportation by river would revive, and the railroads would be compelled to co-operate as freely with the boat lines as with each other.

The equipment, organization and experience acquired in constructing the Panama Canal soon will be available for the Lakes-to-the-Gulf deep waterway and other portions of this great work, and should be utilized by the Nation in co-operation with the various States, at the lowest net cost to the people.

Panama Canal

The Panama Canal, built and paid for by the American people, must be used primarily for their benefit.

We demand that the canal shall be so operated as to break the transportation monopoly now held and misused by the transcontinental railroads by maintaining sea competition with them; that ships directly or indirectly owned or controlled by American railroad corporations shall not be permitted to use the canal, and that American ships engaged in coastwise trade shall pay no tolls.

The Progressive party will favor legislation having for its aim the development of friendship and commerce between the United States and Latin-American nations.

Tariff

We believe in a protective tariff which shall equalize conditions of competition between the United States and foreign countries, both for the farmer and the manufacturer, and which shall maintain for labor an adequate standard of living.

Primarily the benefit of any tariff should be disclosed in the pay envelope of the laborer. We declare that no industry deserves protection which is unfair to labor or which is operating in violation of Federal law. We believe that the presumption is always in favor of the consuming public.

We demand tariff revision because the present tariff is unjust to the people of the United States. Fair dealing toward the people requires an immediate downward revision of those schedules wherein duties are shown to be unjust or excessive.

We pledge ourselves to the establishment of a non-partisan scientific tariff commission, reporting both to the President and to either branch of Congress, which shall report, first, as to the costs of production, efficiency of labor, capitalization, industrial organization and efficiency and the general competitive position in this country and abroad of industries seeking protection from Congress; second, as to the revenue producing power of the tariff and its relation to the resources of Government; and, third, as to the effect of the tariff on prices, operations of middlemen, and on the purchasing power of the consumer.

We believe that this commission should have plenary power to elicit information, and for this purpose to prescribe a uniform system of accounting for the great protected industries. The work of the commission should not prevent the immediate adoption of acts reducing these schedules generally recognized as excessive.

We condemn the Payne-Aldrich bill as unjust to the people. The Republican organization is in the hands of those who have broken, and cannot again be trusted to keep, the promise of necessary downward revision.

The Democratic party is committed to the destruction of the protective system through a tariff for revenue only?a policy which would inevitably produce widespread industrial and commercial disaster.

We demand the immediate repeal of the Canadian Reciprocity Act.

Inheritance and Income Tax

We believe in a graduated inheritance tax as a National means of equalizing the obligations of holders of property to Government, and we hereby pledge our party to enact such a Federal law as will tax large inheritances, returning to the States an equitable percentage of all amounts collected.

We favor the ratification of the pending amendment to the Constitution giving the Government power to levy an income tax.

Peace and National Defense

The Progressive party deplores the survival in our civilization of the barbaric system of warfare among nations with its enormous waste of resources even in time of peace, and the consequent impoverishment of the life of the toiling masses. We pledge the party to use its best endeavors to substitute judicial and other peaceful means of settling international differences.

We favor an international agreement for the limitation of naval forces. Pending such an agreement, and as the best means of preserving peace, we pledge ourselves to maintain for the present the policy of building two battleships a year.

Treaty Rights

We pledge our party to protect the rights of American citizenship at home and abroad. No treaty should receive the sanction of our Government which discriminates between American citizens because of birthplace, race, or religion, or that does not recognize the absolute right of expatriation.

The Immigrant

Through the establishment of industrial standards we propose to secure to the able-bodied immigrant and to his native fellow workers a larger share of American opportunity.

We denounce the fatal policy of indifference and neglect which has left our enormous immigrant population to become the prey of chance and cupidity.

We favor Governmental action to encourage the distribution of immigrants away from the congested cities, to rigidly supervise all private agencies dealing with them and to promote their assimilation, education and advancement.

Pensions

We pledge ourselves to a wise and just policy of pensioning American soldiers and sailors and their widows and children by the Federal Government. And we approve the policy of the southern States in granting pensions to the ex-Confederate soldiers and sailors and their widows and children.

Parcel Post

We pledge our party to the immediate creation of a parcel post, with rates proportionate to distance and service.

Civil Service

We condemn the violations of the Civil Service Law under the present administration, including the coercion and assessment of subordinate employees, and the President's refusal to punish such violation after a finding of guilty by his own commission; his distribution of patronage among subservient congressmen, while withholding it from those who refuse support of administration measures; his withdrawal of nominations from the Senate until political support for himself was secured, and his open use of the offices to reward those who voted for his renomination.

To eradicate these abuses, we demand not only the enforcement of the civil service act in letter and spirit, but also legislation which will bring under the competitive system postmasters, collectors, marshals, and all other non-political officers, as well as the enactment of an equitable retirement law, and we also insist upon continuous service during good behavior and efficiency.

Government Business Organization

We pledge our party to readjustment of the business methods of the National Government and a proper co-ordination of the Federal bureaus, which will increase the economy and efficiency of the Government service, prevent duplications, and secure better results to the taxpayers for every dollar expended.

Government Supervision Over Investments

The people of the United States are swindled out of many millions of dollars every year, through worthless investments. The plain people, the wage earner and the men and women with small savings, have no way of knowing the merit of concerns sending out highly colored prospectuses offering stock for sale, prospectuses that make big returns seem certain and fortunes easily within grasp.

We hold it to be the duty of the Government to protect its people from this kind of piracy. We, therefore, demand wise, carefully thought out legislation that will give us such Governmental supervision over this matter as will furnish to the people of the United States this much-needed protection, and we pledge ourselves thereto.

Conclusion

On these principles and on the recognized desirability of uniting the Progressive forces of the Nation into an organization which shall unequivocally represent the Progressive spirit and policy we appeal for the support of all American citizens, without regard to previous political affiliations.

Farmer-Labor Party (1918–1944)

1920

PREAMBLE

The American Declaration of Independence, adopted July 4, 1776, states that governments are instituted to secure to the people the rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Democracy cannot exist unless all power is preserved to the people. The only excuse for the existence of government is to serve, not to rule, the people.

In the United States of America, the power of government, the priceless and inalienable heritage of the people, has been stolen from the people - has been seized by a few men who control the wealth of the nation and by the tools of these men, maintained by them in public office in public office to do their bidding.

The administrative offices of the government and congress are controlled by the financial barons - even courts have been prostituted - and the people as a result of this usurpation have been reduced to economic and industrial servitude.

Under the prevailing order in the United States, wealth is monopolized by a few and the people are kept in poverty, while costs of living mount until the burden of providing the necessaries of life is well-nigh intolerable.

Having thus robbed the people first of their power and then of their wealth, the wielders of financial power, seeking new fields of exploitation, have committed the government of the United States, against the will of the people, to imperialistic policies and seek to extend these enterprises to such lengths that our nation to-day stands in danger of becoming an empire instead of a republic.

Just emerging from a war which we said we fought to extend democracy to the ends of the earth, we find ourselves helpless while the masters of our government, who are also the masters of industry and commerce, league themselves with the masters of other nations to prevent self-determination by helpless people and to exploit and rob them, notwithstanding that we committed ourselves to guaranty of self-government for all such peoples.

Following the greedy spectacle of the peace conference, the money-masters feared an awakening of the people which threatened to exact for mankind those benefits for which the war was said to have been fought. Thereupon these masters, in the United States, through their puppets in public office, in an effort to stifle free discussion, stripped from the inhabitants of this land, rights and liberties guaranteed under American doctrines on which this country was founded and guaranteed also by the federal constitution.

These rights and liberties must be restored to the people.

More than this must be done. All power to govern this nation must be restored to the people. This involved industrial freedom, for political democracy is only an empty phrase without industrial democracy. This can not be done by superficial, palliative measures such as are, from time to time, thrown as sops to the voters by the Republican and Democratic parties. Patchwork cannot repair the destruction of democracy wrought by these two old parties. Reconstruction is necessary.

The invisible government of the United States maintains the two old parties to confuse the voters with false issues. These parties, therefore, can not seriously attempt reconstruction, which, to be effective, must smash to atoms the money power of the proprietors of the two old parties.

Into this breach step the amalgamated groups of forward looking men and women who perform useful work with hand and brain, united in the FARMER-LABOR Party of the United States by a spontaneous and irresistible impulse to do righteous battle for democracy against despoilers, and more especially determined to function together because of the exceptionally brazen defiance shown by the two old parties in the selection of their candidates and the writing of their platforms in this campaign. This party, financed by its rank and file and not by big business, sets about the task of fundamental reconstruction of democracy in the United States, to restore all power to the people and to set up a governmental structure that will prevent seizure, henceforth, of that power by a few unscrupulous men.

The reconstruction proposed is set forth in the following platform of national issues, to which all candidates of the Farmer-Labor Party are pledged:

1. 100 PER CENT AMERICANISM

Restoration of civil liberties and American doctrines and their preservation inviolate, including free speech, free press, free assemblage, right of asylum, equal opportunity, and trial by jury; return of the Department of Justice to the functions for which it was created, to the end that laws may be enforced without favor and without discrimination; amnesty for all persons imprisoned because of their patriotic insistence upon their constitutional guaranties, industrial activities or religious beliefs; repeal of all so-called "espionage," "sedition," and "criminal syndicalist," laws; protection of the right of all workers to strike, and stripping from the courts of power unlawfully usurped by them and used to defeat the people and foster big business, especially the power to issue anti-labor injunctions and to declare unconstitutional laws passed by Congress.

To Americanize the federal courts, we demand that federal judges be elected for terms not to exceed four years, subject to recall.

As Americanism means democracy, suffrage should be universal. We demand immediate ratification of the nineteenth amendment and full, unrestricted political rights for all citizens, regardless of sex, race, color or creed, and for civil service employes.

Democracy demands also that people be equipped with the instruments of the initiative, referendum and recall, with the special provision that war may not be declared except in cases of actual military invasion, before referring the question to a direct vote of the people.

2. ABOLISH IMPERIALISM AT HOME AND ABROAD

Withdrawal of the United States from further participation (under the treaty of Versailles) in the reduction of conquered peoples to economic or political subjection to the small groups of men who manipulate the bulk of the world's wealth; refusal to permit our government to aid in the exploitation of the weaker people of the earth by these men; refusal to permit use of the agencies of our government (through dollar diplomacy or other means) by the financial interests of our country to exploit other peoples, including emphatic refusal to go to war with Mexico at the behest of Wall Street; recognition of the elected government of the Republic of Ireland and of the government established by the Russian people; denial of assistance financial, military, or otherwise, for foreign armies invading these countries, and an embargo on the shipment of arms and ammunition to be used against the Russian or Irish people; instant lifting of the blockade against Russia; recognition of every government set up by people who wrest their sovereignty from oppressors, in accordance with the right of self-determination for all peoples; abolition of secret treaties and prompt publication of all diplomatic documents received by the State Department; withdrawal from imperialistic enterprises upon which we already have embarked (including the dictatorship we exercise in varying degrees over the Philippines, Hawaii, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Porto Rico, Cuba, Samoa and Guam); and prevention of the imposition upon the people of the United States of any form whatever of conscription, military or industrial, or of military training.

We stand committed to a league of free peoples, organized and pledged to destruction of autocracy, militarism and economic imperialism throughout the world and to bring about a world-wide disarmament and open diplomacy, to the end that there shall be no more kings and no more wars.

3. DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF INDUSTRY

The right of labor to an increasing share in the responsibilities and management of industry; application of this principle to be developed in accordance with the experience of actual operation.

4. PUBLIC OWNERSHIP AND OPERATION

Immediate repeal of the Esch-Cummins Law; public ownership and operation, with democratic operation of the railroads, mines and natural resources, including stock-yards, large abattoirs, grain-elevators, water-power, and coal-storage and terminal warehouses; government ownership and democratic operation of railroads, mines and such natural resources as are in whole or in part bases of control by special interests of basic industries and monopolies such as lands containing coal, iron, copper, oil, large water-power and commercial timber tracts; pipe lines and oil tanks; telegraph and telephone lines; and establishment of a public policy that no land (including natural resources) and no patents shall be held out of use for speculation or to aid monopoly; establishment of national and state owned banks where the money of the government must, and that of individuals may, be deposited; granting of credit to individuals or groups according to regulations laid down by Congress which will safe-guard deposits.

We denounce the attempt to scuttle our great government-owned merchant marine and favor bringing ocean-going commerce to our inland ports.

5. PROMOTION OF AGRICULTURAL PROSPERITY

Legislation that will effectively check and reduce the growth and evils of farm tenancy; establishment of public markets; extension of the federal farm loan system, making personal credit readily available and cheap to farmers; maintenance of dependable transportation for farm products; organization of a state and national service that will furnish adequate advice and guidance to applicants for farms and to farmers already on the land; legislation to promote and protect farmers' and consumers' co-operative organizations conducted for mutual benefit; comprehensive studies of costs of production of farm and staple manufactured products and uncensored publication of facts found in such studies.

6. GOVERNMENT FINANCE

We demand that economy in government expenditures shall replace the extravagance that has run riot under the present administration. The governmental expenditures of the present year of peace, as already disclosed, exceed $6,000,0000,0000 - or six times the annual expenditures of the pre-war period. We condemn and denounce the system that has created one war-millionaire for every three American soldiers killed in the war in France, and we demand that this war-acquired wealth shall be taxed in such a manner as to prevent the shifting of the burden of taxation to the shoulders of the poor in the shape of higher prices and of increased living costs.

We are opposed, therefore, to consumption taxes and to all indirect taxation for support of current operations of government. For support of such current operations, we favor steeply graduated income taxes, exempting individual incomes amounting to less than $3,000 a year, with a further exemption allowance of $300 for every child under 18 and also for every child over 18 who may be pursuing an education to fit himself for life. In the case of state governments and of local governments we favor taxation of land value, but not of improvements or of equipment, and also sharply graduated income taxes on inheritance.

7. REDUCE THE COST OF LIVING

Stabilization of currency so that it may not fluctuate as at present, carrying the standard of living of all people down with it when it depreciates; federal control of the meat packing industry; extension and perfection of the Parcel Post system to bring producer and consumer closer together; enforcing existing laws against profiteers, especially the big and powerful ones.

8. JUSTICE TO THE SOLDIERS

We favor paying the soldiers of the late war as a matter of right and not as a charity, a sufficient sum ti make their war-pay not less than civilian earnings. We denounce the delays in payment, and the inadequate compensation to disabled soldiers and sailors and their dependents, and we pledge such changes as will promptly and adequately give sympathetic recognition of their services and sacrifices.

9. LABOR BILL OF RIGHTS

During the years that Labor has tried in vain to obtain recognition of the rights of the workers at the hands of the government through the agencies of the Republican and Democratic parties, the principal demands of Labor have been catalogued and presented by the representatives of Labor, who have gone to convention after convention of the old parties - to Congress after Congress of old-party office-holders. Those conventions and sessions of Congress have, from time to time, included platforms and laws a few fragments of Labor's program, carefully rewritten, however, to interpose no interference with the oppression of Labor by private wielders of the power of capital. It remains for the Farmer-Labor Party, the people's own party, financed by the people themselves, to pledge itself to the entire Bill of Rights of Labor, the conditions enumerated therein to be written into the laws of the land to be enjoyed by the workers, organized or unorganized, without amelioration of a single word in the program. Abraham Lincoln said: "Labor is the superior of Capital, and deserves the highest consideration."

We pledge the application of this fundamental principle in the enactment and administration of legislation.

(a) The unqualified right of all workers, including civil service employes, to organize and bargain collectively with employers through such representatives of their unions as they choose.

(b) Freedom from compulsory arbitration and all other attempts to coerce workers.

(c) A maximum standard 8-hour day and 44-hour week.

(d) Old age and unemployment payments and workmen's compensation to insure workers and their dependents against accident and disease.

(e) Establishment and operation, through periods of depression, of governmental work on housing, road-building, reforestation, reclamation of cut-over timber, desert and swamp lands and development of ports, waterways and water-power plants.

(f) Re-education of cripples of industry as well as victims of war.

(g) Abolition of employment of children under sixteen years of age.

(h) Complete and effective protection for women in industry, with equal pay for equal work.

(i) Abolition of private employment, detective and strike-breaking agencies and extension of the federal free employment service.

(j) Prevention of exploitation of immigration and immigrants by employers.

(k) Vigorous enforcement of the Seamen's Act, and the most liberal interpretation of its provisions. The present provisions for the protections of seamen and for the safety of the traveling public, must not be minimized.

(l) Exclusion from interstate commerce of the products of convict labor.

(m) A federal department of education to advance democracy and effectiveness in all public school systems through the country, to the end that the children of workers in industrial and rural communities may have maximum opportunity of training to become unafraid, well-informed citizens of a free country.

Progressive Party (1924–1946)

1924

The great issue before the American people today is the control of government and industry by private monopoly.

For a generation the people have struggled patiently, in the face of repeated betrayals by successive administrations, to free themselves from this intolerable power which has been undermining representative government.

Through control of government, monopoly has steadily extended its absolute dominion to every basic industry.

In violation of law, monopoly has crushed competition, stifled private initiative and independent enterprise, and without fear of punishment now exacts extortionate profits upon every necessity of life consumed by the public.

The equality of opportunity proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence and asserted and defended by Jefferson and Lincoln as the heritage of every American citizen has been displaced by special privilege for the few, wrested from the government of the many.

Fundamental Rights in Danger

That tyrannical power which the American people denied to a king, they will no longer endure from the monopoly system. The people know they cannot yield to any group the control of the economic life of the nation and preserve their political liberties. They know monopoly has its representatives in the hails of Congress, on the Federal bench, and in the executive departments; that these servile agents barter away tile nation's natural resources, nullify acts of Congress by judicial veto and administrative favor, invade the people's rights by unlawful arrests and unconstitutional searches and seizures, direct our foreign policy in the interests of predatory wealth, and make wars and conscript the sons of the common people to fight them.

The usurpation in recent years by the federal courts of the power to nullify laws duly enacted by the legislative branch of the government is a plain violation of the Constitution. Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, said: "The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal." The Constitution specifically vests all legislative power in the Congress, giving that body power and authority to override the veto of the president. The federal courts are given no authority under the Constitution to veto acts of Congress. Since the federal courts have assumed to exercise such veto power, it is essential that the Constitution shall give the Congress the right to override such judicial veto, otherwise the Court will make itself master over the other coordinate branches of the government. The people themselves must approve or disapprove the present exercise of legislative power by the federal courts.

Distress of American Farmers

The present condition of American agriculture constitutes an emergency of the gravest character. The Department of Commerce report shows that during 1923 there was a steady and marked increase in dividends paid by the great industrial corporations. The same is true of the steam and electric railways and practically all other large corporations. On the other hand, the Secretary of Agriculture reports that in the fifteen principal wheat growing states more than 108,000 farmers since 1920 have lost their farms through foreclosure or bankruptcy; that more than 122,000 have surrendered their property without legal proceedings, and that nearly 375,000 have retained possession of their property only through the leniency of their creditors, making a total of more than 600,000 or 26 per cent of all farmers who have virtually been bankrupted since 1920 in these fifteen states alone.

Almost unlimited prosperity for the great corporations and ruin and bankruptcy for agriculture is the direct and logical result of the policies and legislation which deflated the farmer while extending almost unlimited credit to the great corporations; which protected with exorbitant tariffs the industrial magnates, but depressed the prices of the farmers' products by financial juggling while greatly increasing the cost of what he must buy; which guaranteed excessive freight rates to the railroads and put a premium on wasteful management while saddling an unwarranted burden on to the backs of the American farmer; which permitted gambling in the products of the farm by grain speculators to the great detriment of the farmer and to the great profit of the grain gambler.

A Covenant With the People

Awakened by the dangers which menace their freedom and prosperity the American people still retain the right and courage to exercise their sovereign control over their government. In order to destroy the economic and political power ofmonopoly, which has come between the people and their government, we pledge ourselves to the following principles and policies:

The House Cleaning

1. We pledge a complete housecleaning in the Department of Justice, the Department of the Interior, and the other executive departments. We demand that the power of the Federal Government be used to crush private monopoly, not to foster it.

Natural Resources

2. We pledge recovery of the navy's oil reserves and all other parts of the public domain which have been fraudulently or illegally leased, or otherwise wrongfully transferred, to the control of private interests; vigorous prosecution of all public officials, private citizens and corporations that participated in these transactions; complete revision of the water-power act, the general leasing act, and all other legislation relating to the public domain. We favor public ownership of the nation's water power and the creation and development of a national super-water-power system, including Muscle Shoals, to supply at actual cost light and power for the people and nitrate for the farmers, and strict public control and permanent conservation of all the nation's resources, including coal, iron and other ores, oil and timber lands, in the interest of the people.

Railroads

3. We favor repeal of the Esch-Cummins railroad law and the fixing of railroad rates upon the basis of actual, prudent investment and cost of service. We pledge speedy enactment of the Howell-Barkley Bill for the adjustment of controversies between railroads and their employees, which was held up in the last Congress by joint action of reactionary leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties. We declare for public ownership of railroads with definite safeguards against bureaucratic control, as the only final solution of the transportation problem.

Tax Reduction

4. We favor reduction of Federal taxes upon individual incomes and legitimate business, limiting tax exactions strictly to the requirements of the government administered with rigid economy, particularly by curtailment of the eight hundred million dollars now annually expended for the army and navy in preparation for future wars; by the recovery of the hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from the Treasury through fraudulent war contracts and the corrupt leasing of the public resources; and by diligent action to collect the accumulated interest upon the eleven billion dollars owing us by foreign governments.

We denounce the Mellon tax plan as a device to relieve multi-millionaires at the expense of other tax payers, and favor a taxation policy providing for immediate reductions upon moderate incomes, large increases in the inheritance tax rates upon large estates to prevent the indefinite accumulation by inheritance of great fortunes in a few hands; taxes upon excess profits to penalize profiteering, and complete publicity, under proper safeguards, of all Federal tax returns.

The Courts

5. We favor submitting to the people, for their considerate judgment, a constitutional amendment providing that Congress may by enacting a statute make it effective over a judicial veto.

We favor such amendment to the constitution as may be necessary to provide for the election of all Federal Judges, without party designation, for fixed terms not exceeding ten years, by direct vote of the people.

The Farmers

6. We favor drastic reduction of the exorbitant duties on manufactures provided in the Ford-ney-McCumber tariff legislation, the prohibiting of gambling by speculators and profiteers in agricultural products; the reconstruction of the Federal Reserve and Federal Farm Loan Systems, so as to eliminate control by usurers, speculators and international financiers, and to make the credit of the nation available upon fair terms to all and without discrimination to business men, farmers and home-builders. We advocate the calling of a special session of Congress to pass legislation for the relief of American agriculture. We favor such further legislation as may be needful or helpful in promoting and protecting cooperative enterprises. We demand that the Interstate Commerce Commission proceed forthwith to reduce by an approximation to pre-war levels the present freight rates on agricultural products, including live stock, and upon the materials required upon American farms for agricultural purposes.

Labor

7. We favor abolition of the use of injunctions in labor disputes and declare for complete protection of the right of farmers and industrial workers to organize, bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and conduct without hindrance cooperative enterprises.

We favor prompt ratification of the Child Labor amendment, and subsequent enactment of a Federal law to protect children in industry.

Postal Service

8. We believe that a prompt and dependable postal service is essential to the social and economic welfare of the nation; and that as one of the most important steps toward establishing and maintaining such a service, it is necessary to fix wage standards that will secure and retain employees of character, energy and ability.

We favor the enactment of the postal salary adjustment measure (S. 1898) for the employees of the postal service, passed by the first session of the 68th Congress, vetoed by the President and now awaiting further consideration by the next session of Congress.

We endorse liberalizing the Civil Service Retirement Law along the lines of S. 3011 now pending in Congress.

War Veterans

9. We favor adjusted compensation for the veterans of the late war, not as charity, but as a matter of right, and we demand that the money necessary to meet this obligation of the government be raised by taxes laid upon wealth in proportion to the ability to pay, and declare our opposition to the sales tax or any other device to shift this obligation onto the backs of the poor in higher prices and increased cost of living. We do not regard the payment at the end of a long period of a small insurance as provided by the law recently passed as in any just sense a discharge of the nation's obligations to the veterans of the late war.

Great Lakes to Sea

10. We favor a deep waterway from the Great Lakes to the sea. The government should, in conjunction with Canada, take immediate action to give the northwestern states an outlet to the ocean for cargoes, without change in bulk, thus making the primary markets on the Great Lakes equal to those of New York.

Popular Sovereignty

11. Over and above constitutions and statutes and greater than all, is the supreme sovereignty of the people, and with them should rest the final decision of all great questions of national policy. We favor such amendments to the Federal Constitution as may be necessary to provide for the direct nomination and election of the President, to extend the initiative and referendum to the federal government, and to insure a popular referendum for or against war except in cases of actual invasion.

Peace on Earth

12. We denounce the mercenary system of foreign policy under recent administrations in the interests of financial imperialists, oil monopolists and international bankers, which has at times degraded our State Department from its high service as a strong and kindly intermediary of defenseless governments to a trading outpost for those interests and concession-seekers engaged in the exploitations of weaker nations, as contrary to the will of the American people, destructive of domestic development and provocative of war. We favor an active foreign policy to bring about a revision of the Versailles treaty in accordance with the terms of the armistice, and to promote firm treaty agreements with all nations to outlaw wars, abolish conscription, drastically reduce land, air and naval armaments, and guarantee public referendum on peace and war.

Union Party (1936)

1936

1. America shall be self-contained and self-sustained - no foreign entanglements, be they political, economic, financial or military.

2. Congress and Congress alone shall coin and issue the currency and regulate the value of all money and credit in the United States through a central bank of issue.

3. Immediately following the establishment of the central bank of issue Congress shall provide for the retirement of all tax-exempt, interest-bearing bonds and certificates of indebtedness of the Federal Government and shall refinance all the present agricultural mortgage indebtedness for the farmer and all the home mortgage indebtedness for the city owner by the use of its money and credit which it now gives to the private bankers.

4. Congress shall legislate that there will be an assurance of a living annual wage for all laborers capable of working and willing to work.

5. Congress shall legislate that there will be an assurance of production at a profit for the farmer.

6. Congress shall legislate that there will be assurance of reasonable and decent security for the aged, who, through no fault of their own, have been victimized and exploited by an unjust economic system which has so concentrated wealth in the hands of a few that it has impoverished great masses of our people.

7. Congress shall legislate that American agricultural, industrial, and commercial markets will be protected from manipulation of foreign moneys and from all raw material and processed goods produced abroad at less than a living wage.

8. Congress shall establish an adequate and perfect defense for our country from foreign aggression either by air, by land, or by sea, but with the understanding that our naval, air, and military forces must not be used under any consideration in foreign fields or in foreign waters either alone or in conjunction with any foreign power. If there must be conscription, there shall be a conscription of wealth as well as a conscription of men.

9. Congress shall so legislate that all Federal offices and positions of every nature shall be distributed through civil-service qualifications and not through a system of party spoils and corrupt patronage.

10. Congress shall restore representative government to the people of the United States to preserve the sovereignty of the individual States of the United States by the ruthless eradication of bureaucracies.

11. Congress shall organize and institute Federal works for the conservation of public lands, waters, and forests, thereby creating billions of dollars of wealth, millions of jobs at the prevailing wage, and thousands of homes.

12. Congress shall protect small industry and private enterprise by controlling and decentralizing economic domination of monopolies to the end that these small industries and enterprises may not only survive and prosper but that they may be multiplied.

13. Congress shall protect private property from confiscation through unnecessary taxation with the understanding that the human rights of the masses take precedence over the financial rights of the classes.

14. Congress shall set a limitation upon the net income of any individual in any one year and a limitation of the amount that such an individual may receive as a gift or as an inheritance, which limitation shall be executed through taxation.

15. Congress shall reestablish conditions, so that the youths of the Nation, as they emerge from schools and colleges, will have the opportunity to earn a decent living while in the process of perfecting and establishing themselves in a trade or profession.

Progressive Party (1948–1955)

1948

PREAMBLE

Three years after the end of the second world war, the drums are beating for a third. Civil liberties are being destroyed. Millions cry out for relief from unbearably high prices. The American way of life is in danger.

The root cause of this crisis is Big Business control of our economy and government. With toil and enterprise the American people have created from their rich resources the world's greatest productive machine. This machine no longer belongs to the people. Its ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few and its product used for their enrichment. Never before have so few owned so much at the expense of so many.

Ten years ago Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned: "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state. That, in its essence, is fascism."

Today that private power has constituted itself an invisible government which pulls the strings of its puppet Republican and Democratic parties. Two sets of candidates compete for votes under the outworn emblems of the old parties. But both represent a single program—a program of monopoly profits through war preparations, lower living standards, and suppression of dissent.

For generations the common man of America has resisted this concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a few. The great¬est of America's political leaders have led the people into battle against the money power, the railroads, the trusts, the economic royalists. We of the Progressive Party are the present-day descendants of these people's movements and fighting leaders. We are the political heirs of Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln — of Frederick Douglass, Altgeld and Debs — of "Fighting Bob" LaFollette, George Norris, and Franklin Roosevelt.

Throughout our history new parties have arisen when the old parties have betrayed the people. As Jefferson headed a new party to defeat the reactionaries of his day, and as Lincoln led a new party to victory over the slave-owners, so today the people, inspired and led by Henry Wallace, have created a new party to secure peace, freedom, and abundance. With the firm conviction that the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution of the United States set forth all fundamental freedoms for all people and secure the safety and well being of our country, the Progressive Party pledges itself to safeguard these principles to the American people.

BETRAYAL BY THE OLD PARTIES

The American people want peace. But the old parties, obedient to the dictates of monopoly and the military, prepare for war in the name of peace.

They refuse to negotiate a settlement of differences with the Soviet Union.

They reject the United Nations as an instrument for promoting world peace and reconstruction. They use the Marshall Plan to rebuild Nazi Germany as a war base and to subjugate the economies of other European countries to American Big Business.

They finance and arm corrupt, fascist governments in China, Greece, Turkey, and elsewhere, through the Truman Doctrine, wasting billions in American resources and squandering America's heritage as the enemy of despotism.

They encircle the globe with military bases which other peoples cannot but view as threats to their freedom and security.

They protect the war-making industrial and financial barons of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, and restore them to power.

They stockpile atomic bombs.

They pass legislation to admit displaced per¬sons, discriminating against Catholics, Jews, and other victims of Hitler.

They impose a peacetime draft and move toward Universal Military Training.

They fill policy-making positions in government with generals and Wall Street bankers.

Peace cannot be won—but profits can—by spending ever-increasing billions of the people's money in war preparations.

Yet these are the policies of the two old parties—policies profaning the name of peace.

The American people cherish freedom.

But the old parties, acting for the forces of special privilege, conspire to destroy traditional American freedoms.

They deny the Negro people the rights of citizenship. They impose a universal policy of Jim Crow and enforce it with every weapon of terror. They refuse to outlaw its most bestial expression—the crime of lynching.

They refuse to abolish the poll tax, and year after year they deny the right to vote to Negroes and millions of white people in the South.

They aim to reduce nationality groups to a position of social, economic, and political inferiority.

They connive to bar the .Progressive Party from the ballot.

They move to outlaw the Communist Party as a decisive step in their assault on the democratic rights of labor, of national, racial, and political minorities, and of all those who oppose their drive to war. In this they repeat the history of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Franco Spain.

They support the House Committee on Un-American Activities in its vilification and persecution of citizens in total disregard of the Bill of Rights.

They build the Federal Bureau of Investigation into a political police with secret dossiers on millions of Americans.

They seek to regiment the thinking of the American people and to suppress political dissent.

They strive to enact such measures as the Mundt-Nixon Bill which are as destructive of democracy as were the Alien and Sedition Laws against which Jefferson fought.

They concoct a spurious "loyalty" program to create an atmosphere of fear and hysteria in government and industry.

They shackle American labor with the Taft-Hartley Act at the express command of Big Business, while encouraging exorbitant profits through uncontrolled inflation.

They restore the labor injunction as a weapon for breaking strikes and smashing unions.

This is the record of the two old parties—a record profaning the American ideal of freedom. The American people want abundance.

But the old parties refuse to enact effective price and rent controls, making the people victims of a disastrous inflation which dissipates the savings of millions of families and depresses their living standards.

They ignore the housing problem, although more than half the nation's families, including millions of veterans, are homeless or living in rural and urban slums.

They refuse social security protection to millions and allow only meagre benefits to the rest.

They block national health legislation even though millions of men, women, and children are without adequate medical care.

They foster the concentration of private economic power.

They replace progressive government officials, the supporters of Franklin Roosevelt, with spokes¬men of Big Business.

They pass tax legislation for the greedy, giving only insignificant reductions to the needy.

These are the acts of the old parties—acts profaning the American dream of abundance.

No glittering party platforms or election promises of the Democratic and Republican parties can hide their betrayal of the needs of the American people.

Nor can they act otherwise. For both parties, as the record of the 80th Congress makes clear, are the champions of Big Business.

The Republican platform admits it.

The Democratic platform attempts to conceal it.

But the very composition of the Democratic leadership exposes the demogogy of its platform. It is a party of machine politicians and Southern Bourbons who veto in Congress the liberal planks "won" in convention.

Such platforms, conceived in hypocrisy and lack of principle, deserve nothing but contempt.

PRINCIPLES OF THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY

The Progressive Party is born in the deep conviction that the national wealth and natural resources of our country belong to the people who inhabit it and must be employed in their behalf; that freedom and opportunity must be secured equally to all; that the brotherhood of man can be achieved and scourge of war ended.

The Progressive Party holds that basic to the organization of world peace is a return to the purpose of Franklin Roosevelt to seek areas of international agreement rather than disagreement. It was his conviction that within the framework of the United Nations different social and economic systems can and must live together. If peace is to be achieved capitalist United States and communist Russia must establish good relations and work together.

The Progressive Party holds that it is the first duty of a just government to secure for all the people, regardless of race, creed, color, sex, national background, political belief, or station in life, the inalienable rights proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The government must actively protect these rights against the encroachments of public and private agencies.

The Progressive Party holds that a just government must use its powers to promote an abundant life for its people. This is the basic idea of Franklin Roosevelt's Economic Bill of Rights. Heretofore every attempt to give effect to this principle has failed because Big Business dominates the key sectors of the economy. Anti-trust laws and government regulation cannot break this domination. Therefore the people, through their democratically elected representatives, must take control of the main levers of the economic system. Public ownership of these levers will enable the people to plan the use of their productive re¬sources so as to develop the limitless potential of modern technology and to create a true American- Commonwealth free from poverty and insecurity.

The Progressive Party believes that only through peaceful understanding can the world make progress toward reconstruction and higher standards of living; that peace is the essential condition for safe-guarding and extending our traditional freedoms; that only by preserving liberty and by planning an abundant life for all can we eliminate the sources of world conflict. Peace, freedom, and abundance—the goals of the Progressive Party—are indivisible. Only the Progressive Party can destroy the power of private monopoly and restore the government to the American people. For ours is a party uncorrupted by privilege, committed to no special interests, free from machine control, and open to all Americans of all races, colors, and creeds.

The Progressive Party is a party of action. We seek through the democratic process and through day-by-day activity to lead the American people toward the fulfillment of these principles.

We ask support for the following program:

PEACE American-Soviet Agreement

Henry Wallace in his open letter suggested, and Premier Stalin in his reply accepted, a basis for sincere peace discussions. The exchange showed that specific areas of agreement can be found if the principles of non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations and acceptance of the right of peoples to choose their own form of government and economic system are mutually respected.

The Progressive Party therefore demands negotiation and discussion with the Soviet Union to find areas of agreement to win the peace.

The Progressive Party believes that enduring peace among the peoples of the world community is possible only through world law. Continued anarchy among nations in the atomic age threat¬ens our civilization and humanity itself with annihilation. The only ultimate alternative to war is the abandonment of the principle of the coercion of sovereignties by sovereignties and the adoption of the principle of the just enforcement upon individuals of world federal law, enacted by a world federal legislature with limited but adequate powers to safeguard the common defense and the general welfare of all mankind.

Such a structure of peace through government can be evolved by making of the United Nations an effective agency of cooperation among nations. This can be done by restoring the unity of the Great Powers as they work together for common purposes. Since the death of Franklin Roosevelt, this principle has been betrayed to a degree which not only paralyzes the United Nations but threatens the world with another war in which there can be no victors and few survivors.

Beyond an effective United Nations lies the further possibility of genuine world government. Responsibility for ending the tragic prospect of war is a joint responsibility of the Soviet Union and the United States. We hope for more political liberty and economic democracy throughout the world. We believe that war between East and West will mean fascism and death for all.

We insist that peace is the prerequisite of survival.

We believe with Henry Wallace that "there is no misunderstanding or difficulty between the USA and USSR which can be settled by force or fear and there is no difference which cannot be settled by peaceful, hopeful negotiation. There is no American principle of public interest, and there is no Russian principle of public interest, which would have to be sacrificed to end the cold war and open up the Century of Peace which the Century of the Common Man demands."

We denounce anti-Soviet hysteria as a mask for monopoly, militarism, and reaction. We demand that a new leadership of the peace-seeking people of our nation—which has vastly greater responsibility for peace than Russia because it has vastly greater power for war— undertake in good faith and carry to an honorable conclusion, without appeasement or sabre- rattling on either side, a determined effort to settle current controversies and enable men and women everywhere to look forward with confidence to the common task of building a creative and lasting peace for all the world.

End the Drive to War

The Progressive Party calls for the repeal of the peacetime draft and the rejection of Universal Military Training.

We call for the immediate cessation of the piling up of armament expenditures beyond reasonable peacetime requirements for national defense.

We demand the repudiation of the Truman Doctrine and an end to military and economic intervention in support of reactionary and fascist regimes in China, Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, and Latin America, We demand that the United States completely sever diplomatic and economic relations with Franco Spain.

We call for the abandonment of military bases designed to encircle and intimidate other nations.

We demand the repeal of the provisions of the National Security Act which are mobilizing the nation for war, preparing a labor draft, and organizing a monopoly-militarist dictatorship.

These measures will express the American people's determination to avoid provocation and aggression. They will be our contribution to the reduction of mistrust and the creation of a general atmosphere in which peace can be established.

United Nations

The Progressive Party will work to realize Franklin Roosevelt's ideal of the United Nations as a world family of nations, by defending its Charter and seeking to prevent its transformation into the diplomatic or military instrument of any one power or group of powers.

We call for the establishment of a United Nations Reconstruction and Development Fund to promote international recovery by providing assistance to the needy nations of Europe, Africa and Asia, without political conditions and with priori¬ties to those peoples that suffered most from Axis aggression.

We call for the repudiation of the Marshall Plan.

We urge the full use of the Economic and Social Council and other agencies of the United Nations to wipe out disease and starvation, to promote the development of culture and science, and to develop the peaceful application of atomic energy.

We demand that the United States delegation to the United Nations stop protecting fascist Spain and press for effective economic and diplomatic sanctions against Franco's dictatorship.

Disarmament

The Progressive Party will work through the United Nations for a world disarmament agreement to outlaw the atomic bomb, bacteriological warfare, and all other instruments of mass destruction; to destroy existing stockpiles of atomic bombs and to establish United Nations controls, including inspection, over the production of atomic energy; and to reduce conventional armaments drastically in accordance with resolutions already passed by the United Nations General Assembly.

Germany and Japan

The Progressive Party calls for cooperation with our wartime allies to conclude peace treaties promptly with a unified Germany and with Japan. The essentials for a German settlement are denazification and democratization, punishment of war criminals, land reform, decartelization, nationalization of heavy industry, Big-Four control of the Ruhr, reparations to the victims of Nazi aggression, and definitive recognition of the Oder-Neisse line as the Western boundary of Poland. On this basis, we advocate the speedy conclusion of a peace treaty and a simultaneous withdrawal of all occupation troops.

Similar principles should govern a settlement with Japan.

State of Israel

The Progressive Party demands the immediate de jure recognition of the State of Israel. We call for admission of Israel to the United Nations.

We call for a Presidential proclamation lifting the arms embargo in favor of the State of Israel. We pledge our support for and call upon the Government of the United States to safeguard the sovereignty, autonomy, political independence, and territorial integrity of the State of Israel in accordance with the boundaries laid down by the Resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations of November 29, 1947.

We support the prompt extension to Israel of generous financial assistance without political conditions.

We oppose any attempt to interfere with Israel in its sovereign right to control its own immigration policy.

We call upon the United States Government to provide immediate shipping and other facilities for the transportation of Jewish displaced persons in Europe who desire to emigrate to Israel. We support, within the framework of the United Nations, the internationalization of Jerusalem and the protection of the Holy Places.

We appeal to the Arab workers, farmers and small merchants to accept the United Nations decision for a Jewish and Arab state as being in their best interest. We urge them not to permit themselves to be used as tools in a war against Israel on behalf of British and American monopolies, for the latter are the enemies of both Arabs and Jews.

The Far East

The Progressive Party supports the struggle of the peoples of Asia to achieve independence and to move from feudalism into the modern era. We condemn the bipartisan policy of military and economic intervention to crush these people's movements. World peace and prosperity cannot be attained unless the people of China, Indonesia, Indo-China, Malaya and Asian lands win their struggle for independence and take their place as equals in the family of nations.

We call for the immediate withdrawal of American troops and abandonment of bases in China.

We demand cessation of financial and military aid to the Chiang Kai-shek dictatorship. We follow the policy of Franklin Roosevelt in encouraging the creation of a democratic coalition government in China. We urge support for and the granting of large scale economic assistance to such a government.

We support the efforts of the people of Korea to establish national unity and the kind of government they desire. We demand an early joint withdrawal of occupation troops. Colonial and Dependent Peoples

We believe that people everywhere in the world have the right to self-determination. The people of Puerto Rico have the right to independence. The people of the United States have an obligation toward the people of Puerto Rico to see that they are started on the road toward economic security and prosperity.

We demand the repeal of the Bell Trade Act relating to the Philippines and the abrogation of other unequal trade treaties with economically weaker peoples.

We urge action by the people of the United States and cooperation with other countries in the United Nations to abolish the colonial system in all its forms and to realize the principle of self- determination for the peoples of Africa, Asia, the West Indies, and other colonial areas.

We support the aspirations for unified home¬lands, of traditionally oppressed and dispersed people such as the Irish and Armenians.

Latin America

The Progressive Party urges a return to, and the strengthening of Franklin Roosevelt's good- neighbor policy in our relations with republics to the South.

We demand the abandonment of the inter-American military program.

We call for economic assistance without political conditions to further the independent economic development of the Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Displaced Persons

The Progressive Party calls for the repeal of the anti-Catholic, anti-semitic Displaced Persons Act of 1948 which permits the entry into the United States of fascists and collaborators. We call for the enactment of legislation to open our doors in the true American tradition to the victims of fascist persecution.

FREEDOM End Discrimination

The Progressive Party condemns segregation and discrimination in all its forms and in all places.

We demand full equality for the Negro people, the Jewish people, Spanish-speaking Americans, Italian Americans, Japanese Americans, and all Other nationality groups.

We call for a Presidential proclamation ending segregation and all forms of discrimination in the armed services and Federal employment.

We demand Federal anti-lynch, anti-discrimination, and fair-employment-practices legislation, and legislation abolishing segregation in interstate travel.

We call for immediate passage of anti-poll tax legislation, enactment of a universal suffrage law to permit all citizens to vote in Federal elections, and the full use of Federal enforcement powers to assure free exercise of the right to franchise.

We call for a Civil Rights Act for the District of Columbia to eliminate racial segregation and discrimination in the nation's capital.

We demand the ending of segregation and discrimination in the Panama Canal Zone and all territories, possessions and trusteeships.

We demand that Indians, the earliest Americans, be given full citizenship rights without loss of reservation rights and be permitted to administer their own affairs.

We will develop special programs to raise the low standards of health, housing, and educational facilities for Negroes, Indians and nationality groups, and will deny Federal funds to any state or local authority which withholds opportunities or benefits for reasons of race, creed, color, sex or national origin.

We will initiate a Federal program of education, in cooperation with state, local, and private agencies to combat racial and religious prejudice.

We support the enactment of legislation making it a Federal crime to disseminate anti-Semitic, anti-Negro, and all racist propaganda by mail, radio, motion picture or other means of communication.

We call for a Constitutional amendment which will effectively prohibit every form of discrimination against women—economic, educational, legal, and political.

We pledge to respect the freedom of conscience of sincere conscientious objectors to war. We demand amnesty for conscientious objectors imprisoned in World War II.

The Right of Political Association and Expression

The Progressive Party will fight for the constitutional rights of Communists and all other political groups to express their views as the first line in the defense of the liberties of a democratic people.

We oppose the use of violence or intimidation, under cover of law or otherwise, by any individual or group, including the violence and intimidation now being committed by those who are attempting to suppress political dissent.

We pledge an all-out fight against the Mundt-Nixon Bill and all similar legislation designed to impose thought control, restrict freedom of opinion, and establish a police state in America.

We demand the abolition of the House Un-American Activities Committee and similar State Committees, and we mean to right the wrongs which these committees have perpetrated upon thousands of loyal Americans working for the realization of democratic ideals.

We pledge to eliminate the current "Loyalty" purge program and to reestablish standards for government service that respect the rights of Federal employees to freedom of association and opinion and to engage in political activity.

We demand the full right of teachers and students to participate freely and fully in the social, civic and political life of the nation and of the local community.

We demand that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other Government agencies desist from investigating, or interfering with, the political beliefs and lawful activities of Americans.

We demand an end to the present practices of Congressional Committees—such as the House Labor Committee—in persecuting trade unionists and political leaders at the behest of Big Business.

We demand an end to the present campaign of deportation against foreign-born trade unionists and political leaders, and will actively protect the civil rights of naturalized citizens and the foreign born.

Nationality Groups

The Progressive Party recognizes the varied contributions of all nationality groups to American cultural, economic, and social life, and considers them a source of strength for the democratic development of our country.

We advocate the right of the foreign born to obtain citizenship without discrimination.

We advocate the repeal of discriminatory immigration laws based upon race, national origin, religion, or political belief.

We recognize the just claims of the Japanese Americans for indemnity for the losses suffered during their wartime internment, which was an outrageous violation of our fundamental concepts of justice.

We support legislation facilitating naturalization of Filipinos, Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, and other national groups now discriminated against by law.

We support legislation facilitating naturalization of merchant seamen with a record of war service.

Democracy in the Armed Forces

The Progressive Party demands abolition of Jim Crow in the armed forces.

We demand abolition of social inequalities be¬tween officers and enlisted personnel.

We call for basic revision in the procedure of military justice, including the more adequate participation of enlisted men in courts-martial.

We urge that admission to West Point and Annapolis be based on the candidates' qualifications, determined by open competitive examinations, and that an increasing percentage of young men admitted be drawn from the ranks.

Representative Government

The Progressive Party proposes a constitutional amendment providing for the direct election of the President and Vice President by popular vote.

We call for Home Rule and the granting of full suffrage to the disfranchised citizens of the District of Columbia.

We favor the immediate admission of Hawaii and Alaska as the 49th and 50th states of the Union.

We urge that all general and primary election days be declared holidays to enable all citizens to vote.

Separation of Church and State

The Progressive Party intends to maintain the traditional American separation of church and state and protect the freedom of secular education.

ABUNDANCE High Cost of Living

The living standards of the American people are under bipartisan attack through uncontrolled inflation. The only effective method of combating inflation is to take the profits out of inflation. The Progressive Party calls for legislation which will impose controls that will reduce and keep down the prices of food, shelter, clothing, other essentials of life, and basic materials. Such controls should squeeze out excessive profits, provide for the payment of subsidies to farmers wherever necessary to maintain fair agricultural prices, and allocate materials and goods in short supply.

We call for removal by the President of the Housing Expediter who is administering rent control in the interests of the real estate lobby.

We call for strengthening rent control, providing protection against evictions, and eliminating the present "hardship" regulations which are a bonanza for the large realty interests.

Economic Planning

The Progressive Party believes in the principle of democratic economic planning and rejects the boom-and-bust philosophy of the old parties.

We mean to establish a Council of Economic Planning to develop plans for assuring high production, full employment, and a rising standard of living.

We mean to develop, on the TVA pattern, regional planning authorities in the major river- valleys the country over to achieve cheap power, rural electrification, soil conservation, flood control and reforestation, and to accelerate the growth of undeveloped areas, particularly in the South and West.

We mean to promote, through public ownership and long-range planning, the peaceful use of atomic energy to realize its great potential as a source of power and as a tool in science, medicine, and technology.

Only through the planned development of all our resources will the full benefit of the nation's wealth and productivity be secured for the people.

Breaking the Grip of Monopoly

Monopoly's grip on the economy must be broken if democracy is to survive and economic planning become possible. Experience has shown that anti-trust laws and government regulation are not by themselves sufficient to halt the growth of monopoly. The only solution is public ownership of key areas of the economy.

The Progressive Party will initiate such measures of public ownership as may be necessary to put into the hands of the people's representatives the levers of control essential to the operation of an economy of abundance. As a first step, the largest banks, the railroads, the merchant marine, the electric power and gas industry, and industries primarily dependent on government funds or government purchases such as the aircraft, the synthetic rubber and synthetic oil industries must be placed under public ownership.

We mean to strengthen and vigorously enforce the anti-trust laws to curb monopoly in the rest of the economy.

We call for the immediate abolition of discriminatory freight rates, which help to keep the South and West in bondage to Wall Street.

Tideland oil resources belong to the people, and we fight the efforts of the oil companies to steal them. We support Federal control of such resources.

We demand the repeal of the Bulwinkle law which exempts railroads from anti-trust prosecution.

We call for the repeal of the Miller-Tydings legislation which eliminated retail competition in branded goods, excluding these from the coverage of the Anti-trust laws.

Labor

The Progressive Party recognizes that from the earliest period of its history the organized labor movement has taken leadership in the struggle for democratic and humanitarian objectives. Organized labor remains the mainspring of America's democratic striving, and the just needs of labor are of special concern to the Progressive Party.

We hold that every American who works for a living has an inalienable right to an income sufficient to provide him and his family with a high standard of living. Unless the rights of labor to organize, to bargain collectively, and to strike are secure, a rising standard of living cannot be realized.

We demand the immediate repeal of the Tart-Hartley Act and the reinstatement of the principles of the Wagner and Norris-LaGuardia acts. These last measures are essential to restore labor's equality in collective bargaining and to prevent business from using government to establish a dictatorship over labor by injunction.

We will demand the right for employees in publicly owned industries to organize, to bargain collectively, and to strike.

We call for the establishment of collective bar¬gaining machinery for Federal employees.

We support the legitimate demands of all wage and salary earners, including Federal employees, for wage and salary increases and improved working conditions. We demand the enactment of a minimum wage of $1 an hour, extension of the Fair Labor Standards Act to cover all workers, enforcement of equal pay for equal work regard¬less of age or sex, and the elimination of any regional wage differential.

We oppose governmental strike-breaking through seizure of struck industries under the pretext of Federal operation, while profits continue to go to private employers.

We urge the enactment and stringent enforcement of Federal and State laws establishing adequate safety and health standards for miners, longshoremen, railroad workers, merchant sea¬men, and all other workers in hazardous industries.

We pledge drastic amendment of the Railway Labor Act to make certain that the railroad workers enjoy genuine collective bargaining and the right to strike. We call for amendment of the Railroad Retirement Act to grant railroad workers pensions of $100 minimum after 30 years' service or when they become 60 years old.

We call for Federal legislation to improve rail¬road working conditions by establishing a 40- hour, 5-day week for non-operating and terminal employees, and a six-hour day for roadmen, and train limit and full crew provisions.

We actively support measures to repair and improve the living standards of the 12 million white collar and professional employees, who have suffered particularly under the inflation.

We call for an end to the second-class citizen¬ship of our nation's two and a half million agricultural wage workers, and the thousands of food-processing workers who are excluded from the protection of social and labor legislation. We stand for legislation to protect the right of agricultural workers to bargain collectively. We call for extension of social security and fair labor standards coverage to all agricultural and food-processing workers.

We demand an immediate end to the arbitrary security orders issued by the Department of National Defense which blacklist employees in private industries under government contracts.

Agriculture

The Progressive Party recognizes that the welfare of farmers is closely tied to the living standards of consumers. We reject the "eat-less" policy of the old parties and proclaim our intention to develop within the framework of an economy of planned abundance, a long-range program of full agricultural production, combined with necessary safeguards for the security of farmers and for the conservation of our natural resources.

We stand for the family-type farm as the basic unit of American agriculture. The Farmer's Home Administration, (formerly. Farm Security Administration) must be expanded to provide ample low-cost credit to assist tenants, sharecroppers, and returned veterans to become farm- owners. Marginal farmers must be assisted to become efficient producers. Where farming is incapable of yielding an adequate family income, supplementary employment on needed conservation and public works projects must be provided.

We propose as a major goal of Federal farm programs that all farm families be enabled to earn an income of not less than $3000 a year. We repudiate the program of Big Business which would eliminate as many as two-thirds of the nation's farmers.

We call for a 5-year program of price-supports for all major crops at not less than 90 percent of parity—parity to be calculated according to an up-to-date formula. Dairy products and certain specialties should be supported at higher rates than 90 percent.

We demand that all essential crops be insured against hazards which are beyond the control of the individual farmer.

We support the principle of direct payments to farmers for soil conservation practices, crop adjustment, and rodent control.

We favor the principle of compensating payments and production subsidies when needed to encourage a high level of consumption without jeopardizing farm income. We also call for assistance to low-income consumers through such pro¬grams as the food stamp plan and the school hot-lunch program.

We favor international commodity agreements and a World Food Board under the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to stabilize world markets and to move farm surpluses to deficient areas.

We call for a long-range national land policy designed to discourage the growth of corporation farms and absentee ownership. This policy is especially important in the South to promote the proper development of its resources and to provide land for the landless. Priority in the purchase of land made available by river-valley projects must be given to tenants, sharecroppers, and small farmers.

We regard it as of utmost importance that programs of conservation, production, marketing, and price-support be administered by democratically-elected farmer committeemen, as in the TripIe-A program.

We stand for the principle of a graduated land tax and for the 160-acre limitation in the use of public irrigation.

We support farmer and consumer cooperatives as a highly important answer to the problem of monopoly control over markets and supplies.

We oppose the tax drive being staged by Big Business against cooperatives.

We favor immediate flood control projects and universal electrification of all farms. REA lines and generating facilities should be rapidly expanded, and river-valley projects for power and irrigation should be undertaken as promptly as possible.

Independent Business

The Progressive Party believes that independent businessmen can survive only in an economy free from monopoly domination, where workers and farmers receive incomes sufficient to permit them to purchase the goods they need.

We propose to encourage and safeguard independent business by providing adequate working capital and development loans at low interest rates, granting tax relief, and giving independent and small business a fair share of government con¬tracts. We propose to make available to independent business, through an expanded government research program, the know-how essential to efficient operation.

Housing

The Progressive Party charges that private enterprise, under monopoly control, has failed to house the American people. It is the responsibility of democratic government to guarantee the right of every family to a decent home at a price it can afford to pay.

We demand a Federal emergency housing pro¬gram to build within the next two years four million low-rent and low-cost dwellings for home¬less and doubled-up families, with priority to veterans.

We recognize that to accomplish this objective it will be necessary to curb non-essential construction, to allocate scarce materials, and to re¬duce the cost of land, money, and building materials.

We pledge an attack on the chronic housing shortage and the slums through a long-range pro¬gram to build 25 million new homes during the next ten years. This program will include public subsidized housing for low-income families.

We pledge that as a part of our genera] pro¬gram of economic planning the building industry will be reorganized and rationalized, capacity to produce presently scarce materials will be expanded, and year-round employment will be guaranteed to workers in the building trades. Government—Federal, state and local—has the responsibility to insure that communities are well-planned, with homes conveniently located near places of employment and with adequate provision for health, education, recreation, and culture.

We pledge the abolition of discrimination and segregation in housing.

Security and Health

The Progressive Party demands the extension of social security protection to every man, woman and child in the United States.

We recognize the service which the Townsend Plan has performed in bringing to national attention the tragic plight of the senior citizens of America, and we condemn the bipartisan conspiracy in Congress over the past ten years against providing adequate old-age pensions.

We pledge our active support for a national old-age pension of $100 a month to all persons at 60 years of age, based on right and not on a pauperizing need basis. We call for a Federal program of adequate disability and sickness benefits and increased unemployment benefits, protecting all workers and their standards of living.

We call for maternity benefits for working mothers for thirteen weeks, including the period before and after childbirth, and the granting of children's allowances to families with children under 18.

We favor adequate public assistance for all persons in need, with Federal grants-in-aid proportionate to the needs and financial ability of the states, pending the enactment of a comprehensive Federal Social Security program.

We support the right of every American to good health through a national system of health insurance, giving freedom of choice to patient and practitioner, and providing adequate medical and dental care for all.

We favor the expenditure of Federal funds in support of an effective program for public health and preventive medicine and a program of dental care.

We favor the expenditure of Federal funds for the promotion of medical and dental education and research.

We look forward to the eventual transfer of the entire cost of the security and health program to the government as an essential public service.

Women

The Progressive Party proposes to secure the rights of women and children and to guarantee the security of the American family as a happy and democratic unit and as the mainstay of our nation.

We propose to raise women to first-class citizens by removing all restrictions—social, economic, and political—without jeopardizing the existing protective legislation vital to women as mothers or future mothers.

We propose to extend fair labor standards for women, to guarantee them healthful working conditions, equal job security with men, and their jobs back after the birth of children.

We propose to guarantee medical care for mother and child prior to, during and after birth, through a national system of health insurance.

We propose a program of Federal assistance for the establishment of day care centers for all children.

Young People

The Progressive Party believes young people are the nation's most valuable asset; their full potentialities can be realized only by implement¬ing our complete program for peace, freedom and abundance. We challenge the failure of the old parties to meet the special problems of youth. We call for the right to vote at eighteen. We call for the enforcement and extension of child labor laws.

We call for Federal and state expenditures for recreational facilities, particularly in needy rural communities.

Veterans

The Progressive Party recognizes the veterans' special sacrifices and contributions in the nation's most critical period.

We demand priority for veterans in obtaining homes.

We call for a Federal bonus to veterans based on length of service.

We demand the expansion of the Veterans Administration program and increased G. I. benefits and allowances and the elimination of discrimination.

We demand that the coverage of the GI Bill of Rights and other servicemen's benefits be extended to war widows and to merchant seamen with war service.

We call for the prompt refund of the over¬charges collected from veterans by National Service Life Insurance.

We demand that the government enforce the right of Negro veterans in the South to file terminal leave applications and to collect their benefits.

We call for increased benefits for disabled veterans and a program to guarantee them jobs at decent wages.

Taxation

The Progressive Party demands the overhaul of the tax structure according to the democratic principle of ability to pay. We propose to employ taxation as a flexible instrument to promote full employment and economic stability.

We propose to exempt from personal income taxes all families and individuals whose income falls below the minimum required for a decent standard of living. We propose that income from capital gains, be taxed at the same graduated rate as ordinary income.

We propose to enact effective excess profits and undistributed profits taxation.

We propose to curb tax-dodging by closing existing loopholes.

We propose to work towards the progressive elimination of Federal excise taxes on the basic necessities of life.

We oppose all state and local sales taxes.

We propose to close existing loopholes in estate and gift taxes and establish an integrated system of estate and gift taxation.

Education

The Progressive Party proposes to guarantee, free from segregation and discrimination, the in¬alienable right to a good education to every man, woman, and child in America. Essential to good education are the recognized principles of academic freedom—in particular, the principle of free inquiry into and discussion of controversial issues by teachers and students.

We call for the establishment of an integrated Federal grant-in-aid program to build new schools, libraries, raise teachers' and librarians' salaries, improve primary and secondary schools, and assist municipalities and states to establish free colleges.

We call for a system of Federal scholarships, fellowships, and cost-of-living grants, free from limitations or quotas based on race, creed, color, sex or national origin, in order to enable all those with necessary qualifications but without adequate means of support to obtain higher education in institutions of their own choice.

We call for a national program of adult education in cooperation with state and local authorities.

We oppose segregation in education and sup¬port legal action on behalf of Negro students and other minorities aimed at securing their admission to state-supported graduate and professional schools which now exclude them by law.

We call for a Department of Education with a Secretary of Cabinet rank.

Culture

The Progressive Party recognizes culture as a potentially powerful force in the moral and spiritual life of a people and through the people, in the growth of democracy and the preservation of peace, and realizes that the culture of a democracy must, like its government, be of, by, and for the people.

We pledge ourselves to establish a department of government that shall be known as the Department of Culture, whose function shall be the pro¬motion of all the arts as an expression of the spirit of the American people, and toward the enrichment of the people's lives, to make the arts available to all.

Promotion of Science

The Progressive Party calls for the enactment of legislation to promote science, including human and social sciences, so that scientific knowledge may be enlarged and used for the benefit of all people.

We condemn the militarization of science and the imposition of military control over scientific expression and communication.

We support measures for public control of patents and licensing provisions to insure that new inventions will be used for the benefit of the people.

The Progressive Party has taken root as the party of the common man. It has arisen in response to, and draws growing strength from, the demand of millions of men and women for the simple democratic right to vote for candidates and a program which satisfy their needs. It gives voters a real choice.

Purposeful and deeply meant, the program of the Progressive Party carries forward the policies of Franklin Roosevelt and the aspirations of Wendell Willkie and holds forth the promise of a reborn democracy ready to play its part in one world. The American people want such a program. They will support it.

Under the leadership of Henry A. Wallace and Glen H. Taylor, a great new people's movement is on the march. Under the guidance of Divine Providence, the Progressive Party, with strong and active faith, moves forward to peace, freedom and abundance.

1952

PREAMBLE

Cease Fire In Korea At Once - No Ifs, Ands Or Buts

The American people want peace. In recognition of this universal desire, each political party will claim to be the peace party in 1952.

There is one touchstone by which every voter can test the sincerity of these claims: Does the party have a program for ending the fighting in Korea? Has it any proposal to stop a useless and senseless war which has already cost over 110,000 American casualties and untold suffering to the Korean people, under cover of which the people are being robbed of their freedom and their substance?

Judged by this acid test, the professions of peace made by the Democratic and Republican candidates are a fraud and a pretense. They may differ on how the war in Korea should be fouight and vie with each other in reckless acts and proposals that threaten to spread it beyond Korea's borders, engulfing the world. But neither old party and none of its candidates - bey they generals, bankers or politicians - has any realistic plan for ending it.

Only the Progressive Party opposed the Korean War from its outset.

Only the Progressive Party has a program for its immediate termination.

The Progressive Party is the only genuine party of peace.

For more than two years before the fighting started in Korea the Progressive Party warned that the Truman-Dulles cold war would inevitably lead to a shooting war. It has consistently opposed each cold war step taken by the two old parties: Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, North Atlantic Pact, the huge arms program at home, the arming of Western Germany and Japan, alliances with Franco and Chiang Kai-shek, the support of reaction, renascent facism and dying colonialism in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Even if the fighting were to end in Korea tomorrow, there are other Koreas in the making, in areas of international tensions, particularly in a divided Germany. These must be averted before they result in the catastrophe of total war. Civilized negotiations among the powers can avert them.

We recognize the integral link between the bi-partisan war drive and the racist violence which seeks to suppress by napalm bombs and other atrocities the mighty upsurge of the peoples of Korea, South Africa, Indo-China, Malaya, the Philippines, India and Japan in the assertion of their inherent right to determine their own destinies.

The Progressive Party has steadfastly demanded a return to the Roosevelt-Willkie policy of One World that proved itself in the victory over fascism and held out the promise of an enduring peace.

That glorious promise can still be redeemed by the American people. The Progressive Party enters the 1952 election campaign dedicated to its redemption.

Defend the Rights of Labor; Protect the Living Standards of the American People

The Democratic and Republican parties offer no end to the war in Korea because that war, and the billions spent in preparation for an even bigger war have been profitable business for the giant corporations which these parties serve, netting them 150 billion dollars in profits and tax-free new plants in the past four years.

These fabulous profits have been extracted from the people.

Expenditures for war are taxing away one-third of the average worker's income and have cut the purchasing power of the farmer by one-third. The cost of living stands at the highest point in our history. Yet, in the name of a so-called national emergency, the right of the trade unions to secure just wage increases is being wrecked. Even as they scuttle price controls and clamp a tighter freeze on wages, the bi-partisans are legislating out of existence the right to bargain and to strike.

The promise of prosperity through a war economy is fading before the harsh reality of growing layoffs and unemployment in the automobile and other industries geared for war as well as in textiles and consumer industries. At the same time, a rigid cold-war embargo shuts off the limitless peace-time markets of China, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to the products of American workers and farmers.

The need for housing, schools and playgrounds, the protection of the people's health, for harnessing our river valleys and conserving our soil resources, for assuring our senior citizens a decent income on retirement, for providing our young people with education and peace-time jobs, are all sacrificed in the race for bigger and deadlier weapons. This year the bi-partisans proposed to spend 65 billion dollars for arms while less than one-tenth of that amount has been appropriated for the people's welfare.

Full and Equal Rights for the Negro People - Now

The war program of the bi-partisans has been accompanied by the intensification of racist acts and practices againsty the Negro people, the Mexican-American people, the Puerto Rican people and the Jewish people.

In Korea, American bombs are wiping out the villages and snuffing out the lives of a colored people. Here at home, the terror-weapon of the bomb is turned upon the Negro people in an attempt to stem the rising militancy of their struggle for full equality and freedom. But bombs, violence and terror will not halt the Negro people in their march to full liberation. Nor will they be put off by the pious repetition of platform promises by the two old parties which have shamelessly betrayed their pledges of anti-lynch and anti-poll tax legislation and an F.E.P.C. The magnificent struggle of the Negro people for equality and representation at every level of government is making a vital contribution to the fight for the peace and freedom of all Americans.

Restore the Bill of Rights For All Americans

Under the pretense of the so-called national emergency, American democratic liberties are being destroyed. Free speech and assembly, the right to counsel, to bail, to a far hearing, the Bill of Rights itself are nullified by Taft-Hartley, Smith and McCarran Acts, McCarthyism and McCarranism, with the support of both old parties and the participation of every arm of government, executive, legislative and judicial. The example of the Federal government has been followed by a rash of similar legislation in almost every state.

Workers, teachers, authors, actors, government employees, small business men professional people, are hounded, harassed, denied passports, driven from their jobs, terrorized and blacklisted for daring to express political criticism. Men and women are victimized and jailed on the unsupported testimony of stool-pigeons and paid informers or on the charges of nameless accusers brought by the FBI.

Foreign born non-citizens are deported or jailed indefinitely. Naturalized Americans are having their citizenship revoked for their political opinions.

This nullification of constitutional freedom was at first ostensibly directed against the Communists alone. Now, inevitably, all Americans - and organized labor foremost - ar the victims. The so-called "emergency" used to justify the conviction of Communists under the Smith Act is invoked to destroy labor's basic right to bargain collectively through the use of injunctions, governmental seizures and the wage freeze. Not content with these measures, the bi-partisans are now pushing further legislation in Congress, sponsored by the author of the Smith Act itself, which would completely outlaw the right to strike.

The events of the past four years have fully confirmed our platform statement in 1948 that defense of the constitutional rights of Communists and all other political groups to express their views is the first line in the defense of the liberties of a democratic people.

The Biggest Graft of All: The War-Racket

The only liberty guaranteed by both old parties is the liberty to pilfer the public purse. The tax graft, the police graft, the mink coat scandals have revolted all honest Americans. But these are penny-ante games compared to the big racket - the war racket. Billions are made in the deals arrived at in the Pentagon and in the very halls of Congress. Tideland oil, natural gas, pipelines, extravagant ship subsidies, control over railroad ratemaking, control of the air waves, rapid tax write-offs, tax loopholes - these mean billions to the profit-mad backers of the two old parties.

It is clear that in 1952, neither Democrats nor Republicans can offer the people anything but more war in Korea, more spending for war, and the consequences of war spending: a tighter belt on the living standards and liberties of our people. Neither party offers any alternative. They blame Soviet aggression. Yet, the generals and politicians have themselves punctured the carefully nurtured myth of aggressive Soviet intentions by stating in unguarded moments that they don't believe the USSR will start a war now or at any time. As the Chicago Tribune - no friend of Communism - observed, if Soviet Russia did not exist, it would be necessary for the war spenders to invent her.

The Key to Peace: American-Soviet Understanding and Co-Operation

American-Soviet understanding and cooperation still remain the key to peace. Despite the differences in political and economic viewpoints between the United States and the Soviet Union, whatever mistakes each may have made, whatever shortcomings of each great country may be, they can and must work together on the basis of mutual self-interest and dictates of survival, for world peace, far-reaching disarmament and normal international trade.

The Progressive Party asserts that the real threat to American security comes, not from without, but from within: from the policies of the bi-partisans themselves. Those policies have not protected our national security but undermined it. They have debased the living standards and are destroying the freedoms of the American people, on which our national security rests.

The tremendous armaments program that the Truman Administration has forced upon Western Europe, together with its disruption of East-West trade, have steadily lowered living standards in England, France and Italy; and are bringing these countries to the brink of economic disaster. America's get-tough policy is also tough on the hard-pressed peoples of Western Europe. It is tough, too, on the people of Turkey and Greece, who suffer under a fascist government and a decaying monarchy, supported by American dollars.

The devastation our weapons have wrought in Korea and the repression of the colonial liberation movements in Asia and Africa have earned us the enmity of the colored peoples. The rearming of Germany and Japan is not only a gross violation of our war-time agreements, but is alienating the freedom-loving people of the world who fought beside us to extirpate the scourge of fascism.

The reservoir of good will for America, filled to overflowing under Franklin Roosevelt, has run dry. We stand today without firm friends or stable allies anywhere.

The American People Are Fighting Back

The American people have not remained silent. They are voicing a powerful mandate for a cease-fire in Korea at once; labor is standing up ir aroused strength against the wage-freeze, injunctions, and anti-union shackles. A militant Negro people is splendidly asserting its right to full citizenship. Americans of all political affiliations are speaking up in defense of basic civil liberties.

The Progressive Party asserts that the true America can and must be restored: The America of a great and creative people, born to a tradition of individual liberty and the friends of peoples striving for freedom everywhere, applying the vast resources of our land to peaceful pursuits for the benefit of our own citizens and all mankind. Such an America - and only such an America - can be a secure America.

To restore such an America, we offer the following platform.

In offering it, we reaffirm our belief in the validity of the democratic process. "Freedom is the right ot choose." We dedicate ourselves to the preservation and extension of that basic right. So long as that right is secured to the American people, we are confident that the program for which we stand can be obtained through the exercise of the processes guaranteed by the Constitution, and we will vigorously oppose any group that would subvert the democratic process and seek its objectives by any other means.

Our platform and our candidates give to every voter, whatever his political affiliation, the opportunity to use his precious ballot as part of a peoples' referendum for peace, security and freedom.

I. Peace: the Mandate of the People

The Progressive Party was founded in the belief that the way to peace is through negotiation of differences among nations.

The events of the past four years now cry out clearly and urgently that this is the only alternative to world destruction.

The Progressive Party rejects the idea that war is inevitable.

We reaffirm that peaceful coexistence of the Soviet Union and the United States is both possible and essential, without the sacrifice of a single interest of the American people, based upon peaceful competition between the two systems in service of humanity.

We reject the idea of the stockpiling of A-bombs and H-bombs and the militarization of our country is needed to defend America. We reaffirm that the best defense of America is peaceful understanding and peaceful relations with all the nations of the world.

The conference table for peace must replace battefields of war.

Towards these ends, the Progressive Party submits the following program:

1. Agree to a cease-fire in Korea today, without any ifs, ands or buts. Propose an immediate armistice at the agreed upon demarcation line; all disputed questions, including the exchange of war prisoners, to be settled by civilian representatives of all nations involved in the war after the fighting stops.
2. Stop the rearmament and renazification of a disunited Germany. We must work out an agreement at the conference table with England, France, and the Soviet Union to make Germany a united and disarmed neutral. We also oppose the rearming of Japan and call for a conference of all the former belligerents against Japan for the negotiation of a peace treaty.
3. Negotiate an international agreement outlawing the use of the A-bomb, and the H-bomb, with effective control and inspection of atomic stockpiles and installations. Ratify the Geneva Protocol outlawing the use of germ warfare. Take action in the UN for progressive universal disarmament.
4. Contribute to a United Nations fund of $50 billion for working with the peoples of the underprivileged areas of the world in the development by them of their own resources and the improvement of their own living standards, without any political or economic interference.
5. Provide full representation in the United Nations by admitting all present applicant nations, including the People's Republic of China. Recognize the People's Republic of China; and withdraw recognition from fascist Spain.
6. Defeat any bill for Universal Military Training. Repeal the Draft Law.
7. Abolish the trade barriers to peaceful trade between American and the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe.
8. Support the demands for independence and freedom of colonial peoples all over the world. Stop support for fascist and racist regimes such as the Malan government in South Africa and all other imperialism which hold African and Asian peoples in colonial bondage. Support democratic movements in Latin America and reverse the present policy of support to South American dictatorships. Repeal all laws imposing restrictions on the economic and political independence of the Philippines.
9. Grant the Puerto Rican people the right to full and immediate independence, and extend them economic assistance.
10. Extend full statehood to the territories of Alaska and Hawaii.
11. Proceed to hold a conference of the five great powers, as the only peaceful means for securing an over-all settlement of differences.

II. Jobs and Security For America

A prompt return to a peacetime economy is the only real guarantee of economic security for the American people. The old parties offer war and a war economy as the only way to have prosperity and stave off a depression.

The fact is that production for war has meant soaring prices, crushing taxes, frozen wages, mounting unemployment and sharply reduced living standards.

Production for peace would mean millions of lasting new jobs, decent wages, lower prices, lower taxes, improved social security and higher living standards.

In the midst of a so-called war boom, 5 1/2 million Americans are on relief, some 40 million Americans try to make ends meet on incomes of less than $2,000.00 a year and one out of every four American children live in want and bitter poverty. The overwhelming majority of our people are unable to meet the costs of sickness and a third of the illnesses of the low-income groups goes without medical care. We lack almost 1,000,000 hospital beds. More than one-half the nations families live in rural or urban slums which blight our country. Not a city or county in our country has sufficient teachers, schools, facilities or books. Not only do we waste and endanger our basic resources, the health and welfare of our people, but we waste and endanger our natural resources as well. We suffer periodic disasters and floods which are entirely within our power to prevent.

The richest nation in the world, we have the resources to assure all Americans against want, to build all the houses, hospitals we need. A fraction of what we waste on insane war preparations could provide an adequate social welfare program.

Only through the planned development of all our resources will the full benefit of the Nation's wealth and productivity be secured for all of the people. Farmer and laborer, housewife and shopkeeper, all remember and urgently seek the Economic Bill of Rights first put forth by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The Progressive Party urges the following program to make that Economic Bill of Rights a reality today:

1. Strict Federal dollar and cents price ceilings and restoration of Federal Rent Control at pre-Korean levels.
2. End the wage-freeze. Return to free collective bargaining.
3. Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act and re-enact the Wagner Act. Defeat the Smith Anti-Labor bill.
4. Launch a national housing program to provide 2.5 million low-rent homes a year, with public subsidies to make low rents possible. Wipe out the slums and provide all Americans with decent homes, without discrimination or segregation.
5. Tax exemption for families of four whose income is below $4,000 and individuals whose income is below $2,000. Allow tax deductions to working mothers for the cost of child care. Raise corporation taxes. Close the tax loopholes for wealthy individuals and large corporations. Defeat the proposed Federal sales tax. Repeal the excise tax on necessities. Provide tax relief for small business.
6. A comprehensive Federal system of old-age, unemployment and disability compensation guaranteeing to every American, without discrimination, benefits equal to a minimum decent standard of living. For the aged, not less than $150 monthly; for the unemployed or disabled, not less than $40 weekly, with additional dependency allowances. Extend the Social Security Act to all workers and all who are self-employed, including the farmer.
7. Provide family allowances of $3 weekly per child.
8. A system of national health insurance, guaranteeing to all Americans as a matter of right, and not as charity, and without discrimination, adequate dental and medical care, together with a hospital and health center construction program and an expanded program of medical education and research. Provide dependency benefits to working mothers equal to the unemployment compensation.
9. Enact a comprehensive farm program, providing that the prices to be paid farmers will be agreed upon and set well in advance of the production season. So long as necessary, the market place returns to farmers should be supplemented by production payments at national expense - and with no nonsense about basic non-basic farm commodities and with all working farmers receiving equal and equitable treatment. The total return to farmers for their products should be such as to enable them to adopt and enjoy living standards on parity with the rest of the population and, in addition, to finance soil conservation practices and the restoration of soil fertility. Participation should be voluntary, conditioned upon performance, and limited to family type farmers with corporate and large scale operations excluded as a matter of public policy. Only through such a program can the long standing inequities between agriculture on the one hand and the industry and commerce on the other be corrected, scarcity abolished, abundance assured, and the agricultural threat to our national survival removed. To that end, we call for the following:

• 100 per cent parity prices for all farm commodities on the basis of a revised and modernized parity formula.
• Halt the draft of our farm youth.
• Use production payments to encourage food production and reduce farm -- to market price spreads. Provide government credit at low rates to working farmers and enact a farm debt moratorium law.
• Provide federal development and conservation of soil, water and power resources on an integrated basin-wide scale, including the St. Lawrence seaway, to provide publicly owned low-cost power and irrigation water and protect against the ravages of flood and drought. Develop and conserve harbors and fisheries.
• Reduce taxes on working farmers and eliminate federal income taxes on farm cooperatives.
• Recognized the elementary right of agricultural workers and sharecroppers to organize and bargain collectively and end sharecropper peonage in the South. Enact a tenant purchase program. Provide full coverage of agricultural workers under Workmen's Compensation, Unemployment Insurance, and Social Security legislation. Establish minimum federal standards for the protection of agricultural workers, including all who come from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the British West Indies.

1. Appropriate ten billion dollars for a 10 year program of federally financed school construction; immediate appropriation of one billion dollars for federal aid for public schools to raise teachers' salaries, employ additional needed teachers and provide essential materials and services for the children. Eliminate segregation and all forms of discrimination in education.
2. Increase to $1.25 the minimum hourly wage under the Fair Labor Standard Act, with overtime pay for work in excess of 30 hours in any work week.
3. Empower the Federal Bureau of Mines to fine or close down mines not conforming to Government standards of safety.
4. Provide and guarantee equal job opportunities and job training for Negroes, Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans and other minority groups.
5. Establish a system of nation-wide job training centers for youth; full social security protection for youth. Federal scholarships and cost-of-living grants, free from discrimination by reason of race, color, creed or national origin, to insure full educational opportunities. Grant the right to vote to 18 year olds.
6. We demand for all women the economic rights of first class citizens. We urge legislation forbidding discrimination against women, guaranteeing them equal pay job security and removing all social and economic restrictions upon women, without jeopardizing existing protective legislation.
7. Enact a GI Bill of Rights for all veterans since World War II, providing all the benefits granted to World War II veterans. Increase all veterans' benefits in amounts which reflect the increased cost of living. Extend all veterans' benefits to merchant seamen with war service.
8. Establish a federally subsidized arts and theatre program.

III. End America's Shame.

The deliberate official policy of government on all levels which denies full equality of rights to sixteen million Negro Americans is responsible for the evils of segregation, discrimination, police brutality, terror, lynching and second-class citizenship.

That policy has shortened the average life span of the Negro people in America to eight years less than the life span of whites. It sanctions violence and murder against Negroes solely because they are Negroes - and this violence is being wrought on so mounting a scale that it approaches what is defined as "genocide" under the United Nations Convention against genocide.

An aroused and determined Negro people properly insist on their protection, on their full status as America citizens, and on full representation in the political life of the nation.

In vigorous and uncompromising support of these aims and steps toward stamping out every form of discrimination against the Negro people, the Mexican-American people, the Puerto Rican people, the Jewish people and other minority groups, the Progressive Party calls for:

1. A Federal Fair Employment Practices Law with effective enforcement powers to guarantee equality in job opportunities and training for the Negro people, Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans and all other minorities.
2. A Federal anti-poll tax law together with Federal legislation to guarantee to the Negro people, Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans and other minorities the right to register and to vote in primary and general elections for Federal office. Revise Senate cloture rules to make filibusters impossible.
3. A Federal anti-lynch law.
4. The immediate issuance of an Executive Order by the President to prohibit discrimination in employment, under any contract entered into by the Federal government or any of its agencies.
5. The immediate issuance of an Executive Order by the President for effective prosecution under the Federal civil rights statutes of the violation of the civil rights of Negro citizens and other minorities.
6. End of segregation and discrimination in housing.
7. The immediate issuance of an Executive Order to end segregation and discrimination in the armed forces, in all Federal departments and agencies, and in the Panama Canal Zone.
8. Real Home Rule for the District of Columbia and Congressional legislation to prohibit every form of segregation and discrimination in the nation's capital.
9. Full representation of the Negro and Puerto Rican and Mexican-American people in Congress, in State legislatures and all levels of public office.
10. Provide that all Federal laws appropriating Federal monies for any public purpose contain a specific provision prohibiting the use of any such funds in a manner which discriminates against the Negro people, Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans or any other minorities.
11. Full citizenship for American Indians and the right to administer their own affairs without loss of Reservation rights. Adequate compensation for loss of tribal land rights.

IV. Restore Freedom To All Americans

The right freely to petition, to speak, to think, to write, to travel, to assemble peacefully, to vote for candidates of one's own choice, - these are the bedrocks of American democracy. We support these freedoms of all individuals and groups in our American community, for those with whom we disagree as well as those with whom we agree. Only a nation which guarantees and implements these freedoms can find the path of social progress and develop science, art and other fields of creative endeavor in the peaceful service of the people.

The Progressive Party calls for a great national crusade to restore the full meaning of the Bill of Rights to all Americans.

1. Repeal the Smith, McCarran, and the new McCarran-Walter Acts. No concentration camps in America.
2. End all prosecution under the Smith Act, stop the proceedings under the McCarran Act, grant unconditional pardons and restore full civil rights to all persons convicted under the Smith Act.
3. Stop the persecution, deportation and imprisonment of native or foreign-born Americans because of their trade union or political activities or opinions.
4. Guarantee the freedom of advocacy for lawyers and the right of accused to counsel of their own choice.
5. Abolish the House Committee on un-American Activities, and the McCarran Committees of the Senate on Internal Security. Establish fair and equitable procedures for all legislative investigating committees.
6. End the "loyalty" and "screening" programs and the Attorney General's subversive list which affect millions of government workers, teachers, members of the arts and professions, and millions more in private industry.
7. Maintain the traditional American principle of separation of church and state and protect the freedom of public education.
8. Provide compulsory public hearings on major legislation; end government by secret star chamber proceedings; insure public knowledge of the public business.
9. Ratify the UN Convention on Genocide and the UN Convention on Human Rights.
10. Stop attempts to impose thought control on teachers and pupils and the use of the public schools to promote war hysteria.

The Progressive Party Peace Program:

1. End the War in Korea - now.
2. Call a Big Power Conference to settle outstanding differences among nations.
3. Stop the armaments race.
4. Provide Federal guarantees of full citizenship and equality for the Negro people, and other minorities.
5. Open the channels of world trade and provide millions of jobs.
6. Convert America's resources from war to a peace economy.

Libertarian Party (1971–Present)

Listed Here.

Green Party (1991–Present)

Listed Here.

Constitution Party (1992–Present)

Listed Here.

References

Platforms Category:Party programs