HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 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 eighteen and also for every child over eighteen 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 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 the 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 charity, a sufficient sum to 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's 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. These conventions and sessions of Congress have from time to time included in platforms and laws a few fragments of labor's programme, carefully rewritten, however, to interpose no interference with the opposition to labor by private wielders of the power of capital. It remains for the FarmerLabor 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 and unorganized, with out the 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 eight-hour day and forty-four-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) Reeducation of the cripples of industry as well as the victims of war. age. "(g) Abolition of employment of children under sixteen years of "(h) Complete and effective protection for women in industry, with equal pay for equal work. "(i) Abolition of private employment, detective, and strikebreaking 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 protection of seamen and for the safety of the travelling public must not be minimized. "(1) Exclusion from interstate commerce of the products of convict labor. 500 POLITICAL AND GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK [1920 "(m) A Federal Department of Education to advance democracy and effectiveness in all public school systems throughout 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." Single Tax Party The Single Tax delegates in attendance at the convention of Forty-Eighters left that body and held a separate convention, Chicago, July 12, 1920, which nominated for President Robert C. Macauley, of Pennsylvania, and for Vice-President Richard C. Barnum, of Ohio. Platform: "We, the Single Tax party, in national convention assembled, recognizing that the earth was created for all the people for all time, and that all have an equal and inalienable right to live on it and to produce from it the things that they require for their welfare and happiness; recognizing that all wealth, whatever its form, is produced only by labor applied to land, or to the products of land, and that the denial of the equal access to land is a denial of the right to produce, and thus a denial of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence; recognizing further that under our tax laws and our system of land tenure a small number of the people own most of the land of our country, and exact tribute in the form of ground rent from all the rest of the people in exchange for the mere permission to work and produce, thus not only reaping where they have not sown but also holding idle the greater part of the earth's surface and restricting the amount of wealth we otherwise easily could and would produce; recognizing further that the value of the land, as expressed in its ground rentals or in its capitalized selling price, is a community value created by the presence of the people and, therefore, belongs to the people and not to the individuals; "We, therefore, demand that the full rental value of the land be collected by the government instead of all taxes, and that all buildings, implements, and improvements on land, all industry, thrift, and enterprise, all wages, salaries, incomes, and every product of labor be entirely exempt from taxation. And we pledge ourselves that, if entrusted with the power to do so, we will express in law and enforce to the utmost such measures as will make effective these demands to the end that involuntary poverty and want may be abolished and economic and civic freedom for all be assured." Socialist Party Convention held in New York, May 8-15, 1920. For President the nominee was Eugene V. Debs, an inmate of the Federal prison at Atlanta, Georgia, having been convicted and sentenced to a ten years' term for violation of the Espionage act by his public utterances at Canton, Ohio, in July, 1918. After Debs's nomination a delegation of Socialists requested President Wilson to pardon him, but without success. For Vice-President, Seymour Stedman, of Chicago. Platform: "In the national campaign of 1920 the Socialist party calls upon all American workers of hand and brain, and upon all citizens who believe in political liberty and social justice, to free the country from the oppressive misrule of the old political parties, and to take the government into their own hands under the banner and upon the program of the Socialist party. The outgoing administration, like Democratic and Republican administrations of the past, leaves behind it a disgraceful record of solemn pledges unscrupulously broken and public confidence ruthlessly betrayed. It obtained the suffrage of the people on a platform of peace, liberalism, and social betterment, but drew the country into a devastating war and inaugurated a regime of despotism, reaction, and oppression unsurpassed in the annals of HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK the republic. It promised to the American people a treaty which would assure to the world a reign of international right and true democracy: it gave its sanction and support to an infamous pact formulated behind closed doors by predatory elder statesmen of European and Asiatic imperialism. Under this pact territories have been annexed against the will of their populations and cut off from their sources of sustenance; nations seeking their freedom in the exercise of the much heralded right of self-determination have been brutally fought with armed force, intrigue, and starvation blockades. "To the millions of young men who staked their lives on the field of battle, to the people of the country who gave unstintingly of their toil and property to support the war, the Democratic administration held out the sublime ideal of a union of peoples of the world organized to maintain perpetual peace among nations on the basis of justice and freedom. It helped create a reactionary alliance of imperialistic governments, banded together to bully weak nations, crush working-class governments, and perpetuate strife and warfare. While thus furthering the ends of reaction, violence, and oppression abroad, our administration suppressed the cherished and fundamental rights and civil liberties at home. Upon the pretext of war-time necessity, the Chief-Executive of the republic and the appointed heads of his administration were clothed with dictatorial powers (which were often exercised arbitrarily), and Congress enacted laws in open and direct violation of the constitutional safeguards of freedom of expression. Hundreds of citizens who raised their voices for the maintenance of political and industrial rights during the war were indicted under the Espionage law, tried in an atmosphere of prejudice and hysteria, and many of them now serving inhumanly long jail sentences for daring to uphold the traditions of liberty which once were sacred in this country. Agents of the Federal government unlawfully raided homes and meeting-places and prevented or broke up peaceful gatherings of citizens. "The Postmaster-General established a censorship of the press more autocratic than that ever tolerated in a regime of absolutism, and has harassed and destroyed publications on account of their advanced political and economic views, by excluding them from the |