which may be practicable; and we submit to | prises and agriculture, precarious and the practical. Sensible people of the United intermittent employment for the laborer, States to say whether it would not be dan-industrial war, increasing pauperism and gerous to the dearest interests of our coun-crime, and the consequent intimidation try, at this time to surrender the adminis- and disfranchisement of the producer, and tration of the national government to a a rapid declension into corporate feudalism. party which seeks to overthrow the exist- Therefore, we declareing policy, under which we are so prosperous, and thus bring distrust and confusion where there is now order, confidence, and hope.

First. That the right to make and issue money is a sovereign power, to be maintained by the people for their common benefit. The delegation of this right to corporations is a surrender of the central attribute of sovereignty, void of constitutional sanction, and conferring upon a subordinate and irresponsible power an 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 a full legal tender for all debts, public and private.

9. The Republican party, adhering to a principle affirmed by its last national convention, of respect for the constitutional rule covering appointments to office, adopts the declaration of President Hayes, that the reform of the civil service should be thorough, radical, and complete. To this end it demands the co-operation of the legislative with the executive department of the government, and that Congress shall so legislate that fitness, ascertained by proper practical tests, shall admit to the public service; and that the power of removal for cause, with due responsibility for the good conduct of subordinates, shall accompany the power of appointinent.

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 pro

1880.-National (Greenback) Platform, Chicago, Illinois. June 9. The civil government should guarantee the divine right of every laborer to the re-tected by national and state authority as to sults of his toil, thus enabling the pro- equalize its burdens and insure a just disducers of wealth to provide themselves tribution of its results. The eight hour with the means for physical comfort, and law of Congress should be enforced, the facilities for mental, social, and moral cul- sanitary condition of industrial establishture; and we condemn, as unworthy of our ments placed under the rigid control, the civilization, the barbarism which imposes competition of contract convict labor abolupon wealth-producers a state of drudgery |ished, a bureau of labor statistics estabas the price of a bare animal existence. lished, factories, mines, and workshops inNotwithstanding the enormous increase of spected, the employment of children under productive power by the universal intro- fourteen years of age forbidden, and wages duction of labor-saving machinery and the paid in cash. 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 syndicates, and other income classes demand dear money, cheap labor, and 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 an 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 scarce; and the 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 enter

Fourth. Slavery being simply cheap labor, and cheap labor being simply 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 property and dangerous to liberty the action of the old parties in fostering and sus

sures:

taining gigantic land, railroad, and money ing platform of national reforms and meacorporations, and monopolies invested with and exercising powers belonging to the government, and yet not responsible to it for the manner of their exercise.

In the examination and discussion of the temperance question, it has been proven, and is an accepted truth, that alcoholic drinks, whether fermented, brewed, or distilled, are poisonous to the healthy human body, the drinking of which is not only needless but hurtful, necessarily tending to form intemperate habits, increasing greatly the number, severity, and fatal termination of diseases, weakening and deranging the intellect, polluting the affections, hardening the heart and corrupting the morals, depriving many of reason and still more of its healthiul exercise, and annually bringing down large numbers to untimely graves, producing, in the children of many who drink, a predisposition to intemperance, insanity, and various bodily and mental diseases, causing diminution of strength, feebleness of vision, fickleness of purpose, and premature old age, and inducing, in all future generations, deterioration of moral and physical character. Alcoholic drinks are thus the implacable foe of inan as an individual.

First. The legalized importation, manufacture, and sale of intoxicating drinks ministers to their use, and teaches the erro

Twelfth. We demand absolute democra-neous and destructive sentiment that such tic rules for the government of Congress, use is right, thus tending to produce and placing all representatives of the people perpetuate the above mentioned evils. upon an equal footing, and taking away from committees a veto power greater than that of the President.

Second. To the home it is an enemyproving itself to be a disturber and destroyer of its peace, prosperity, and happiness; taking from it the earnings of the

!

Thirteenth. We demand a government of the people, by the people, and for the peo-husband; depriving the dependent wife ple, instead of a government of the bond- and children of essential food, clothing, holder, by the bondholder, and for the and education; bringing into it profanity, bondholder; and we denounce every at- abuse, and violence; setting at naught the tempt to stir up sectional strife as an effort to vows of the marriage altar; breaking up conceal monstrous crimes against the people. the family and sundering the children from Fourteenth. In the furtherance of these the parents, and thus destroying one of ends we ask the co-operation of all fair- the most beneficent institutions of our Creminded people. We have no quarrel with ator, and removing the sure foundation of individuals, wage no war on classes, but good government, national prosperity, and only against vicious institutions. We are welfare. not content to endure further discipline from our present actual rulers, who, having dominion over money, over transportation, over land and labor, over the press and the machinery of government, wield unwarrantable power over our institutions and over life and property.

Eighth. That the constitution, in giving Congress the power to borrow money, to declare war, to raise and support arinies, to provide and maintain a navy, never in tended that the men who loaned their money for an interest-consideration should be preferred to the soldiers and sailors who periled 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 and 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 dangerous the efforts everywhere manifest to restrict the right of suffrage.

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

Third. To the community it is equally an enemy-producing vice, demoralization, and wickedness; its places of sale being resorts of gaming, lewdness, and debauchery, and the hiding-place of those who prey upon society; counteracting the efficacy of religious effort, and of all means of intellectual elevation, moral purity, social happiness, and the eternal good of mankind, without rendering any counteracting or compensating benefits; being in its influence and effect evil and only evil, and that continually.

Fourth. To the state it is equally an enemy-legislative inquiries, judicial inves

The prohibition Reform party of the United States, organized, in the name of the people, to revive, enforce, and perpetu-tigations, and official reports of all penal, ate in the government the doctrines of the reformatory, and dependent institutions Declaration of Independence, submit, for showing that the manufacture and sale of the suffrage of all good citizens, the follow-such beverages is the promoting cause of

1880.-Prohibition Reform Platform, Cleveland, Ohio, June 17.

volving an annual waste to the nation of one million five hundred thousand dollars, and the sacrifice of one hundred thousand lives, have, under its legislation, grown up and been fostered as a legitimate source of revenue; that during its history, six territories have been organized and five states

intemperance, crime, and pauperism, and of demands upon public and private charity, imposing the larger part of taxation, paralyzing thrift, industry, manufactures, and commercial life, which, but for it, would be unnecessary; disturbing the peace of streets and highways; filling prisons and poor-houses; corrupting politics, legisla- been admitted into the Union, with constition, and the execution of the laws; short-tutions provided and approved by Conening lives; diminishing health, industry, gress, but the prohibition of this debasing and productive power in manufactures and and destructive traffic has not been proart; and is manifestly unjust as well as vided, nor even the people given, at the injurious to the community upon which it time of admission, power to forb.d it in is imposed, and is contrary to all just any one of them. Its history further views of civil liberty, as well as a violation shows, that not in a single instance has an of the fundamental maxim of our common original prohibitory law been passed by law, to use your own property or liberty any state that was controlled by it, while so as not to injure others. in four states, so governed, the laws found on its advent to power have been repealed. At its national convention in 1872, it declared, as part of its party faith, that "it disapproves of the resort to unconstitutional laws for the purpose of removing evils, by interference with rights not surrendered by the people to either the state or national government," which, the author of this plank says, was adopted by the platform committee with the full and implicit understanding that its purpose was the discountenancing of all so-called temperance, prohibitory, and Sunday laws. Ninth. We arraign, also, the Democra

Fifth. It is neither right nor politic for the state to afford legal protection to any traffic or any system which tends to waste the resources, to corrupt the social habits, and to destroy the health and lives of the people; that the importation, manufacture, and sale of intoxicating beverages is proven to be inimical to the true interests of the individual home, community, and state, and destructive to the order and welfare of society, and ought, therefore, to be classed among crimes to be prohibited.

Sixth. In this time of profound peace at home and abroad, the entire separation of the general government from the drink-tie party as unfaithful and unworthy of traffic, and its prohibition in the District reliance on this question; for, although of Columbia, territories, and in all places not clothed with power, but occupying the and ways over which, under the constitu- relation of an opposition party during tion, Congress has control and power, is a twenty years past, strong in numbers an I political issue of the first importance to the organization, it has allied itself with peace and prosperity of the nation. There liquor-traffickers, and become, in all the can be no stable peace and protection to states of the Union, the'r special political personal liberty, life, or property. until defenders, and in its national convention secured by national or state constitutional in 1876, as an article of its political faith, provisions, enforced by adequate laws. declared against prohibition and just laws in restraint of the trade in drink, by saying it was opposed to what it was pleased to call "all sumptuary laws." The National party has been dumb on this question.

Seventh. All legitimate industries require deliverance from the taxation and loss which the liquor traffic imposes upon them; and financial or other legislation could not accomplish so much to increase production and cause a demand for labor, and, as a result, for the comforts of living, as the suppression of this traffic would bring to thousands of homes as one of its blessings.

Tenth. Drink-traffickers, having the history and experience of all ages, climes, an l conditions of men, declaring their business destructive of all good-finding no support

Eighth. The administration of the gov-in the Bible, morals, or reason-appeal to misapplied law for their justification, anl intrench themselves behind the evil e'ements of political party for defense, party tactics and party inertia become battling forces, protecting this evil.

ernment and the execution of the laws are through political parties; and we arraign the Republican party, which has been in continuous power in the nation for twenty years, as being false to duty, as false to loudly-proclaimed principles of equal justice to all and special favors to none, and of protection to the weak and dependent, insensible to the mischief which the trade in liquor has constantly inflicted upon industry, trade, commerce, and the social happiness of the people; that 5,652 distilleries, 3,830 breweries, and 175,266 places

Eleventh. In view of the foregoing facts and history, we cordially invite all voters, without regard to former party affiliations, to unite with us in the use of the ballot for the abolition of the drinking system, under the authority of our national and state governments. We also demand, as a right, that women, having the privileges of citifor the sale of these poisonous liquors, in-zens in other respects, be clothed with the

ballot for their protection, and as a rightful | ever impossible for a defeated candidate to means for the proper settlement of the bribe his way to the seat of a usurper by liquor question. billeting villains upon the people.

Twelfth. To remove the apprehension of some who allege that a loss of public revenue would follow the suppression of the direct trade, we confidently point to the experience of governments abroad and at home, which shows that thrift and revenue from the consumption of legitimate manufactures and commerce have so largely followed the abolition of drink as to fully supply all loss of liquor taxes.

Sixth. The great fraud of 1876-7, by which, upon a false count of the electoral votes of two states, the candidate defeated at the polls was declared to be President, and, for the first time in American history, the will of the people was set aside under a threat of military violence, struck a deadly blow at our system of representative government. The Democratic party, to preserve the country from the horrors of a civil war, submitted for the time, in the firm and patriotic belief that the people would punish the crime in 1880. This is

Thirteenth. We recognize the good providence of Almighty God, who has preserved and prospered us as a nation; and, asking for His Spirit to guide us to ultimate suc-sue precedes and dwarfs every other. It cess, we all look for it, relying upon His imposes a more sacred duty upon the people onnipotent arm. of the Union than ever addressed the consciences of a nation of freemen.

Fourth. The right to a free ballot is a right preservative of all rights; and must and shall be maintained in every part of the United States.

Seventh. The resolution of Samuel J. Tilden, not again to be a candidate for the exalted place to which he was elected by a majority of his countrymen, and from which he was excluded by the leaders of the Republican party, is received by the Democrats of the United States with deep sensibility; and they declare their confidence in his wisdom, patriotism, and integrity unshaken by the assaults of the common enemy; and they further assure him that he is followed into the retirement he has chosen for himself by the sympathy and respect of his fellow-citizens, who regard him as one who, by elevating the standard of the public morality, and adorning and purifying the public service, merits the lasting gratitude of his country and his party.

Eighth. Free ships, and a living chance for American commerce upon the seas; and on the land, no discrimination in favor of transportation lines, corporations, or monopolies.

Ninth. Amendments of the Burlingame treaty; no more Chinese immigration, except for travel, education, and foreign commerce, and, therein, carefully guarded.

Tenth. Public money and public credit for public purposes solely, and public land

for actual settlers.

Eleventh. The Democratic party is the friend of labor and the laboring man, and pledges itself to protect him alike against the cormorants and the commune.

Fifth. The existing administration is the Twelfth. We congratulate the country representative of conspiracy only; and its upon the honesty and thrift of a Democlaim of right to surround the ballot-boxes cratic Congress, which has reduced the with troops and deputy marshals, to in-public expenditure $10,000,000 a year; timidate and obstruct the elections, and upon the continuation of prosperity at the unprecedented use of the veto to main-home and the national honor abroad; and, tain its corrupt and despotic power, insults above all, upon the promise of such a the people and imperils their institutions. change in the administration of the governWe execrate the course of this administra- ment as shall insure a genuine and lasting tion in making places in the civil service a reform in every department of the public reward for political crime; and demand a service. reform, by statute, which shall make it for

i

Second. That amongst the principles of the Republican party none is of more vital importance to the welfare and interest of the country in all its parts than that which pertains to the sanctity of Government contracts. It therefore becomes the special duty and province of the Republican party of Virginia to guard and protect the credit of our time-honored State, which has been besmirched with repudiation, or received with distrust, by the gross mismanagement of various factions of the Democratic party, which have controlled the legislation of the State.

Fifth. That the elective franchise as an equal right should be based on manhood qualification, and that we favor the repeal of the requirements of the prepayment of the capitation tax as a prerequisite to the franchise as opposed to the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of the condition whereby the State was readmitted as a member of our Constitutional Union, as well as against the spirit of the

Virginia Readjuster.

[Adopted Jnne 2.j

First. We recognize our obligation to support the institution for the deaf, dumb and blind, the lunatic asylum, the public free schools and the Government out of the revenues of the State; and we deprecate and denounce that policy of ring rule and subordinated sovereignty which for years borrowed money out of banks at high rates of interest for the discharge of these paramount trusts, while our revenues were left the prev of commercial exchanges, available to the State only at the option of speculators and syndicates.

Third. That the Republican party of Virginia hereby pledges itself to redeem the State from the discredit that now hangs over her in regard to her just obligations for moneys loaned her for constructing her internal improvements and charitable institutions, which, permeating every quarter of the State, bring benefits of far greater value than their cost to our whole people, and we in the most solemn form pledge the Republican party of the State to the full payment of the whole debt of the State, less the one-third set aside as justly falling on West Virginia; that the industries of the country should be fostered through protective laws, so as to develop our own re-two-thirds of all the money Virginia borsources, employ our own labor, create a rowed, and sets aside the other third to home market, enhance values, and promote West Virginia to be dealt with by her in the happiness and prosperity of the people. her own way and at her own pleasure; that Fourth. That the public school system it places those of her creditors who have of Virginia is the creature of the Repub- received but 6 per cent. instalments of inlican party, and we demand that every terest in nine years upon an exact equality dollar the Constitution dedicates to it shall with those who by corrupt agencies were be sacredly applied thereto as a means of enabled to absorb and monopolize our educating the children of the State, with- means of payment; that it agrees to pay out regard to condition or race. such rate of interest on our securities as can with certainty be met out of the revenues of the State, and that it contains all the essential features of finality.

Second. We reassert our purpose to settle and adjust our State obligations on the principles of the "Bill to re-establish public credit," known as the "Riddleberger bill," passed by the last General Assembly and vetoed by the Governor. We maintain that this measure recognizes the just debt of Virginia, in this, that it assumes

Third. We reassert our adherence to the Constitutional requirements for the "equal and uniform" taxation of property, exempting none except that specified by the Constitution and used exclusively for " religious, charitable and educational purposes.'

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