THE PEOPLE’S RIGHTS
WE have waited for a year to see such propositions made, and until they are made and put into actual practice, and until we see how they work, the phrase “New Freedom” must stand as any empty flourish of rhetoric, having no greater and no smaller value than all the similar flourishes invented by clever phrase-makers whose concern is with diction and not action. The problems connected with the trusts, the problems connected with child labor, and all similar matters, can be solved only by affirmative national action. No party is progressive which does not set the authority of the National Government as supreme in these matters. No party is progressive which does not give to the people the right to determine for themselves, after due opportunity for deliberation, but without endless difficulty and delay, what the standards of social and industrial justice shall be; and, furthermore, the right to insist upon the servants of the people, legislative and judicial alike, paying heed to the wishes of the people as to what the law of the land shall be. The Progressive party believes with Thomas Jefferson, with Andrew Jackson, with Abraham Lincoln, that this is a government of the people, to be used for the people so as to better the condition of the average man and average woman of the nation in the intimate and homely concerns of their daily lives; and thus to use the government means that it must be used after the manner of Hamilton and Lincoln to serve the purposes of Jefferson and Lincoln.
We are for the people’s rights. Where these rights can best be obtained by exercise of the powers of the State, there we are for States’ rights. Where they can best be obtained by the exercise of the powers of the National Government, there we are for national rights. We are not interested in this as an abstract doctrine; we are interested in it concretely. Wisconsin possesses advanced laws in the interest of labor. There are other States in this respect more backward, where wage-workers, and especially women and child wage-workers, are left at the mercy of greedy and unscrupulous capitalists. Wherever this operates unjustly to favor the capitalists of other less advanced States at the expense of Wisconsin, and therefore for business reasons to make state legislatures fearful of passing laws for the proper safeguarding of the life, health, and liberty of the wage-workers, then we believe that the National Government should step in and by national action secure in the interest of the wage-workers uniform conditions throughout the Union. We hold it to be the duty of the National Government to put all the governmental resources of our people, national and state, behind the movement for the wise and sane uplifting of the men and women whose lives are hardest.
We believe in the principle of a living wage. We hold that it is ruinous for all our people, if some of our people are forced to subsist on a wage such that body and soul alike are stunted. We believe in safeguarding the body of the wage-worker, and in providing for his widow and children if he falls a victim to industrial accident. We believe in shortening the labor day to the point that will tell most for the laborer’s efficiency both as wage-worker and as citizen. In the Progressive National platform we inserted the following plank:
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 injurious 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 scale in all industrial occupations;
The 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 diseases 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.
These propositions are definite and concrete. They represent for the first time in our political history the specific and reasoned purpose of a great party to use the resources of the government in sane fashion for industrial betterment.