Our Presidents and how we make them

by Alexander K. McClure

That we favor reforms in the administration of the Government, in the abolition of all sinecures, useless offices and officers, in the election by the people of officers of the Government instead of appointment by the President. That competency, honesty, and sobriety are essential qualifications for holding civil office, and we oppose the removal of such persons from mere administrative offices, except so far as it may be absolutely necessary to secure effectiveness to the vital issues on which the general administration of the Government has been intrusted to a party.

That the collection of revenue from alcohol, liquors, and tobacco should be abolished, as the vices of men are not a proper subject for taxation; that revenue for customs duties should be levied for the support of the Government, economically administered; and when so levied, the fostering of American labor, manufactures, and industries should constantly be held in view.

That the public land should be held for homes for the people and not for gifts to corporations, or to be held in large bodies for speculation upon the needs of actual settlers.

That all money, coin and paper, shall be made, issued, and regulated by the General Government, and shall be a legal tender for all debts, public and private.

That grateful care and support should be given to our soldiers and sailors, their dependent widows and orphans, disabled in the service of the country.

That we repudiate as un-American, contrary to and subversive of the principle of the Declaration of Independence, from which our Government has grown to be the government of fifty-five millions of people, and a recognized power among nations, that any person or people shall or may be excluded from residence or citizenship with all others who may desire the benefits which our institutions confer upon the oppressed of all nations.

That while there are important reforms that are demanded for purity of administration and the welfare of the people, their importance sinks into insignificance when compared with the reform of the drink traffic, which annually wastes eight hundred million dollars of the wealth created by toil and thrift, and drags down thousands of families from comfort to poverty; which fills jails, penitentiaries, insane asylums, hospitals, and institutions for dependency; which destroys the health, saps industry, and causes loss of life and property to thousands in the land, lowers intellectual and physical vigor, dulls the cunning hand of the artisan, is the chief cause of bankruptcy, insolvency, and loss in trade, and by its corrupting power endangers the perpetuity of free institutions.

That Congress should exercise its undoubted power, and prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages in the District of Columbia, in the Territories of the United States, and in all places over which the Government has exclusive jurisdiction; that hereafter no State shall be admitted into the Union until its Constitution shall expressly prohibit polygamy and the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages.

We earnestly call the attention of the laborer and mechanic, the miner and manufacturer, and ask investigation of the baneful effects upon labor and industry caused by the needless liquor business, which will be found the robber who lessens wages and profits, the destroyer of happiness and the family welfare of the laboring man, and that labor and all legitimate industry demand deliverance from the taxation and loss which this traffic imposes, and that no tariff or other legislation can so healthily stimulate production or increase a demand for capital and labor, or produce so much of comfort and content as the suppressing of this traffic would bring to the laboring man, mechanic, or employer of labor throughout our land.

That the activity and co-operation of the women of America for the promotion of temperance has in all the history of the past been a strength and encouragement which we gratefully acknowledge and record. In the later and present phase of the movement for the prohibition of the licensed traffic by the abolition of the drinking-saloon, the purity of purpose and method, the earnestness, zeal, intelligence, and devotion of the mothers and daughters of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union has been eminently blessed by God. Kansas and Iowa have been given her as “sheaves of rejoicing;” and the education and arousing of the public mind, and the demand for constitutional amendment now prevailing, are largely the fruit of her prayers and labors, and we rejoice to have our Christian women unite with us in sharing the labors that shall bring the abolition of this traffic to the polls, she shall join in the grand “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” when by law our boys and friends shall be free from legal drink temptation.