Our Presidents and how we make them

by Alexander K. McClure

4. For the immediate abolition of the internal revenue system, whereby our National Government is deriving support from our greatest national vice.

5. That, an adequate public revenue being necessary, it may properly be raised by impost duties and by an equitable assessment upon the property and the legitimate business of the country, but import duties should be so reduced that no surplus shall be accumulated in the treasury, and that the burdens of taxation shall be removed from foods, clothing, and other comforts and necessaries of life.

6. That civil service appointments for all civil offices, chiefly clerical in their duties, should be based upon moral, intellectual and physical qualifications, and not upon party service or party necessity.

7. That the right of suffrage rests on no mere circumstance of race, color, sex or nationality, and that where, from any cause, it has been held from citizens who are of suitable age and mentally and morally qualified for the exercise of an intelligent ballot, it should be restored by the people through the Legislatures of the several States, on such educational basis as they may deem wise.

8. For the abolition of polygamy and the establishment of uniform laws governing marriage and divorce.

9. For prohibiting all combinations of capital to control and to increase the cost of products for popular consumption.

10. For the preservation and defence of the Sabbath as a civil institution without oppressing any who religiously observe the same on any other day than the first day of the week.

11. That arbitration is the Christian, wise, and economic method of settling national differences, and the same method should, by judicious legislation, be applied to the settlement of disputes between large bodies of employés and employers; that the abolition of the saloons would remove the burdens, moral, physical, pecuniary, and social, which now oppress labor and rob it of its earnings, and would prove to be the wise and successful way of promoting labor reform; and we invite labor and capital to unite with us for the accomplishment thereof; that monopoly in land is a wrong to the people, and the public land should be reserved to actual settlers, and that men and women should receive equal wages for equal work.

12. That our immigration laws should be so enforced as to prevent the introduction into our country of all convicts, inmates of other dependent institutions, and of others physically incapacitated for self-support, and that no person should have the ballot in any State who is not a citizen of the United States.

Recognizing and declaring that prohibition of the liquor traffic has become the dominant issue in national politics, we invite to full party fellowship all those who, on this one dominant issue, are with us agreed, in the full belief that this party can and will remove sectional differences, promote national unity, and insure the best welfare of our entire land.