In the maintenance of class government both the Democratic and Republican parties have been equally guilty. The Republican party has had control of the national government and has been directly and actively responsible for these wrongs. The Democratic party, while saved from direct responsibility by its political impotence, has shown itself equally subservient to the aims of the capitalist class whenever and wherever it has been in power. The old chattel-slave-owning aristocracy of the South, which was the backbone of the Democratic party, has been supplanted by a child-slave plutocracy. In the great cities of our country the Democratic party is allied with the criminal element of the slums as the Republican party is allied with the predatory criminals of the palace in maintaining the interests of the possessing class.
Temporary Measures Demanded
The various "reform" movements and parties which have sprung up within recent years are but the clumsy expression of widespread popular discontent. They are not based on an intelligent understanding of the historical development of civilization and of the economic and political needs of our time. They are bound to perish, as the numerous middle-class reform movements of the past have perished.
As measures calculated to strengthen the working class in its fight for the realization of this ultimate aim, and to increase its power of resistance against capitalist oppression, we advocate and pledge ourselves and our elected officers to the following program:
General Demands
1. The immediate government relief for the unemployed workers, by building schools, by reforesting of cut-over and waste lands, by reclamation of arid tracts, and the building of canals, and by extending all other useful public works. All persons employed on such works shall be employed directly by the government under an eight-hour workday and at the prevailing union wages. The government shall also loan money to States and municipalities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public works. It shall contribute to the funds of labor organizations for the purpose of assisting their unemployed members, and shall take such other measures within its power as will lessen the widespread misery of the workers caused by the misrule of the capitalist class.
2. The collective ownership of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, steamship lines and all other means of social transportation and communication and all land.[229]
3. The collective ownership of all industries which are organized on a national scale and in which competition has virtually ceased to exist.
4. The extension of the public domain to include mines, quarries, oil wells, forests and water power.
5. That occupancy and use of land be the sole title to possession. The scientific reforestation of timber lands and the reclamation of swamp lands. The land so reforested or reclaimed to be permanently retained as a part of the public domain.