Sec. 2.—We warn the people of our common country, jealous for the preservation of their free institutions, that the policy of federal control of elections, to which the Republican party has committed itself, is fraught with the gravest dangers, scarcely less momentous than would result from a revolution practically establishing monarchy on the ruins of the Republic. It strikes at the North as well as the South, and injures the colored citizen even more than the white; it means a horde of deputy marshals at every polling place, armed with federal power; returning boards appointed and controlled by federal authority; the outrage of the electoral rights of the people in the several States; the subjugation of the colored people to the control of the party in power and the reviving of race antagonisms now happily abated, of the utmost peril to the safety and happiness of all; a measure deliberately and justly described by a leading Republican Senator as “the most infamous bill that ever crossed the threshold of the Senate.”
Such a policy, if sanctioned by law, would mean the dominance of a self-perpetuating oligarchy of office-holders, and the party first intrusted with its machinery could be dislodged from power only by an appeal to the reserved right of the people to resist oppression which is inherent in all self-governing communities.
Two years ago this revolutionary policy was emphatically condemned by the people at the polls; but in contempt of that verdict the Republican party has defiantly declared in its latest authoritative utterance that its success in the coming elections will mean the enactment of the Force bill and the usurpation of despotic control over elections in all the States.
Believing that the preservation of republican government in the United States is dependent upon the defeat of this policy of legalized force and fraud, we invite the support of all citizens who desire to see the constitution maintained in its integrity, with the laws pursuant thereto, which have given our country a hundred years of unexampled prosperity, and we pledge the Democratic party, if it be entrusted with power, not only to the defeat of the Force bill, but also to relentless opposition to the Republican policy of profligate expenditure which in the short space of two years has squandered an enormous surplus and emptied an overflowing treasury after piling new burdens of taxation upon the already overtaxed labor of the country.
Sec. 3.—We denounce the Republican policy of protection as a fraud on the labor of the great majority of the American people for the benefit of the few.
We declare it to be a fundamental principle of the Democratic party that the federal government has no constitutional power to impose and collect tariff duties except for the purposes of revenue only, and we demand that the collection of such taxes shall be limited to the necessities of the government when honestly and economically administered.
Sec. 4.—Trade interchange on the basis of reciprocal advantages to the countries participating is a time-honored doctrine of the Democratic faith, but we denounce the sham reciprocity which juggles with the people’s desire for enlarged foreign markets and freer exchanges by pretending to establish closer trade relations for a country whose articles of export are almost exclusively agricultural products with other countries that are also agricultural, while erecting a Custom House barrier of prohibitive tariff taxes against the rich countries of the world that stand ready to take our entire surplus of products and to exchange therefor commodities which are necessaries and comforts of life among our own people.
Sec. 5.—We recognize in the trusts and combinations which are designed to enable capital to secure more than its just share of the joint product of capital and labor, a natural consequence of the prohibitive taxes which prevent the free competition which is the life of honest trade, but we believe their worst evils can be abated by law, and we demand the rigid enforcement of the laws made to prevent and control them, together with such further legislation in restraint of their abuses as experience may show to be necessary.
Sec. 6.—The Republican party, while professing a policy of reserving the public land for small holdings by actual settlers, has given away the people’s heritage till now a few railroad and non-resident aliens, individual and corporate, possess a larger area than that of all our farms between the two seas. The last Democratic administration reversed the improvident and unwise policy of the Republican party touching the public domain, and reclaimed from corporations and syndicates, alien and domestic, and restored to the people nearly one hundred million acres of valuable land to be sacredly held as homesteads for our citizens, and we pledge ourselves to continue this policy until every acre of land so unlawfully held shall be reclaimed and restored to the people.
Sec. 7.—We denounce the Republican legislation known as the Sherman act of 1890 as a cowardly makeshift fraught with possibilities of danger in the future which should make all of its supporters, as well as its author, anxious for its speedy repeal. We hold to the use of both gold and silver as the standard money of the country, and to the coinage of both gold and silver without discriminating against either metal or charge of mintage, but the dollar unit of coinage for both metals must be of equal intrinsic and exchangeable value, or be adjusted through international agreement or by such safeguards of legislation as shall insure the maintenance of the parity of the two metals, and the equal power of every dollar at all times in the markets and in the payment of debts, and we demand that all paper currency shall be kept at par with and redeemable in such coin. We insist upon this policy as especially necessary for the protection of the farmers and laboring classes, the first and most defenceless victims of unstable money and a fluctuating currency.