THE TRUE POLITICS FOR PROHIBITION AND LABOR.
BY EDWIN C. PIERCE.
A vast body of American citizens have a deep concern in the temperance cause, and are bound in conscience to do their utmost to give early success to the movement for the legal suppression of the drinking saloon, which they rightly regard as the fountain of intemperance. Some of them are rich and some of them are poor. Some of them are conservative and some of them of radical tendency as to questions concerning wealth. They belong to the industrious, intelligent, moral, and patriotic reserves of the country. With them in sympathy is the motherhood of America. I think it is only fair to say, and that all social reformers should see, that the radical prohibition constituency—dispersed now in several political parties—is larger than the following commanded by any other single reform idea, and it is distinguished by exceptional persistency. There is also a large and increasing body of American citizens absorbed in what is called the labor question. Some of them are rich and some of them are poor. Some of them are also on the side of prohibition and some of them are hostile or indifferent.
The labor question is the question of social justice, and no question can be higher than that. Stated in other terms, the labor question is the question of how to approximate more nearly to an equal distribution of wealth, not so much of the wealth already amassed by society as of the wealth that is to be produced by labor in the future. Now, while there are very few people who think that entire equality of fortune in this world is either possible or desirable; every free democracy will wish to work towards equality of social condition, looking forward to a glorious time when uninvited poverty shall be outgrown, when manhood shall be of more social weight than wealth.
There is as much high moral sentiment put into the labor question to-day, as ever was put into any crusade against any form of oppression or evil.
If, however, only the radicals with fixed convictions and unflagging zeal were counted, neither of these humane causes would have a majority of American voters. Deeply interested in both, I frankly confess that I do not believe either prohibition or labor can win alone. As we study our political history, we find that political issues are not carried except in combination, and as part of the policy of a political party to the cohesion and the power of which many issues and many forces contribute. We are not under the Swiss referendum; we are a representative republic, with two legislative chambers, each constituted in a peculiar way. Our national life is complex. To hold in party association the six millions or more of American men whose support, continued for years, is necessary to carry a great measure, requires the proper connection with the past, and trenchant dealing with the present which is full of imperious demands. Abraham Lincoln was not borne into the presidency in 1860 solely by the strength of the anti-slavery issue, but found necessary support in Pennsylvania from the committal of the Republicans to the protective principle, while in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and the West generally, he was greatly aided by the homestead issue. Several distinct issues have usually been involved in our presidential elections. Exceptions are presented by the victories of sentiment or tendency under the extraordinary leadership of Jefferson in 1800, and in the extraordinary demonstration for General Jackson and Democracy in 1828.
Successful parties in the United States, as in England, have generic rather than specific names. Federalist, Democratic-Republican, Whig, Democratic, and Republican; all represent popular triumphs and administrations of the government. Anti-Masonic, Liberty, American, Free Soil, Greenback, Prohibition, Labor,—these party names represent no partisan victories. In the Cabinet of the first President of the Republic, Thomas Jefferson was Secretary of State, and Alexander Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury. To each of them Washington submitted the question whether Congress had power to incorporate a bank. Jefferson, believing popular liberty safe only in a strict construction of the Constitution, denied the power to create a bank because no such power is expressed, or is strictly necessary to the exercise of any power expressly granted. Hamilton, believing that a liberal construction of the Constitution was essential to the development of America, answered that Congress had the power, that the power was incidental to the national character of the government. He construed the grant of “necessary” powers in these words: “It is a common mode of expression to say that it was necessary for a government or a person to do this or that thing, when nothing more is intended or understood than that interests of the government or person require or may be promoted by the doing of this or that thing. The imagination can be at no loss for exemplifications on the use of the word in this sense. And it is the true one, in which it is to be understood as used in the Constitution.” The Supreme Court, quoting these very words with approval, has adopted Hamilton’s construction. With the writing of those two opinions in the Cabinet of Washington, the enduring lines of party division in America were drawn. There ought to be early recognition of the fact, that in case a new party of the people shall be formed, a party determined upon reform of existing abuses and oppressions, upon the suppression of the liquor traffic as we know it, upon the overthrow of every semblance of plutocracy, upon opening to every child of the American democracy an equality of opportunity as yet unknown, resort must be had to those broad, liberal, and constructive constitutional doctrines which the existing Democratic party steadily opposes, and which the Republican party does not sufficiently apply for the benefit of the masses. It is the duty and opportunity of the prohibitionists to make such a party. A party going to Thomas Jefferson for a baptism of Democratic feeling, and content with no sprinkling, and to the school of Hamilton for its constitutionalism, can supplant the Republicans, and only such a party can meet the case of labor. The woollen manufacturers of Massachusetts have just remonstrated against further reduction of the hours of labor unless the reduction be uniform in all the manufacturing States, and they made the significant suggestion that Congress has power to establish uniform hours of labor. Congress does have that power as a part of the power to regulate commerce. The eight-hour day can only come in this country by act of Congress, and the construction that sustains such an act sustains national regulation of the liquor traffic. The general welfare of the Union is involved in each case. American industry is a unit so far as the interests of American homes require the rule of uniformity, and the home life of America is a unit so far as it needs that protection which, in order to be complete, must come from the national authority. I venture to suggest that one thing that has hindered the cementing of the alliance between labor and prohibition, is the tendency of the prohibitionists while recognizing the importance of labor problems to insist that prohibition must come first. The labor men will never go into any party that puts it quite in that way. Is it not sufficient to claim urgency for the prohibition issue, to say that no work should take precedence of prohibition in party performance? I think the time has come when this issue can be taken up by a political party and I recommend a party that shall declare for prohibition with the same emphasis with which the Republican party declared for protection in 1884 and in 1888. I think, however, that the party that carries a bill for national control of the manufacture and traffic in liquors through Congress, to be signed by a President chosen with a knowledge of his prohibition principles, will have to have a good running mate for its prohibition issue. Yet I believe the prohibition plank in the platform of the great progressive party, lineally descending, would be the centre of attraction and of repulsion. I grant that. But the balance will be so kept that multitudes who take, at first at least, a livelier interest in some other measure which also is promoted by party ascendancy, will vote for partisan prohibition because it is the policy of the party of human progress with which they are keeping step.