upon them the responsibility of choice between liquor parties, dominated by distillers and brewers, with their policy of saloon perpetuation, breeding waste, wickedness, woe, pauperism, taxation, corruption, and crime, and our one party of patriotic and moral principle, with a policy which defends it from domination by corrupt bosses, and which insures it forever against the blighting control of saloon politics.

We face with sorrow, shame and fear the awful fact that this liquor traffic has a grip on our Government, municipal, State and National, through the revenue system and saloon sovereignty, which no other party dares to dispute; a grip which dominates the party now in power, from caucus to Congress, from policeman to President, from the rumshop to the White House, a grip which compels the Chief Executive to consent that law shall be nullified in behalf of the brewer, that the canteen shall curse our army and spread intemperance across the seas, and that our flag shall wave as the symbol of partnership, at home and abroad, between this Government and the men who defy and defile it for their own profit and gain.

We charge on President McKinley, who was elected to his high office by appeals to Christian sentiment and patriotism almost unprecedented and by a combination of moral influences never before seen in this country, that by his conspicuous example as a wine drinker at public banquets, and as a wine-serying host at the White House, he has done more to encourage the liquor business, to demoralize the temperance habits of young men, and to bring Christian practices and requirements into disrepute than any other President this Republic has had.

We further charge upon President McKinley responsibility for the army canteen, with all its dire brood of disease, immorality, sin and death in this country, in Cuba, in Porto Rico and the Philippines, and we insist that by his attitude concerning the canteen and his apparent contempt for the vast number of petitions and petitioners protesting against it he has outraged and insulted the moral sentiment of this country in such a manner and to such a degree as calls for its righteous uprising, and his indignant and effective rebuke.

We challenge denial of the fact that our Executive, as Commander in Chief of the military forces of the United States at any time prior to or since March 2, 1899, could have closed every army saloon, called a canteen, by executive order, as President Hayes before him, and should have closed them, for the same reasons which actuated President Hayes. We assert that the act of Congress, passed March 2, 1899, forbidding the sale of liquors "in any post, exchange or canteen" by any "officer or private soldier," or by "any other person, on any premises used for military purposes by the United States," was and is explicitly an act of prohibition, as much so as the language can frame; we declare our solemn belief that the Attorney General, in his interpretation of that law, and that the Secretary of War, in his acceptance of that interpretation and his refusal to enforce the law, were and are guilty of treasonable nullification thereof, and that President McKinley, through his assent to and indorsement of such interpretation and refusal on the part of

the officials appointed by and responsible to him, shares responsibility in their guilt, and we record our conviction that a new and serious peril confronts our country, in the fact that its President, at the behest of the beer power, dares, and does abrogate a law of Congress, through subordinates removable at will by him, and whose acts become his, and thus virtually confesses that laws are to be administered, or to be nullified, in the interest of a law-defying business, by an Administration under mortgage to such business for support.

We deplore the fact that an Administration of this Republic claiming the right and power to carry our flag across the seas. and to conquer and annex new territory, should admit its lack of power to prohibit the American saloon on subjugated soil, or should openly confess itself subject to liquor sovereignty under that flag. We are humiliated, exasperated and grieved by the evidence plainly abundant that the Administration's policy of expansion is bearing so rapidly its fruits of drunkenness, insanity and crime, under the hothouse sun of the tropics, and when the President of the first Philippine Commission says: "It was unfortunate that we introduced and established the saloon there, to corrupt the natives and to exhibit the vices of our race." We charge the inhumanity and unchristianity of this act upon the Administration of McKinley and upon the party which elected him and would perpetuate the same.

We declare that the only policy which the Government of the United States can of right adopt as to the liquor traffic under the National Constitution, upon any territory under the military or civil control of that Government, is the policy of prohibition, and that the revenue policy which makes our Government a partner with distillers and brewers and barkeepers is a disgrace to our civilization, an outrage upon humanity and a crime against God.

The fact being plain and undeniable that the Democratic party stands for license, the saloon and the canteen, while the Republican party, in policy and administration, stands for the canteen, the saloon and revenue therefrom, we declare ourselves justified in expecting that Christian voters everywhere shall cease their complicity with the liquor curse by refusing to uphold a liquor party, and shall unite themselves with the only party which upholds the prohibition policy, and which for nearly thirty years has been the faithful defender of the church, the State, the home and the school against the saloon, its expanders and perpetuators, their actual and persistent foe.

We declare that there are but two real parties to-day concerning the liquor traffic-perpetuationists and prohibitionists— and that patriotism, Christianity and every interest of genuine republicanism and of pure democracy, besides the loyalty to the demands of our common humanity, require the speedy union, in one solid phalanx at the ballot box, of all who oppose the liquor traffic perpetuation and who covet endurance for this Republic.

SOCIALISTS.

In July, 1899, dissensions occurred in the ranks of the Socialist Labor party, which resulted in the formation of two factions. Both factions claimed the right to use the original name of the party and the question was tried in the courts. The result was a decision in favor of the faction which split off from the main body. This faction was lead by Daniel De Leon. Until the decision of the court was pronounced the main body of the party continued to be known as the Socialist Labor party, while the dissevered faction was called the De Leon Socialists, after its leader.

On January 27, 1900, the main body, now without a name, held a Convention in Rochester, N. Y., and decided to amalgamate with the Socialist Democratic party. When the latter body met in Indiana on March 7, 1900, to adopt a national platform and place its candidates in nomination, it accepted the proposition for amalgamation. The two bodies are now, therefore, united under the name of Social Democratic party, leaving to the split-off the name of the Socialist Labor party.

NATIONAL SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM.

ADOPTED AT INDIANAPOLIS, MARCH 9, 1900.

The Social Democratic party of the United States, in convenon assembled, reaffirms its allegiance to the revolutionary principles of International Socialism and declares the supreme political issue in America to-day to be the contest between the working class and the capitalist class for the possession of the powers of government. The party affirms its steadfast purpose to use those powers, once achieved, to destroy wage slavery, abolish the institution of private property in the means of production and establish the Co-operative Commonwealth.

In the United States, as in all other civilized countries, the natural order of economic development has separated society into two antagonistic classes-the capitalists, a comparatively small class, the possessors of all the modern means of production and distribution (land, mines, machinery and means of transportation and communication), and the large and ever increasing class of wage workers possessing no means of production.

This economic supremacy has secured to the dominant class the full control of the government, the pulpit, the schools and the public press; it has thus made the capitalist class the arbiter of the workers, whom it is reducing to a condition of dependence, economically exploited and oppressed, intellectually and physically crippled and degraded, and their political equality rendered a bitter mockery.

The contest between these two classes grows ever sharper. Hand in hand with the growth of monopolies goes the annihilation of small industries and of the middle class depending upon them; ever larger grows the multitude of destitute wage workers and of the unemployed, and ever fiercer the struggle between the class of the exploiter and the exploited, the capitalists and the wage workers.

The evil effects of capitalist production are intensified by the recurring industrial crises which render the existence of the greater part of the population still more precarious and uncertain.

These facts amply prove that the modern means of production have outgrown the existing social order based on production for profit. Human energy and natural resources are wasted for individual gain.

Ignorance is fostered that wage slavery may be perpetuated. Science and invention are perverted to the exploitation of men and women, and children.

The lives and liberties of the working class are recklessly sacrificed for profit.

Wars are fomented between nations; indiscriminate slaughter is encouraged; the destruction of whole races is sanctioned, in order that the capitalist class may extend its commercial dominion abroad and enhance its supremacy at home.

The introduction of a new and higher order of society is the historic mission of the working class. All other classes, despite their apparent or actual conflicts, are interested in upholding the system of private ownership in the means of production. The Democratic, Republican and all other parties which do not stand for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system of production are alike the tools of the capitalist class. Their policies are injurious to the interest of the working class, which can be served only by the abolition of the profit system.

The workers can most effectively act as a class in their struggle against the collective power of the capitalist class only by constituting themselves into a political party, distinct and opposed to all parties formed by the propertied classes.

We, therefore, call upon the wage workers of the United States, without distinction of color, race, sex or creed, and upon all citizens in sympathy with the historic mission of the working class, to organize under the banner of the Social Democratic party, as a party truly representing the interests of the toiling masses and uncompromisingly waging war upon the exploiting class, until the system of wage slavery shall be abolished and the Co-operative Commonwealth shall be set up. Pending the accomplishment of this our ultimate purpose, we pledge every effort of the Social Democratic party for the immediate improvement of the condition of labor and for the securing of its progressive demands.

As steps in that direction, we make the following demands: First-Revision of our Federal Constitution, in order to remove the obstacles to complete control of government by the people irrespective of sex.

Second-The public ownership of all industries controlled by monopolies, trusts and combines.

Third-The public ownership of all railroads, telegraphs and telephones; all means of transportation and communication; all water works, gas and electric plants, and other public utilities. Fourth-The public ownership of all gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, coal and other mines, and all oil and gas wells.

Fifth-The reduction of the hours of labor in proportion to the increasing facilities of production.

Sixth-The inauguration of a system of public works and improvements for the employment of the unemployed, the public credit to be utilized for that purpose.

Seventh-Useful inventions to be free, the inventors to be remunerated by the public.

Eighth-Labor legislation to be national, instead of local, and international when possible.

Ninth-National insurance of working people against accidents, lack of employment and want in old age.

Tenth-Equal civic and political rights for men and women, and the abolition of all laws discriminating against women.

Eleventh-The adoption of the initiative and referendum, proportional representation, and the right of recall of representatives by the voters.

Twelfth-Abolition of war and the introduction of international arbitration.

NATIONAL SOCIALIST LABOR PLATFORM.

ADOPTED AT NEW YORK, JUNE 3, 1900.

The Socialist Labor party of the United States, in convention assembled, reasserts the inalienable right of all men to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

With the founders of the American republic we hold that the purpose of government is to secure every citizen in the enjoyment of this right; but in the light of our social conditions we hold, furthermore, that no such right can be exercised under a system of economic inequality, essentially destructive of life, of liberty and of happiness.

With the founders of this republic we hold that the true theory of politics is that the machinery of government must be owned and controlled by the whole people; but in the light of our industrial development we hold, furthermore, that the true theory of economics is that the machinery of production must likewise belong to the people in common.

To the obvious fact that our despotic system of economics is the direct opposite of our democratic system of politics, can plainly be traced the existence of a privileged class, the corruption of government by that class, the alienation of public property, public franchises and public functions to that class, and the abject dependence of the mightiest of nations upon that class.