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We are opposed to war and condemn mob violence.

We favor government ownership of coal mines, oil wells and public utilities.

We are opposed to government revenue from the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor as a beverage.

We are opposed to all trusts and combines contrary to the welfare of the common people, and declare that Christian government through direct legislation will regulate the trusts and labor problem according to the golden rule.

NATIONAL LIBERTY PLATFORM.

ADOPTED AT ST. LOUIS, MO., JULY 7, 1904.

We, the delegates of the National Liberty party of the United States, in convention assembled, declare our unalterable faith in the essential doctrine of human liberty, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.

Under no other doctrine can the people of this or any other country stand together in good friendship and perfect union. Equal liberty is the first concession that a republican form of government concedes to its people, and universal brotherhood is the cementing tie which binds a people to respect the laws. It has always been so where caste existed and was recog nized by law or by common consent, that the oppression of the weaker by the stronger has attained and a degree of human slavery been realized. Such a condition of affairs must necessarily exist where universal suffrage is not maintained and respected, and where one man considers that by nature he was born and by nature dies better than another.

The application of the fundamental principles of the rights of men is always the paramount issue before a people, and when they are strictly adhered to there is no disturbing element to the peace, prosperity, or to the great industrial body politic of the country.

We believe in the supremacy of the civil as against the military law, when and where the civil is respected. But when the civil law has been outraged and wrested from the hands of authority it should be understood that military law may be temporarily instituted.

Law and order should take the place of lynching and mob violence, and polygamy should not survive, but polygamy is more tolerable than lynching, and we regret that a great national party could overlook lynching, and yet denounce polygamy.

Citizens of a democracy should be non-partisan, always casting their votes for the safety of their country and for their best interests, individually and collectively.

The right of any American citizen to support any measure instead of party should not be questioned, and when men conform themselves to party instead of principles they become party slaves. There were 2,500,000 such slaves among our colored population in 1900, all voting strictly to party lines, regardless of their material welfare. We are satisfied that

they did not serve their best interest in that section of the country in which the greater number of them live by doing so.

These being our thoughts and ideas of how the Government's affairs should be conducted, we most respectfully submit them to all liberty-loving and Christian-hearted people, that they may act upon them in a spirit of justice and equity, "with good will to all, malice toward none.'

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Suffrage. We ask for universal suffrage, or qualification which does not discriminate against any reputable citizen on account of color or condition.

Citizenship. We ask that the Federal Government enforce its guarantee to protect its citizens, and secure for them every right given under the Constitution of the United States, wherever and whenever it is necessary.

Lynch Law.-We appeal to all forms of Catholic and Protestant religions to assist us to awaken the Christian consciences of all classes of the American people, private citizens and officers, to wipe out the greatest shame known to civilized nations of the world, whose very root seems to have been planted in this, one of the most proud of all nations of its civilization"lynch law," the pregnator of anarchism, the most dangerous system to revolutionize our Republic.

We ask that the national laws be so remedied as to give any citizen, being next of kin, the right to demand an indemnity of the National Government for the taking of life or the injuring of any citizen other than by due process of law. And that where the property of a citizen is wilfully destroyed by a mob, the Federal Government shall be held to make restitution to the injured parties.

The Army. We demand an increase of the regular army, making six negro regiments instead of four, and an equal chance to colored soldiers to become line officers.

We favor the adjustment of all grievances between the wage earner and the capitalist by equitable resources without injustice to either or by methods of coercion.

We firmly protest against interference of the Government in the Orient until paramount political issues of the races, capital and labor are settled and settled right at home.

Pensions for the Ex-Slaves.-We firmly believe that the exslave, who served the country for 246 years, filling the lap of the nation with wealth by their labor, should be pensioned from the overflowing treasury of the country to which they are and have been loyal, both on land and sea, as provided in the bill introduced in the Senate of the United States by Senator Hanna, of the State of Ohio.

Government Ownership and Public Carriers.-We ask that the general Government own and control all public carriers in the United States, so that the citizens of the United States could not be denied equal accommodations where they pay with the same lawful money provided by the Government as a circulating medium and as a legal tender for all obligations.

American Citizens Deprived of Self-Government. The people of the District of Columbia, the capital of the nation, should be given the right to participate in the selection of President

and Vice-President of the United States, and should be allowed representation in the two branches of Congress, and the election of a Governor, Mayor, City Council, and such other officers as are necessary for the proper government of the District of Columbia. We indorse the Gallagher resolution looking to the establishment of self-government of the District of Columbia.

NATIONAL PROHIBITION

PLATFORM.

ADOPTED AT INDIANAPOLIS, IND., JUNE 30, 1904.

The Prohibition party, in national convertion assembled, at Indianapolis, June 30, 1904, recognizing that the chief end of all government is the establishment of those principles of righteousness and justice which have been revealed to men as the will of the ever-living God, desiring His blessing upon our national life, and believing in the perpetuation of the high ideals of government of the people, by the people and for the people, established by our fathers, makes the following declaration of principles and purposes:

The Most Important Question in American Politics.-The widely prevailing system of the licensed and legalized sale of alcoholic beverages is so ruinous to individual interests, s0 inimical to public welfare, so destructive of national wealth and so subversive of the rights of great masses of our citizenship, that the destruction of the traffic is, and for years has been, the most important question in American politics.

Ignored by Democratic and Republican Leaders.-We denounce the lack of statesmanship exhibited by the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties in their refusal to recognize the paramount importance of this question, and the cowardice with which the leaders of these parties have courted the favor of those whose selfish interests are advanced by the continuation and augmentation of the traffic, until to-day the influence of the liquor traffic practically dominates national, State and local government throughout the nation.

Regulation a Failure-License Money a Bribe.-We declare the truth, demonstrated by the experience of half a century, that all methods of dealing with the liquor traffic which recognize its right to exist, in any form, under any system of license or tax or regulation, have proved powerless to remove its evils, and useless as checks upon its growth, while the insignificant public revenues which have accrued therefrom have seared the public conscience against a recognition of its iniquity.

Prohibitory Law, Administered by Its Friends, the Only Hope. We call public attention to the fact, proved by the experience of more than fifty years, that to secure the enactment and enforcement of prohibitory legislation, in which alone lies the hope of the protection of the people from the liquor traffic, it is necessary that the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government should be in the hands of a political party in harmony with the prohibition principle, and pledged to its embodiment in law, and to the execution of those laws.

Party Will Enact and Enforce Prohibitory Laws.-We pledge. the Prohibition party, wherever given power by the suffrages of the people, to the enactment and enforcement of laws prohibiting and abolishing the manufacture, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages.

No Other Issue of Equal Importance.-We declare that there is not only no other issue of equal importance before the American people to-day, but that the so-called issues upon which the Democratic and Republican parties seek to divide the electorate of the country are, in large part, subterfuges under the cover of which they wrangle for the spoils of office. Attitude on Other Public Questions.-Recognizing that the intelligent voters of the country may properly ask our attitude upon other questions of public concern, we declare ourselves in favor of:

The impartial enforcement of all law.

The safeguarding of the people's rights by a rigid application of the principles of justice to all combinations and organizations of capital and labor.

The recognition of the fact that the right of suffrage should depend upon the mental and moral qualifications of the citizen. A more intimate relation between the people and government, by a wise application of the principle of the initiative and referendum.

Such changes in our laws as will place tariff schedules in the hands of an omni-partisan commission.

The application of uniform laws to all our country and dependencies.

The election of United States Senators by vote of the people. The extension and honest administration of the civil service laws.

The safeguarding of every citizen in every place under the government of the people of the United States, in all the rights guaranteed by the laws and the Constitution.

International arbitration, and we declare that our nation should contribute, in every manner consistent with national dignity, to the permanent establishment of peace between all nations.

The reform of our divorce laws, the final extirpation of polygamy, and the total overthrow of the present shameful system of the illegal sanction of the social evil, with its unspeakable traffic in girls, by the municipal authorities of almost all our cities.

NATIONAL CONTINENTAL PLATFORM.

ADOPTED AT CHICAGO, ILL., AUGUST 31, 1904.

The Continental party of the United States, in first national convention assembled, in the city of Chicago, August 31, 1904, announces the following platform of principles:

The objects and ends of the Continental party, as set forth in its charter, are: "To enlist the co-operation of legal voters throughout the United States in earnest and honorable efforts

to repeal unjust laws in every branch of government, and, in their stead, to secure the enactment and enforcement of other laws better adapted to 'establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, promote the general welfare,' and secure the election or appointment to office of honest and capable men."

Paramount Issues.-The questions pertaining to money, the tariff, transportation, trusts and corporations, the race problem, the labor problem, are pre-eminently live issues, which can never be permanently settled until they are settled right. Tariff-Without referring to our trade relations with nations of the Eastern Continent, we declare our adherence to the principles of reciprocity advocated by that eminent statesman, James G. Blaine, as applied to Canada and all American republics. To this end we favor such Congressional action as shall initiate a movement intended to bring about reciprocity to its fullest extent with the entire American Continent. In the language of Mr. Blaine: "There is room for but one commercial flag between Cape Horn and the North Pole."

Money. We believe that the money question is far from being settled, and that it involves not only the gold standard but the far greater question, namely, Who shall issue and control the paper currency of the nation-the Government or the banks? He who controls the money of a country controls the government of that country.

We believe that the money trust is the mother of all other trusts; that it is international in its scope; that it has duplicate headquarters-London and New York; that its power exceeds in many particulars the power of the Government itself; that it controls legislation by controlling the political party in power; that through its agents it secured the nomination of the Presidential candidates of both the Republican and Democratic parties and dictated the main planks of their national platforms.

We believe that it is this subserviency of the two leading political parties of this country to the money trust that is fast placing the wealth of the country into the hands of a few individuals, reducing to penury and want millions of the laboring and middle classes and establishing in this land of former freedom a plutocracy which threatens to be more arbitrary in its demands than any monarchy of the Old World.

"To coin money and regulate the value thereof" is a function of the National Government which the Constitution has denied to the States, but which the Republican party has delegated, in part, to corporations.

As a check to the encroachments of the money power we advocate the following demands:

The act authorizing national banks to issue notes of credit should be repealed. All money of every description should be issued by the general Government, and be equal in value, dollar for dollar.

Postal banks for deposit and check should be established-one in every city, county, town and village, the surplus funds thus accruing to be loaned to the people at interest not exceeding 3 per cent. per annum.

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