vicious monetary system, which depresses the prices of their prod ucts below the cost of production, and thus deprives them of the means of purchasing the products of our home manufacture. CONGRESSIONAL APPROPRIATIONS. We denounce the profligate waste of the money wrung from the people by oppressive taxation and the lavish appropriations of recent Republican Congresses, which have kept taxes high, while the labor that pays them is unemployed, and the products of the people's toil are depressed in price till they no longer repay the cost of production. We demand a return to that simplicity and economy which best befits a democratic government and a reduction in the number of useless offices, the salaries of which drain the substance of the people. FEDERAL INTERFERENCE. We denounce arbitrary interference by Federal authorities in local affairs as a violation of the Constitution of the United States and a crime against free institutions, and we especially object to government by injunction as a new and highly dangerous form of oppression, by which Federal judges, in contempt of the laws of the States and rights of citizens, become at once legislators, judges, and executioners, and we approve the bill passed at the last session of the United States Senate, and now pending in the House, relative to contempts in Federal courts, and providing for trials by jury in certain cases of contempt. PACIFIC FUNDING BILL. No discrimination should be indulged by the Government of the United States in favor of any of its debtors. We approve of the refusal of the Fifty-third Congress to pass the Pacific Railroad funding bill, and denounce the effort of the present Republican Congress to enact a similar measure. PENSIONS. Recognizing the just claims of deserving Union soldiers, we heartily indorse the rule of the present Commissioner of Pensions that no names shall be arbitrarily dropped from the pension roll, and the fact of an enlistment and service should be deemed conclusive evidence against disease or disability before enlistment. CUBA. We extend our sympathy to the people of Cuba in their heroic struggle for liberty and independence. THE CIVIL SERVICE. We are opposed to life tenure in the public service. We favor appointments based upon merits, fixed terms of office, and such an administration of the civil-service laws as will afford equal opportunities to all citizens of ascertained fitness. NO THIRD TERM. We declare it to be the unwritten law of this Republic, established by custom and usage of one hundred years, and sanctioned by the examples of the greatest and wisest of those who founded and have maintained our Government, that no man should be eligible for a third term of the Presidential office. CORPORATE WEALTH. The absorption of wealth by the few, the consolidation of our leading railroad systems, and formation of trusts and pools require a stricter, control by the Federal Government of those arteries of commerce. We demand the enlargement of the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and such restrictions and guaranties in the control of railroads as will protect the people from robbery and oppression. ADMISSION OF TERRITORIES. We favor the admission of the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona into the Union of States, and we favor the early admission of all the Territories giving the necessary population and resources to entitle them to Statehood, and while they remain Territories we hold that the officials appointed to administer the government of any Territory, together with the District of Columbia and Alaska, should be bona fide residents of the Territory or District in which their duties are to be performed. The Democratic party believes in home rule and that all public lands of the United States should be appropriated to the establishment of free homes for American citizens. We recommend that the Territory of Alaska be granted a Delegate in Congress, and that the general land and timber laws of the United States be extended to said Territory. MISSISSIPPI RIVER IMPROVEMENT. The Federal Government should care for and improve the Mississippi River and other great waterways of the Republic, so as to secure for the interior people easy and cheap transportation to tidewater. When any waterway of the Republic is of sufficient importance to demand aid of the Government, such aid should be extended upon a definite plan of continuous work until permanent improvement is secured. Confiding in the justice of our cause and the necessity of its success at the polls, we submit the foregoing declaration of principles and purposes to the considerate judgment of the American people. We invite the support of all citizens who approve them, and who desire to have them made effective through legislation for the relief of the people and the restoration of the country's prosperity. THE POPULIST NATIONAL PLATFORM. The People's Party of the United States in convention assembled, congratulating its supporters on the wide extension of its principles in all directions, does hereby reaffirm its adherence to the fundaméntal principles proclaimed in its two prior platforms, and calls upon all who desire to avert the subversion of free institutions by corporate and imperialistic power to unite with it in bringing the Government back to the ideals of Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln. It extends to its allies in the struggle for financial and economic freedom assurances of its loyalty to the principles which animate the allied forces, and the promise of honest and hearty co-operation in every effort for their success. To the people of the United States we offer the following platform as the expression of our unalterable convictions: Resolved, That we denounce the act of March 14, 1900, as the culmination of a long series of conspiracies to deprive the people of their constitutional rights over the money of the nation and relegate to a gigantic money trust the control of the purse and hence of the people. We denounce this act, first, for making all money obligations, domestic and foreign, payable in gold coin or its equivalent, thus enormously increasing the burdens of the debtors and enriching the creditors. Second, for refunding "coin bonds," not to mature for years, into long-time gold bonds, so as to make their payment improb. able and our debt perpetual. Third, for taking from the Treasury over $50,000,000 in a time of war and presenting it at a premium to bondholders to accomplish the refunding of bonds not due. Fourth, for doubling the capital of bankers by returning to them the face value of their bonds in currency money notes, so that they may draw one interest from the Government and another from the people Fifth, for allowing banks to expand and contract their circulation at pleasure, thus controlling prices of all products. Sixth, for authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to issue new gold bonds to an unlimited amount whenever he deems it necessary to replenish the gold reserve, thus enabling usurers to secure more bonds and more bank currency by drawing gold from the Treasury, thereby creating an “endless chain" for perpetually adding to a perpetual debt. Seventh, for striking down the greenbacks in order to force the people to borrow $346,000,000 more from the banks at an annual cost of over $20,000,000. While barring out the money of the Constitution this law opens the printing mints of the Treasury to the free coinage of bank paper money to enrich the few and impoverish the many. We pledge anew the People's Party never to cease the agitation until this financial conspiracy is blotted from the statute books, the Lincoln greenback restored, the bonds all paid, and all corporation money forever retired. We reaffirm the demand for the reopening of the mints of the United States for the free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, the immediate increase in the volume of silver coins and certificates thus created to be substituted, dollar for dollar, for the bank notes issued by private corporations under special privileges granted by the law of March 14, 1900, and prior national banking laws, the remaining portion of the bank notes to be replaced with full legal-tender Government paper money, and its volume so controlled as to maintain at all times a stable money market and a stable price level. We demand a graduated income and inheritance tax, to the end that aggregated wealth shall bear its just proportion of taxation. We demand that postal savings banks be established by the Government for the safe deposit of the savings of the people and to facilitate exchange. The original homestead policy should be enforced, and future settlers upon the public domain should be entitled to a free homestead, while all who have paid an acreage price to the Government under existing laws should have their homestead rights restored. Trusts, the overshadowing evil of the age, are the result of culmination of the private ownership and control of the three great instruments of commerce-money, transportation, and the means of transmission of information-which instruments of commerce are public functions, and which our fathers declared in the Constitution should be controlled by the people through their Congress for the public welfare. One remedy for trusts is that ownership and control be assumed and exercised by the people. We further demand that all tariffs on goods controlled by trusts shall be abolished. To cope with the trust evil the people must act directly without intervention of representatives, who may be controlled or influenced. We therefore demand direct legislation, giving the people the law making and the veto power under the initiative and referendum. A majority of the people can never be corruptly influenced. Applauding the vaior of our Army and Navy in the Spanish war, we denounce the conduct of the Administration in changing a war for humanity into a war for conquest. The action of the Administration in the Philippines is in conflict with all precedents of our national life; at war with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the plain precepts of humanity. Murder and arson have been our response to the appeals of the people who asked only to establish a free government in their own land. We demand a stoppage of this war of extermination by the assurance to the Philippines of independence and protection under a stable government of their own creation. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the American flag are one and inseparable. The island of Perto Rico is a part of the territory of the United States, and by levying special and extraordinary customs duties on the commerce of that islard the Administration has violated the Consteretion, abanded the fundamental principles of American Poerty, and has striven to give the lie to the contention of our forefa hors that there should be no taxation without representation. Out of the imperalism which would force an undesired dominaten of the people of the Philippines springs the un-American cry for a large standing army. We denounce the Administration for its sister eforts to substitute a standing army for the citizen Very, which is the best safeguard of the Republic. We extend to the brave Bers of South Africa our sympathy and moral suppert in their patriotic struggle for the right of selfgovernment, and we are unalterably opposed to any alliance, open or cerent, between the United States and any other nation that will tend to the destruction of human liberty. The platform der ounces the Federal and Idaho State government for using the milta in the Coeur D'Alene mining districts for enforement of what it terms "an infamous permit system" among the laborers struggling for a greater measure of independence. It denounces the importation of Japanese and other laborers under contract to serve monopolistic corporations and pledges its efforts to restrict Mongolian and Malayan immigration. It indorses municipal ownership of public utilities. It demands a direct popu lar vote for United States Senators and all other officials as far as |