USA > New York > History of the state of New York, political and governmental, Vol. VI > Part 30
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"The Tariff .- We reaffirm our belief in a protective tariff. The Republican tariff policy has been of the greatest benefit to the coun- try, developing our resources, diversifying our industries, and pro- tecting our workmen against competition with cheaper labor abroad, thus establishing for our wage-earners the American standard of living. The protective tariff is so woven into the fabric of our indus-
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trial and agricultural life that to substitute for it a tariff for revenue only would destroy many industries and throw millions of our people out of employment. The products of the farm and of the mine should receive the same measure of protection as other products of American labor.
"We hold that the import duties should be high enough, while yielding a sufficient revenue, to protect adequately American industries and wages. Some of the existing import duties are too high and should be reduced. Readjustment should be made from time to time to con- form to changing conditions and to reduce excessive rates, but without injury to any American industry. To accomplish this correct infor- mation is indispensable. This information can best be obtained by an expert commission, as the large volume of useful facts contained in the recent reports of the Tariff board has demonstrated. The pronounced feature of modern industrial life is its enormous diversification. To apply tariff rates justly to these changing conditions requires closer study and more scientific methods than ever before. The Republican party has shown by its creation of a Tariff board its recognition of this situation and its determination to be equal to it. We condemn the Democratic party for its failure either to provide funds for the continuance of this board or to make some other provision for securing the information requisite for intelligent tariff legislation. We protest against the Democratic method of legislating on these vitally import- ant subjects without careful investigation.
"We condemn the Democratic tariff bills passed by the House of Representatives of the Sixty-second Congress as sectional, as injurious to the public credit, and as destructive of business enterprise.
"Cost of Living .- The steadily increasing cost of living has become a matter not only of national but of world-wide concern. The fact that it is not due to the protective tariff system is evidenced by the existence of similar conditions in countries which have a tariff policy different from our own, as well as by the fact that the cost of living has increased while rates of duty have remained stationary or been reduced. The Republican party will support a prompt scientific inquiry into the causes which are operative, both in the United States and elsewhere, to increase the cost of living. When the exact facts
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are known, it will take the necessary steps to remove any abuses that may be found to exist in order that the cost of the food, clothing, and shelter of the people may in no way be unduly or artificially increased.
"Banking and Currency .- The Republican party has always stood for a sound currency and for safe banking methods. It is responsible for the resumption of specie payments, and for the establishment of the gold standard. It is committed to the progressive development of our banking and currency system. Our banking arrangements to-day need further revision to meet the requirements of current conditions. We need measures which will prevent the recurrence of money panics and financial disturbances and which will promote the prosperity of business and the welfare of labor by producing constant employment. We need better currency facilities for the movement of crops in the west and south. We need banking arrangements under American auspices for the encouragement and better conduct of our foreign trade. In attaining these ends, the independence of individual banks, whether organized under national or State charters, must be carefully protected and our banking and currency system must be safeguarded from any possibility of domination by sectional, financial, or political interests.
"It is of great importance to the social and economic welfare of this country that its farmers have facilities for borrowing easily and cheaply the money they need to increase the productivity of their land. It is as important that financial machinery be provided to supply the demand of farmers for credit as it is that the banking and currency systems be reformed in the interests of general business. Therefore we recommend and urge an authoritative investigation of agricultural credit societies and corporations in other countries, and the passage of State and Federal laws for the establishment and capable supervision of organizations having for their purpose the loaning of funds to farmers.
"The Civil Service .- We reaffirm our adherence to the principle of appointment to public office based on proved fitness, and tenure during good behavior and efficiency. The Republican party stands committed to the maintenance, extension, and enforcement of the Civil Service law, and it favors the passage of legislation empowering the President
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to extend the competitive service so far as practicable. We favor legislation to make possible the equitable retirement of disabled and superannuated members of the civil service, in order that a higher order of efficiency may be maintained.
"We favor the amendment of the Federal Employers' Liability law so as to extend its provision to all government employes, as well as to provide a more liberal scale of compensation for injury and death.
"Campaign Contributions-We favor such additional legislation as may be necessary more effectually to prohibit corporations from contributing funds, directly or indirectly, to campaigns for the nomi- nation or election of the President, the Vice-President, Senators, and Representatives in Congress. We heartily approve the recent act of Congress requiring the fullest publicity in regard to all campaign con- tributions, whether made in connection with primaries, conventions, or elections.
"Conservation Policy .- We rejoice in the success of the distinctive Republican policy of the conservation of our national resources, for their use by the people without waste and without monopoly. We pledge ousrelves to a continuance of such a policy.
"We favor such fair and reasonable rules and regulations as will not discourage or interfere with actual bona fide homeseekers, pros- pectors, and miners in the acquisition of public lands under existing laws.
"Parcels Post .- In the interest of the general public, and particu- larly of the agricultural or rural communities, we favor legislation looking to the establishment, under proper regulations, of a parcels post, the postal rates to be graduated under a zone system in propor- tion to the length of carriage.
"Protection of American Citizens .- We approve the action taken by the President and the Congress to secure with Russia, as with other countries, a treaty that will recognize the absolute right of expatria- tion, and that will prevent all discrimination of whatever kind between American citizens, whether native-born or alien, and regardless of race, religion, or previous political allegiance. The right of asylum
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is a precious possession of the people of the United States, and it is to be neither surrendered nor restricted.
"The Navy .- We believe in the maintenance of an adequate navy for the national defense, and we condemn the action of the Democratic House of Representatives in refusing to authorize the construction of additional ships.
"Merchant Marine .- We believe that one of the country's most urgent needs is a revived merchant marine. There should be American ships, and plenty of them, to make use of the great American inter- oceanic canal now nearing completion.
"Flood Prevention in the Mississippi Valley .- The Mississippi River is the nation's drainage ditch. Its flood-waters, gathered from thirty-one States and the Dominion of Canada, constitute an over- powering force which breaks the levees and pours its torrents over many million acres of the richest land in the Union, stopping mails, impeding commerce, and causing great loss of life and property. These floods are national in scope, and the disasters they produce seriously affect the general welfare. The States unaided cannot cope with this giant problem; hence, we believe the Federal government should assume a fair proportion of the burden of its control so as to prevent the disasters from recurring floods.
"Reclamation .- We favor the continuance of the policy of the government with regard to the reclamation of arid lands; and for the encouragement of the speedy settlement and improvement of such lands we favor an amendment to the law that will reasonably extend the time within which the cost of any reclamation project may be repaid by the landowners under it.
"Rivers and Harbors .- We favor a liberal and systematic policy for the improvement of our rivers and harbors. Such improvements should be made upon expert information and after a careful compar- ison of cost and prospective benefits.
"Alaska .- We favor a liberal policy toward Alaska, to promote the development of the great resources of that district, with such safe- guards as will prevent waste and monopoly. We favor the opening of the coal lands to development through a law leasing the lands on such terms as will invite development and provide fuel for the navy
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and the commerce of the Pacific Ocean, while retaining title in the United States to prevent monopoly.
"Porto Rico .- We ratify in all its parts the platform of 1908 respecting citizenship for the people of Porto Rico.
"Philippine Policy .- The Philippine policy of the Republican party has been and is inspired by the belief that our duty toward the Filipino people is a national obligation which should remain entirely free from partisan politics.
"Immigration .- We pledge the Republican party to the enactment of appropriate laws to give relief from the constantly growing evil of induced or undesirable immigration, which is inimical to the progress and welfare of the people of the United States.
"Safety at Sea .- We favor the speedy enactment of laws to provide that seamen shall not be compelled to endure involuntary servitude, and that life and property at sea shall be safeguarded by the ample equipment of vessels with life-saving appliances and with full com- plements of skilled, able-bodied seamen to operate them.
"Republican Accomplishment .- The approaching completion of the Panama canal, the establishment of a Bureau of Mines, the insti- tution of postal savings banks, the increased provision made in 1912 for the aged and infirm soldiers and sailors of the republic and for their widows, and the vigorous administration of the laws relating to pure food and drugs, all mark the successful progress of Republican administration and are additional evidence of its effectiveness.
"Economy and Efficiency in Government .- We commend the earnest effort of the Republican administration to secure greater economy and increased efficiency in the conduct of government busi- ness ; extravagant appropriations and the creation of unnecessary offices are an injustice to the taxpayer and a bad example to the citizen.
"Civic Duty .- We call upon the people to quicken their interest in public affairs, to condemn and punish lynchings and other forms of lawlessness, and to strengthen in all possible ways a respect for law and the observance of it. Indifferent citizenship is an evil from which the law affords no adequate protection and for which legislation can provide no remedy.
"Arizona and New Mexico .- We congratulate the people of Ari-
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zona and New Mexico upon the admission of those States, thus merg- ing in the Union in final and enduring form the last remaining portion of our continental territory.
"Republican Administration .- We challenge successful criticism of the sixteen years of Republican administration under Presidents Mckinley, Roosevelt, and Taft. We heartily reaffirm the endorse- ment of President Mckinley contained in the platforms of 1900 and of 1904 and that of President Roosevelt contained in the platforms of 1904 and 1908.
"We invite the intelligent judgment of the American people upon the administration of William H. Taft. The country has prospered and been at peace under his Presidency. During the years in which he had the cooperation of a Republican Congress an unexampled amount of constructive legislation was framed and passed in the interest of the people and in obedience to their wish. That legislation is a record on which any administration might appeal with confidence to the favorable judgmnt of history.
"We appeal to the American electorate upon the record of the Republican party and upon this declaration of its principles and pur- poses. We are confident that under the leadership of the candidates here to be nominated our appeal will not be in vain; that the Repub- lican party will meet every just expectation of the people whose servant it is; that under its administration and its laws our nation will continue to advance; that peace and prosperity will abide with the people, and that new glory will be added to the great republic."
The members of the committee on resolutions from Wisconsin and North Dakota submitted a minority report which embodied the ideas of Senator LaFollette; this was laid on the table without a division. The platform as above was then adopted by the following vote :- ayes, 666; nays, 53; not voting but present, 343; absent, 21.
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Democratic Party
Convention held in Baltimore, June 25-July 2, 1912. For the position of temporary chairman the national committee designated Alton B. Parker. This choice was strongly opposed by William J. Bryan, who nomi- nated John W. Kern, but Mr. Kern declined to be a candidate and advocated the election of Mr. Bryan. On roll-call Parker was chosen by 579 votes to 508 for Bryan-scattering or not voting, 7. Ollie M. James, of Kentucky, was made permanent chairman.
Forty-six ballots were required to nominate the Presidential candidate. First ballot :- Champ Clark, of Missouri, 44012; Woodrow Wilson, of New Jersey, 324; Judson Harmon, of Ohio, 148; Oscar W. Under- wood, of Alabama, 11712 ; Thomas R. Marshall, of In- diana, 31; Simeon E. Baldwin, of Connecticut, 22; William Sulzer, of New York, 2; William J. Bryan, 1; not voting, 2. On the tenth ballot Clark had 556, eleven more than a majority; this proved to be his maximum vote, though for many ballots following he continued largely in the lead, Wilson meantime retain- ing second place and slowly gaining. The thirtieth ballot showed 460 for Wilson to 455 for Clark; and on all the subsequent ballots Wilson held the lead. Forty- sixth and last ballot :- Wilson, 990; Clark, 84; Har- mon, 12; not voting, 2.
The defeat of Mr. Clark, the failure of either Mr. Harmon or Mr. Underwood to develop promising strength, and the consequent success of Mr. Wilson were greatly due to the activities of Mr. Bryan and the
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growing feeling among the delegates that it would be unwise to provoke discord by the choice of a candidate unacceptable to him. At the opening of the struggle for the nomination Bryan offered a resolution, which the convention adopted (883 ayes to 2011/2 nays), de- claring opposition to "the nomination of any candidate for President who is the representative of or under obligation to J. Pierpont Morgan, Thomas F. Ryan, August Belmont, or any other member of the privilege- hunting and favor-seeking class." Bryan was hostile to the New York delegation and determined to beat any aspirant having its preference. On the early ballots he voted for Clark, while New York gave its solid sup- port of 90 votes to Harmon. But on the tenth and fol- lowing ballots New York went solidly for Clark. Bryan sat silent until the fourteenth ballot was being taken, when he rose and in a vigorous speech announced that a condition had arisen in the convention that obliged him to withdraw his support from Clark. "I shall withhold my vote from Mr. Clark," he said, "as long as New York's vote is recorded for him. And the position that I take in regard to Mr. Clark I will take in regard to any other candidate whose name is now or may be before the convention." He then cast his vote for Wilson. His action did not at once pro- duce a marked effect upon the situation, but Clark's vote began to fall off, a few at a time, while Wilson's stead- ily rose. New York stood unitedly by Clark until the final ballot, when it joined the stampede to Wilson. Mr. Bryan's course created very great bitterness among the friends of Mr. Clark-probably not so much, how-
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ever, on account of the loss of the nomination, as be- cause of the assumption and implications involved in the discrimination against him.
For Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall, of Indiana, was nominated on the second ballot, the vote for him being made unanimous after changes.
Platform (unanimously adopted) :
"We, the representatives of the Democratic party of the United States, in national convention assembled, reaffirm our devotion to the principles of Democratic government formulated by Thomas Jeffer- son and enforced by a long and illustrious line of Democratic Presidents.
"Tariff Reform .- We declare it to be a fundamental principle of the Democratic party that the Federal government, under the Consti- tution, has no right or power to impose or collect tariff duties except for the purpose of revenue, and we demand that the collection of such taxes shall be limited to the necessities of government, honestly and economically administered.
"The high Republican tariff is the principal cause of the unequal distribution of wealth; it is a system of taxation which makes the rich richer and the poor poorer ; under its operations the American farmer and laboring man are the chief sufferers; it raises the cost of the necessaries of life to them, but does not protect their product or wages. The farmer sells largely in free markets and buys almost entirely in the protected markets. In the most highly protected industries, such as cotton and wool, steel and iron, the wages of the laborers are the lowest paid in any of our industries. We denounce the Republican pretense on that subject and assert that American wages are estab- lished by competitive conditions and not by the tariff.
"We favor the immediate downward revision of the existing high, and, in many cases, prohibitive tariff duties, insisting that material reductions be speedily made upon the necessaries of life. Articles entering into competition with trust-controlled products and articles
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president; born October 27, 1858, New York City; publicist; member of assembly, 1882; candidate for mayor of New York, 1886; United States civil service com- missioner, 1889-95; president of New York City police board, 1895-97; assistant secretary of the navy, 1897-8; served in Spanish-American war; governor of New York, 1899-1900; vice president, March 4 to September 20, 1901, when he became president upon the death of President Mckinley; elected presi- dent, 1904; defeated candidate for president on progressive ticket in 1912; died at Oyster Bay, N. Y., January 6, 1919.
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of American manufacture which are sold abroad more cheaply than at home should be put upon the free list.
"We recognize that our system of tariff taxation is intimately con- nected with the business of the country, and we favor the ultimate attainment of the principles we advocate by legislation that will not injure or destroy legitimate industry.
"We denounce the action of President Taft in vetoing the bills to reduce the tariff in the cotton, woolen, metal, and chemical schedules and the Farmers' Free List bill, all of which were designed to give immediate relief to the masses from the exactions of the trusts.
"The Republican party, while promising tariff revision, has shown by its tariff legislation that such revision is not to be in the people's interest, and having been faithless to its pledges of 1908 it should no longer enjoy the confidence of the nation. We appeal to the American people to support us in our demand for a tariff for revenue only.
"High Cost of Living .- The high cost of living is a serious prob- lem in every American home. The Republican party in its platform attempts to escape from responsibility for present conditions by deny- ing that they are due to a protective tariff. We take issue with them on this subject and charge that excessive prices result in a large measure from the high tariff laws enacted and maintained by the Republican party and from trusts and commercial conspiracies fostered and encouraged by such laws, and we assert that no substantial relief can be secured for the people until import duties on the necessaries of life are materially reduced and these criminal conspiracies broken up.
"Anti-Trust Law .- A private monopoly is indefensible and intol- erable. We therefore favor the vigorous enforcement of the criminal as well as the civil law against trusts and trust officials, and demand the enactment of such additional legislation as may be necessary to make it impossible for a private monopoly to exist in the United States.
"We favor the declaration by law of the conditions upon which corporations shall be permitted to engage in interstate trade, including, among others, the prevention of holding companies, of interlocking directors, of stock watering, of discrimination in price, and the control by any one corporation of so large a proportion of any industry as to make it a menace to competitive conditions.
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"We condemn the action of the Republican administration in com- promising with the Standard Oil Company and the Tobacco Trust and its failure to invoke the criminal provisions of the Anti-Trust law against the officers of those corporations after the court had declared that, from the undisputed facts in the record, they had violated the criminal provisions of the law.
"We regret that the Sherman Anti-Trust law has received a judi- cial construction depriving it of much of its efficiency, and we favor the enactment of legislation which will restore to the statute the strength of which it has been deprived by such interpretation.
"Rights of the States .- We believe in the preservation and mainte- nance in their full strength and integrity of the three coordinate branches of the Federal government-the executive, the legislative, and the judicial,-each keeping with its own bounds and not en- croaching upon the just powers of either of the others.
"Believing that the most efficient results under our system of gov- ernment are to be attained by the full exercise by the States of their reserved sovereign powers, we denounce as usurpation the efforts of our opponents to deprive the States of any of the rights reserved to them, and to enlarge and magnify by indirection the powers of the Federal government.
"We insist upon the full exercise of all the powers of the govern- ment, both State and national, to protect the people from injustice at the hands of those who seek to make the government a private asset in business. There is no twilight zone between the nation and the State in which exploiting interests can take refuge from both. It is as necessary that the Federal government shall exercise the powers dele- gated to it as it is that the States shall exercise the powers reserved to them, but we insist that Federal remedies for the regulation of inter- state commerce and for the prevention of private monopoly shall be added to, and not substituted for, State remedies.
"Income Tax and Popular Election of Senators .- We congratulate the country upon the triumph of two important reforms demanded in the last national platform, namely, the amendment of the Federal Constitution authorizing an income tax and the amendment providing for the popular election of Senators, and we call upon the people of
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all the States to rally to the support of the pending propositions and secure their ratification.
"Publicity of Campaign Contributions .- We note with gratifica- tion the unanimous sentiment in favor of publicity before the election of campaign contributions-a measure demanded in our national plat- form of 1908 and at that time opposed by the Republican party,-and we commend the Democratic House of Representatives for extending the doctrine of publicity to recommendations, verbal and written, upon which Presidential appointments are made, to the ownership and control of newspapers, and to the expenditures made by and in behalf of those who aspire to Presidential nominations, and we point for additional justification for this legislation to the enormous expenditures of money in behalf of the President and his predecessor in the recent contest for the Republican nomination for President.
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