USA > New York > History of the state of New York, political and governmental, Vol. VI > Part 40
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"8. Justice to the Soldiers .- We favor paying the soldiers of the late war, as a matter of right and not as charity, a sufficient sum to make their war pay not less than civilian earnings. We denounce the delays in payment and the inadequate compensation to disabled soldiers and sailors and their dependents, and we pledge such changes as will promptly and adequately give sympathetic recognition of their services and sacrifices.
"9. Labor's Bill of Rights .- During the years that labor has tried in vain to obtain recognition of the rights of the workers at the hands of the government through the agencies of the Republican and Democratic parties, the principal demands of labor have been catalogued and presented by the representatives of labor, who have gone to convention after convention of the old parties-to Congress after Congress of old-party office-holders. These conventions and sessions of Congress have from time to time included in platforms and laws a few fragments of labor's programme, carefully rewritten, however, to interpose no interference with the opposition to labor by private wielders of the power of capital. It remains for the Farmer- Labor party, the people's own party, financed by the people them- selves, to pledge itself to the entire Bill of Rights of Labor, the conditions enumerated therein to be written into the laws of the land to be enjoyed by the workers, organized and unorganized, with-
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out the amelioration of a single word in the program. Abraham Lincoln said: 'Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves the highest consideration.'
"We pledge the application of this fundamental principle in the enactment and administration of legislation.
"(a) The unqualified right of all workers, including civil serv- ice employes, to organize and bargain collectively with employers through such representatives of their unions as they choose.
"(b) Freedom from compulsory arbitration and all other attempts . to coerce workers.
"(c) A maximum standard eight-hour day and forty-four-hour week.
"(d) Old age and unemployment payments and workmen's com- pensation to insure workers and their dependents against accident and disease.
"(e) Establishment and operation, through periods of depression, of governmental work on housing, road-building, reforestation, reclamation of cut-over timber, desert, and swamp lands, and develop- ment of ports, waterways, and water-power plants.
"(f) Reeducation of the cripples of industry as well as the victims of war.
"(g) Abolition of employment of children under sixteen years of age.
"(h) Complete and effective protection for women in industry, with equal pay for equal work.
"(i) Abolition of private employment, detective, and strike- breaking agencies, and extension of the Federal Free Employment service.
"(j) Prevention of exploitation of immigration and immigrants by employers.
"(k) Vigorous enforcement of the Seamen's act, and the most lib- eral interpretation of its provisions. The present provisions for the pro- tection of seamen and for the safety of the travelling public must not be minimized.
"(1) Exclusion from interstate commerce of the products of convict labor.
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"(m) A Federal Department of Education to advance democ- racy and effectiveness in all public school systems throughout the country, to the end that the children of workers in industrial and rural communities may have maximum opportunity of training to become unafraid, well-informed citizens of a free country."
Single Tax Party
The Single Tax delegates in attendance at the con- vention of Forty-Eighters left that body and held a separate convention, Chicago, July 12, 1920, which nominated for President Robert C. Macauley, of Penn- sylvania, and for Vice-President Richard C. Barnum, of Ohio.
Platform :
"We, the Single Tax party, in national convention assembled, recognizing that the earth was created for all the people for all time, and that all have an equal and inalienable right to live on it and to produce from it the things that they require for their welfare and happiness; recognizing that all wealth, whatever its form, is pro- duced only by labor applied to land, or to the products of land, and that the denial of the equal access to land is a denial of the right to produce, and thus a denial of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as proclaimed by the Declaration of Inde- pendence; recognizing further that under our tax laws and our sys- tem of land tenure a small number of the people own most of the land of our country, and exact tribute in the form of ground rent from all the rest of the people in exchange for the mere permission to work and produce, thus not only reaping where they have not sown but also holding idle the greater part of the earth's surface and restricting the amount of wealth we otherwise easily could and would produce; recognizing further that the value of the land, as expressed in its ground rentals or in its capitalized selling price, is a community value created by the presence of the people and, there- fore, belongs to the people and not to the individuals;
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"We, therefore, demand that the full rental value of the land be collected by the government instead of all taxes, and that all build- ings, implements, and improvements on land, all industry, thrift, and enterprise, all wages, salaries, incomes, and every product of labor be entirely exempt from taxation. And we pledge ourselves that, if entrusted with the power to do so, we will express in law and enforce to the utmost such measures as will make effective these demands to the end that involuntary poverty and want may be abolished and economic and civic freedom for all be assured."
Socialist Party
Convention held in New York, May 8-15, 1920.
For President the nominee was Eugene V. Debs, an inmate of the Federal prison at Atlanta, Georgia, hav- ing been convicted and sentenced to a ten years' term for violation of the Espionage act by his public utter- ances at Canton, Ohio, in July, 1918. After Debs's nomination a delegation of Socialists requested Presi- dent Wilson to pardon him, but without success.
For Vice-President, Seymour Stedman, of Chicago. Platform :
"In the national campaign of 1920 the Socialist party calls upon all American workers of hand and brain, and upon all citizens who believe in political liberty and social justice, to free the country from the oppressive misrule of the old political parties, and to take the government into their own hands under the banner and upon the program of the Socialist party. The outgoing administration, like Democratic and Republican administrations of the past, leaves behind it a disgraceful record of solemn pledges unscrupulously broken and public confidence ruthlessly betrayed. It obtained the suffrage of the people on a platform of peace, liberalism, and social betterment, but drew the country into a devastating war and inaugurated a regime of despotism, reaction, and oppression unsurpassed in the annals of
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the republic. It promised to the American people a treaty which would assure to the world a reign of international right and true democracy: it gave its sanction and support to an infamous pact formulated behind closed doors by predatory elder statesmen of European and Asiatic imperialism. Under this pact territories have been annexed against the will of their populations and cut off from their sources of sustenance; nations seeking their freedom in the exercise of the much heralded right of self-determination have been brutally fought with armed force, intrigue, and starvation blockades.
"To the millions of young men who staked their lives on the field of battle, to the people of the country who gave unstintingly of their toil and property to support the war, the Democratic administra- tion held out the sublime ideal of a union of peoples of the world organized to maintain perpetual peace among nations on the basis of justice and freedom. It helped create a reactionary alliance of impe- rialistic governments, banded together to bully weak nations, crush working-class governments, and perpetuate strife and warfare. While thus furthering the ends of reaction, violence, and oppression abroad, our administration suppressed the cherished and fundamental rights and civil liberties at home. Upon the pretext of war-time necessity, the Chief-Executive of the republic and the appointed heads of his administration were clothed with dictatorial powers (which were often exercised arbitrarily), and Congress enacted laws in open and direct violation of the constitutional safeguards of freedom of expression. Hundreds of citizens who raised their voices for the maintenance of political and industrial rights during the war were indicted under the Espionage law, tried in an atmosphere of prejudice and hysteria, and many of them now serving inhumanly long jail sentences for daring to uphold the traditions of liberty which once were sacred in this country. Agents of the Federal government unlawfully raided homes and meeting-places and prevented or broke up peaceful gatherings of citizens.
"The Postmaster-General established a censorship of the press more autocratic than that ever tolerated in a regime of absolutism, and has harassed and destroyed publications on account of their advanced political and economic views, by excluding them from the
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mails. And after the war was in fact long over, the administration has not scrupled to continue a policy of repression and terrorism under the shadow and hypocritical guise of war-time measures.
"It has practically imposed involuntary servitude and peonage on a large class of American workers by denying them the right to quit work and coercing them into acceptance of inadequate wages and onerous conditions of labor. It has dealt a foul blow to the traditional American right of asylum by deporting hundreds of foreign-born workers by administrative order, on the mere suspicion of harbor- ing radical views and often for the sinister purpose of breaking labor strikes. In the short span of three years our self-styled liberal administration has succeeded in undermining the very foundation of political liberty and economic rights which this republic has built up in more than a century of struggle and progress. Under the cloak of a false and hypocritical patriotism and under the protection of governmental terror the Democratic administration has given the rul- ing classes unrestrained license to plunder the people by intensive exploitation of labor, by the extortion of enormous profits, and by increasing the cost of all necessities of life. Profiteering has become reckless and rampant, billions have been coined by the capitalists out of the suffering and misery of their fellow-men. The American financial oligarchy has become a dominant factor in the world, while the condition of the American workers has grown more precarious.
"The responsibility does not rest upon the Democratic party alone. The Republican party, through its representatives in Congress and otherwise, has not only openly condoned the political misdeeds of the last three years but has sought to outdo its Democratic rival in the orgy of political reaction and repression. Its criticism of the Democratic administrative policy is that it is not reactionary and drastic enough.
"America is now at the parting of the roads. If the outraging of political liberty and concentration of economic power into the hands of the few is permitted to go on, it can have only one consequence, the reduction of the country to a state of absolute capitalist despotism. We particularly denounce the militaristic policy of both old parties, of investing countless hundreds of millions of dollars in armaments
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after the victorious completion of what was to have been the 'last war.' We call attention to the fatal results of such a program in Europe, carried on prior to 1914 and culminating in the Great War ; we declare that such a policy, adding unbearable burdens to the work- ing class and to all the people, can lead only to the complete Prussian- ization of the nation, and ultimately to war; and we demand immedi- ate and complete abandonment of this fatal program. The Socialist party sounds the warning. It calls upon the people to defeat both parties at the polls, and to elect the candidates of the Socialist party to the end of restoring political democracy and bringing about a complete industrial freedom.
"The Socialist party of the United States therefore summons all who believe in this fundamental doctrine to prepare for a com- plete reorganization of our social system, based upon public owner- ship of public necessities; upon government by representatives chosen from occupational as well as from geographical groups, in harmony with our industrial development and with citizenship based on serv- ice, that we may end forever the exploitation of class by class. To achieve this end the Socialist party pledges itself to the following program :
"I. Social .- 1. All business vitally essential for the existence and welfare of the people, such as railroads, express service, steam- ship lines, telegraphs, mines, oil wells, power plants, elevators, pack- ing houses, cold storage plants, and all industries operating on a national scale, should be taken over by the nation.
"2. All publicly-owned industries should be administered jointly by the government and representatives of the workers, not for reve- nue or profit, but with the sole object of securing just compensation and humane conditions of employment to the workers and efficient and reasonable service to the public.
"3. All banks should be acquired by the government and incor- porated in a unified public banking system.
"4. The business of insurance should be taken over by the govern- ment and should be extended to include insurance against accident, sickness, invalidity, old age, and unemployment, without contribution on the part of the worker.
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"5. Congress should enforce the provisions of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments with reference to the negroes, and effective Federal legislation should be enacted to secure to the negroes full civil, political, industrial, and educational rights.
"II. Industrial .- 1. Congress should enact effective laws to abolish child labor, to fix minimum wages based on an ascertained cost of a decent standard of life, to protect migratory and unemployed workers from oppression, to abolish detective and strike-breaking agencies, and to establish a shorter work-day in keeping with increased industrial productivity.
"III. Political .- 1. The constitutional freedom of speech, press, and assembly should be restored by repealing the Espionage law and all other repressive legislation, and by prohibiting the executive usurpation of authority.
"2. All prosecutions under the Espionage law should be discon- tinued, and all persons serving prison sentences for alleged offenses growing out of religious beliefs, political views, or industrial activities should be fully pardoned and immediately released.
"3. No alien should be deported from the United States on account of his political views or participation in labor struggles, nor in any event without proper trial on specific charges. The arbitrary power to deport aliens by administrative order should be repealed.
"4. The power of the courts to restrain workers in their strug- gles against employers by the writ of injunction or otherwise, and their power to nullify Congressional legislation, should be abrogated.
"5. Federal Judges should be elected by the people and be subject to recall.
"6. The President and the Vice-President of the United States should be elected by direct popular election, and be subject to recall. All members of the cabinet should be elected by Congress and be responsible at all times to the vote thereof.
"7. Suffrage should be equal and unrestricted, in fact as well as in law, for all men and women throughout the nation.
"8. Because of the strict residential qualification of suffrage in this country, millions of citizens are disfranchised in every election ;
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adequate provision should be made for the registration and voting of migratory voters.
"9. The Constitution of the United States should be amended to strengthen the safeguards of civil and political liberty, and to remove all obstacles to industrial and social reform and reconstruc- tion, including the changes enumerated in this program, in keep- ing with the will and interest of the people. It should be made amendable by a majority of the voters of the nation upon their own initiative, or upon the initiative of Congress.
"IV. Foreign Relations .- 1. All claims of the United States against Allied countries for loans made during the war should be cancelled upon the understanding that all war debts among such countries shall likewise be cancelled. The largest possible credit in food, raw materials, and machinery should be extended to the stricken nations of Europe in order to help them rebuild the ruined world.
"2. The government of the United States should initiate a movement to dissolve the mischievous organization called the 'League of Nations' and to create an international parliament, composed of democratically elected representatives of all nations of the world, based upon the recognition of their equal rights, the principles of self-determination, the right to national existence of colonies and other dependencies, freedom of international trade and trade routes by land and sea, and universal disarmament, and be charged with revising the treaty of peace on the principles of justice and concilia- tion.
"3. The United States should immediately make peace with the Central powers and open commercial and diplomatic relations with Russia under the Soviet government. It should promptly recognize the independence of the Irish republic.
"4. The United States should make and proclaim it a fixed prin- ciple in its foreign policy that American capitalists who acquire con- cessions or make investments in foreign countries do so at their own risk, and under no circumstances should our government enter into diplomatic negotiations or controversies or resort to armed conflicts on account of foreign property claims of American capitalists.
"V. Fiscal .- 1. All war debts and other debts of the Federal
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government should immediately be paid in full, the funds of such payment to be raised by means of a progressive property tax whose burden should fall upon the rich and particularly upon great for- tunes made during the war.
"2. A standing progressive income tax and a graduated inheri- tance tax should be levied to provide for all needs of the govern- ment, including the cost of its increasing social and industrial functions.
"3. The unearned increment of land should be taxed; all land held out of use should be taxed at full rental value."
The following "Declaration of Socialist Principles" was adopted by the convention :
"The Socialist party of the United States demands that the country and its wealth be redeemed from the control of private interests and turned over to the people to be administered for the equal benefit of all.
"America is not owned by the American people. Our so-called national wealth is not the wealth of the nation, but of the privileged few.
"These are the ruling classes of America. They are small in numbers but they dominate the lives and shape the destinies of their fellow-men.
"They own the people's jobs and determine their wages; they control the markets of the world and fix the prices of farm products; they own their own homes and fix their rents; they own their food and set its cost; they own their press and formulate their con- victions; they own the government and make their laws; they own their schools and mould their minds.
"Around and about the capitalist class cluster the numerous and varied groups of the population generally designated as the 'middle class.' They consist of farm-owners, small merchants and manu- facturers, professional and better paid employes. Their economic status is often precarious. They live in hopes of being lifted into the charmed spheres of the ruling classes. Their social psychology is that of retainers of the wealthy. As a rule they sell their gifts,
-
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knowledge, and efforts to the capitalist interests. They are staunch upholders of the existing order of social inequalities.
"The bulk of the American people is composed of workers. Workers on the farm and in the factory, in mines and mills, on ships and railroads, in offices and counting-houses, in schools and in personal service, workers of hand and brain, all men and women who render useful service to the community in the countless ramified ways of modern civilization. They have made America what it is. They sustain America from day to day. They bear most of the burdens of life and enjoy but few of its pleasures. They create the enormous wealth of the country, but live in constant dread of poverty. They feed and clothe the rich, and yet bow to their alleged superi- ority. They keep alive the industries, but have no say in their man- agement. They constitute the majority of the people, but have no control in the government. Despite the forms of political equality the workers of the United States are virtually a subject class.
"The Socialist party is the party of the workers. It espouses their cause because in the workers lies the hope of the political, economic, and social redemption of the country. The ruling class and their retainers cannot be expected to change the iniquitous system of which they are the beneficaries. Individual members of these classes often join in the struggle against the capitalist order from motives of personal idealism, but whole classes have never been known to abdicate their rule and surrender their privileges for the mere sake of social justice. The workers alone have a direct and com- pelling interest in abolishing the present profit system.
"The Socialist party desires the workers of America to take the economic and political power from the capitalist class, not that they may establish themselves as a new ruling class, but in order that all class divisions may be abolished forever.
"To perform this supreme social task the workers must be organized as a political party of their own. They must realize that both the Republican and Democratic parties are the political instru- ments of the master classes, and equally pledged to uphold and per- petuate capitalism. They must be trained to use the ballot-box to vote out the tools of the capitalist and middle classes and to vote in repre-
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sentatives of the workers. A true political party of labor must be founded upon the uncompromising demand for the complete socializa- tion of the industries. That means doing away with the private own- ership of the sources and instruments of wealth production and dis- tribution, abolishing workless incomes in the form of profits, interest, or rents, transforming the whole able-bodied population of the country into useful workers, and securing to all workers the full social value of their work.
"The Socialist party is such a political party. It strives by means of political methods, including the action of its representatives in the Legislatures and other public offices, to force the enactment.of such measures as will immediately benefit the workers, raise their standard of life, increase their power, and stiffen their resistance to capitalist aggression. Its purpose is to secure a majority in Congress and in every State Legislature, to win the principal executive and judicial offices, to become the dominant and controlling party, and when in power to transfer to the ownership by the people of industries, begin- ning with those of a public character, such as banking, insurance, min- ing, transportation, and communication, as well as the trustified industries, and extending the process to all other industries susceptible of collective ownership as rapidly as their physical conditions will permit.
"It also proposes to socialize the system of public education and health, and all activities and institutions vitally affecting the public needs and welfare, including dwelling-houses.
"The Socialist program advocates the socialization of all large farming estates and land used for industrial and public purposes, as well as all instrumentalities for storing, preserving, and marketing farm products. It does not contemplate interference with the private possession of land actually used and cultivated by occupants.
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