PROHIBITION NATIONAL PLATFORM.

Adopted at Pittsburg, July 24, 1884.

The Prohibition Home Protection party, in national convention assembled, acknowledge Almighty God as the rightful sovereign of all men from whom the just powers of government are derived; to whose laws human enactments should confirm and that peace, prosperity and happiness only can come to the people when their laws of natural and state government are in accord with the Divine will.

That the importation, manufacture, supply and sale of alcoholic beverages, created and maintained by the laws of the National and State governments, during the entire history of such laws, is everywhere shown to be the promoting cause of intemperance, with resulting crime and pauperism, making large demands upon public and private charity. imposing large and unjust taxation and public burdens for penal and sheltering institutions, upon thrift, industry, manufactures and commerce; endangering the public peace, desecration of the Sabbath, corrupting our politics, legislation and administration of the laws, shortening lives,impairing health and diminishing productive industry; causing education to be neglected and despised; nullifying the teachings of the Bible, the church and the school. The standards and guides of our fathers and their children, in the founding and growth of our widely extended country, and which, imperiling the perpetuity of our civil and religious liberty, are baneful fruits by which we know that these laws are alike contrary to God's laws, and contravene our happiness; and we call upon our fellow-citizens to aid in the repeal of these laws and the legal suppression of this baneful liquor traffic.

The fact is, that during the twenty-four years in which the Republican party has controlled the general government, and that of many of these States, no effort has been made to change this policy. Territories have been created from the national domain; governments for them established, and States from them admitted to the Union, in no instance in either of which has the traffic been forbidden, or the people of these territories or States been permitted to prohibit. That there are now over 200,000 distilleries, breweries, wholesale and retail dealers in these drinks holding certificates and claiming the authority of government for the continuance of a business so destructive to moral and material welfare of the people, together with the fact that they have turned a deaf ear to remonstrance and petition for the correction of this abuse of civil government, is conclusive that the Republican party is insensible to or impotent for the redress of those wrongs, and should no longer be entrusted with the powers and responsibilities of government; that, although this party, in its last national convention, was silent on the liquor question, not so its candidates, Messrs. Blaine and Logan. Within the year past Mr. Blaine has publicly recommended that the revenue derived from the liquor traffic shall be distributed among the States; and Senator Logan has by bill proposed to devote these revenues to the support of schools. Thus both virtually recommend the perpetuation of the traffic, and that the States and its citizens shall become partners in the liquor crime.

The fact that the Democratic party has in its national deliverances of party policy arrayed itself on the side of the drinkmakers and sellers by declaring against the policy of prohibition of such traffic under the false name of sumptuary laws;" and when in power in some of the States in refusing remedial legislation, and in congress of refusing to permit the creation of a board of inquiry to investigate and report upon the effects of this traffic, proves that the Democratic party should not be intrusted with power or place.

That there can be no greater peril to the nation than the existing competition of the Republican and Democratic parties for the liquor vote. Experience shows that any party not openly opposed to the traffic will engage in this competition; will court the favor of the criminal classes; will barter away the public morals, the purity of the ballot, and every trust and object of good government for party success; and patriots and good citizens should find in this practice sufficient cause for immediate withdrawal from all connections with their party.

That while we favor reforms in the administration of the government in the abolition of all sinecures, useless offices and officers, in the election of the post office officers of the government, instead of appointment by the president; that competency, honesty and sobriety are essential qualifications for holding civil office, and we oppose the removal of such persons for mere administrative offices, except so far as it may be absolutely necessary to secure effectiveness to the vital issues on which the general administration of the government has been entrusted to a party; that the collection of revenues from alcohols, liquors and tobaccos should be abolished, as the vices of men are not a proper subject for taxation.

That revenue for custom duties should be levied for the support of the government economically administered, and when so levied, the fostering of American labor, manufactures and industries should constantly be held in view; that the public land should be held for homes for the people and not for gifts to corporations, or to be held in large bodies for speculation upon the needs of actual settlers; that all money, coin and paper shall be made, issued and regulated by the general government,and shall be a legal tender for all debts, public and private.

That grateful care and support should be given to our soldiers and sailors, their dependent widows and orphans, disabled in the service of the country; that we repudiate as un-American, contrary to, and subversive of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, from which our Government has grown to be the Government of 55,000,000 of people, and recognized power among the nations, that any person or people shall or may be excluded from residence or citizenship with all others who may desire the benefits which the institutions confer upon the oppressed of all nations.

That while there are important reforms that are demanded for purity of administration and the welfare of the people, their importance sinks into insignificance when compared with the reform of the drink traffic, which annually wastes $800,000,000 of the wealth created by toil and thrift, and drags down thousands of families from comfort to poverty; which fills jails, penitentiaries, insane asylums, hospitals and institutions for dependency; which destroy the health, saps industry and causes loss of life and property to thousands in the land, lowers intellectual vigor, dulls the cunning hand of the artisan, the chief cause of bankruptcy, insolvency and loss in trade, and by its corrupting power endangers the perpetuity of free institutions.

That Congress should exercise its undoubted power and prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages in the District of Columbia and the Territories of the United States, and in all places over which the Government has exclusive jurisdiction; that hereafter no State shall be admitted into the Union until its Constitution shall expressly prohibit polygamy and the manufacture and the sale of intoxicating beverages. We earnestly call the attention of the laborer and the mechanic, the miner and manufacturer, and ask investigation of the baneful effects upon labor and industry caused by the needless liquor business, which will be found the robber who lessens wages and profits; the destroyer of the happiness and family welfare of the laboring man; and that labor and all legitimate industry demand deliverance from taxation and loss which this

traffic composes; and that no tariff or other legislation can so heartily stimulate production or increase a demand for capital and labor or produce so much of comfort and content as the suppressing of this traffic would bring to the laboring man, mechanic or employer.

That the activity and co-operation of the women of America for the promotion of temperance has in all the history of the past been a strength and encouragement which we gratefully acknowledge and record. In the later and present phase the movement for prohibition of the license traffic by the abolition of the drink saloon, the purity of purpose and methods, the earnestness, zeal, intelligence and devotion of the mothers and daugthers of the Women's Christian Temperance Union has been eminently blessed by God. Kansas and Iowa have given her as "sheaves" of rejoicing, and the education and arousing of public mind and demand for the Constitutional amendment now prevailing, are largely the fruit of her progress and labors: and we rejoice to have our Christian women unite with us, and sharing in the labor that shall bring the abolition of the traffic to the polls. We shall join in the grand "Praise God. from whom all blessings flow," when by law our boys and friends shall be free from the legal drink temptation.

That, beliving in the civil and political equality of the sex, and that the ballot in the hand of woman as right for her protection, and would prove a powerful ally for the abolition of the drink saloon, the execution of the law, the promotion of reform in civil affairs and the removal of corruption in public life; and, believing, we relegate the practical outworking of this reform to the discretion of the Prohibition party in the several States, according to the condition of public sentiment in those States.

That gratefully we acknowledge and praise God for the presence of His spirit and guiding counsel, and granting the success which has been vouchsafed in the progress of the temperance reform; and looking to Him from whom all wisdom and help come, we ask the voters of the United States to make the principles of the above declaration a ruling principle in the government of the nation and of the States.

Resolved, That henceforth the Prohibition Home-protection party shall be called by the name of the Prohibition Party.

DEMOCRATIC STATE PLATFORM.

Adopted at St. Louis, August 20, 1886.

The Democratic party of Missouri congratulates the country upon the fact, that after the most thorough and practical test of the fundamental principles of the Democratic party, upon which Grover Cleveland was elected, it can now declare its renewed faith in those principles and most heartily endorse the firm and conscientious manner in which President Cleveland has given to the country a wise and patriotic administration, reforming the glaring abuses which had crept into the public service under his Republican predecessors.

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We endorse the wise and economical administration of Governor Marmaduke, and we refer with pride to the fact, that in this State, which has been traduced for political purposes by its enemies as the robber State," nowhere are the rights of the citizens more sacredly guarded as the best refutation of such slanders; and if additional evidence is needed it is furnished by the fact that our bonds, bearing 3 per cent. interest, command in the money markets a premium of 3 per cent.

We, therefore, with confidence, present the following declaration of principles: In accordance with the time honored principles of the Democratic party, we declare that the federal government is one of limited

power, and the powers not delegated by the Constitution of the United States, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people; that the maintenance of this just equilibrium as to the powers delegated and those reserved, is essential to the perpetuity of our dual form of State and federal governments, and that congress in the exercise of its functions should confine its actions strictly within the limit of the constitutional grant; that the authority to levy and collect taxes and duties on imports was intended to vest in the general government the power of raising the money necessary to meet its expenses, and is by the express terms of the Constitution limited to the purposes of paying the expenses and obligations of the government. We, therefore, deprecate the prostitution of the taxing power, under any pretext or guise whatever, to objects and purposes other than the raising of revenue, or to the purpose of affecting indirectly legislation as to subjects over which congress has no control, as such legislation tends inevitably to consolidation and a destruction of the reserved rights of the States, and that the building up of one industry by a taxation, or at the expense of another, is foreign to the true aims of a free government in which all the people, as to their legal rights, stand on an absolutely equal footing.

2. We believe in honest money, the gold and silver coinage of the Constitution, and a circulating medium convertible into such money without loss; and we demand at the hands of congress the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver.

3. We demand that all surplus money in the treasury shall be applied to the payment of the interest-bearing debt.

4 We approve the action of the Democratic house of congress in forfeiting and restoring to the public domain, for homesteads for actual settlers, nearly a hundred million acres of unearned land heretofore granted by Republican congresses to railroad corporations, and we also approve the act preventing alien ownership in large tracts of public lands in the United States.

5. It is the deliberate judgment of the Democratic party of Missouri that in their very nature, as well as by the provisions of our State Constitution, the railroads of this State are public highways, many of which were built by public taxation; that both the rights and duty of the State to regulate and control these highways is clear and can never be abrogated; that the wise provisions of our Constitution as to discrimination in freight and passenger rates by railroads; against competing lines being under one management; against the giving of passes or reduced rates to public officers; against such corporations engaging in other business and their officers furnishing supplies to such railroads, together with the other requirements of our Constitution, should be supplemented by stringent laws carrying them into effect, and we demand of the next General Assembly the passage of all such necessary laws, with such penalties as will insure their observance. We further declare that rates should be so adjusted on freights as to give the railroads a fair and just remuneration for the service performed and the money actually invested, exclusive of watered or fictitious stock; that our board of Railroad Commissioners should reduce all present rates to such standard, and if the powers of the board are inadequate to that end that such further authori ty be given it; that we demand that our present laws be so amended as to give the board the power to enforce such rates when fixed, and the shipper also a clear remedy for all wrongs. We further favor necessary legislation for the speedy and equitable settlement of all disputes or differences that may arise between railroad companies and their employes. 6. The Democratic party, having originated the public school system in Missouri, stands pledged to maintain popular education in this

State.

7. We heartily sympathize with the Irish people in their heroic efforts against oppression, and to secure to themselves a local government, free from oppression of landlordism-a relic of fuedalism.

The Republicans of the State of Missouri, in convention assembled, hereby declare :

1. That the lapse of time and constant experience in the conduct of public affairs for a quarter of a century has only served to strengthen and intensify our allegiance to those principles of self-government that have ever been the guiding star of the Republican party of the nation.

2. The record of the national administration for the past eighteen months has proven the unfitness of the Democratic party to rule, not only by its utter failure to keep the promises made to the people during the campaign of 1884, but by its failure to originate any ineasures of relief whereby the expenses of the government can be reduced, or the relations of capital to labor more equitably adjusted, or by any other beneficent measure in the interest of the people. It promised to be the friend and advocate of civil service reform; it has lost no opportunity to cripple the efficiency and thwart the efforts of the commission who have charge of that reform, and has made civil service reform odious by not only removing, but attempting, in utter disregard of justice, to blacken the character of thousands of our best citizens, many of them old soldiers, who have been removed under the cowardly subterfuge of offensive partisanship. It promised that the expressed will of the people should be obeyed. President Cleveland has vetoed more bills passed by Congress during the last session than were ever vetoed before by all the Presidents of the Republic together since its foundation. It promised a reduction in the number of government officials. It has largely increased the number of the employes of the departments at Washington. It promised tariff reform. It has utterly failed, even under the pressure of presidential and cabinet influence, to agree on such a measure, much less to pass it in the body where they have an overwhelming majority, we are therefore presented with the spectacle of an administration whose term of office is already more than one-third gone, that has utterly failed to redeem even the least of the pledges by and through which it came into power.

3 As we turn to the Democratic administrations that have dominated Missouri for the last fifteen years we find, if possible, still less cause for congratulation. From the day of the adoption of the enfranchising amendment sixteen years ago the old familiar rebel yell has swept the conventions of the Democratic party like a prairie fire, until union Democrats, who were only here and there briefly given office for a purpose, are cast aside, and no pretense is made of nominating a union man where there is a possible chance of electing an ex-confederate, until the calling of the names of the Democrats holding offices in the State of Missouri sounds to-day like calling the roll of the ex-confederate army. We charge the Democratic party with having permitted abuses in the matters of transportation by refusal to pass effective laws for the regulation of railroads, protection alike to the companies and to the people, which has led to pooling, to the abrogation of all competition, and to rates so burdensome that the aggregate charges exceed annually those made for like extent of service in States similarly situated by an amount equal to all taxation for State government, and which, while creating a vast mo