Pensions.

We pledge ourselves to a wise and just policy of pensioning American soldiers and sailors and their widows and children by the federal government. And we approve the policy of the Southern states in granting pensions to the ex-Confederate soldiers and sailors and their widows and children. Parcels Post.

We pledge our party to the immediate creation of a parcels post, with rates proportionate to distance and service. We condemn the violations of the civil service law under the present administration, including the coercion and assessment of subordinate employes and the President's refusal to punish such violation after a finding of guilty Civil Service. by his own commission; his distribution of patronage among subservient Congressmen, while withholding it from those who refuse support of administration measures; his withdrawal of nominations from the Senate until political support for himself was secured, and his open use of the offices to reward those who voted for his renomination.

To eradicate these abuses we demand not only the enforcement of the civil service act in letter and spirit, but also legislation which will bring under the competitive system postmasters, collectors, marshals and all other non-political officers, as well as the enactment of an equitable retirement law, and we also insist on continuous service during good behavior and efficiency.

We pledge our party to readjustment of the business methods of the national Government Business government and a proper co-ordination of the federal Organization. bureaus which will increase the economy and efficiency of the government service, prevent duplications and secure

better results to the taxpayers for every dollar expended.

The people of the United States are swindled out of many millions of dollars every year through worthless investments. The plain people, the wage earner and Supervision Over the men and women with small savings have no way of knowInvestments. ing the merit of concerns sending out highly colored prospectuses offering stock for sale, prospectuses that make big re

turns seem certain and fortunes easily within grasp.

We hold it to be the duty of the government to protect its people from this kind of piracy. We therefore demand wise, carefully thought out legislation that will give us such governmental supervision over this matter as will furnish to the people of the United States this much needed protection, and we pledge ourselves thereto.

On these principles and on the recognized desirability of uniting the progresConclusion. sive forces of the nation into an organization which shall unequivocally represent the progressive spirit and policy, we appeal for the support of all American citizens, without regard to previous political affiliations. SOCIALIST.

The Socialist National Convention was held at Indianapolis on May 10-17, 1912. On May 17 Eugene V. Debs, of Indiana, the party's candidate for president in 1900, 1904 and 1908, was renominated.

The vote on the first and only ballot was: Debs, 165; Emil Seidel, of Wisconsin, 56, and Charles E. Russell, of New York, 54. Emil Seidel was nominated for Vice-President on the first ballot, the vote standing: Seidel, 159; Daniel Hogan, of Arkansas, 73; John W. Slayton, of Pennsylvania, 24.

The platform, adopted at Indianapolis, Ind., May 10, 1912, was as follows:

The Platform.

The representatives of the Socialist party, in national convention at Indianapolis, declare that the capitalist system has outgrown its historical function, and has become utterly incapable of meeting the problems now confronting society. We denounce this outgrown system as incompetent and corrupt and the source of unspeakable misery and suffering to the whole working class.

Under this system the industrial equipınent of the nation has passed into the absolute control of plutocracy, which exacts an annual tribute of hundreds of millions of dollars from the producers. Unafraid of any organized resistance, it stretches out its greedy hands over the still undeveloped resources of the nation the land, the mines, the forests and the water powers of every state in the Union.

The

In spite of the multiplication of labor saving machines and improved methods in industry, which cheapen the cost of production, the share of the producers grows ever less, and the prices of all the necessities of life steadily increase. boasted prosperity of this nation is for the owning class alone. To the rest it means only greater hardship and misery. The high cost of living is felt in every home. Millions of wage workers have seen the purchasing power of their wages decrease until life has become a desperate battle for mere existence.

Multitudes of unemployed walk the streets of our cities or trudge from state to state awaiting the will of the masters to move the wheels of industry.

The farmers in every state are plundered by the increasing prices exacted for tools and machinery and by extortionate rent, freight rates and storage charges.

The

Capitalist concentration is mercilessly crushing the class of small business men and driving its members into the ranks of propertyless wage workers. overwhelming majority of the people of America are being forced under a yoke of bondage by this soulless industrial despotism.

It is this capitalist system that is responsible for the increasing burden of armaments, the poverty, slums, child labor, most of the insanity, crime and prostitution, and much of the disease that afflicts mankind.

In Rhode Island in 1910 Cranston had the highest death rate, 25.4 per 1,000 population, and Cumberland town the lowest, 13.9.

Under this system the working class is exposed to poisonous conditions, to frightful and needless perils to life and limb; is walled around with court decisions, injunctions and unjust laws, and is preyed upon incessantly for the benefit of the controlling oligarchy of wealth. Under it also, the children of the working class are doomed to ignorance, drudging toil and darkened lives. In the face of these evils, so manifest that all, thoughtful observers are appalled at them, the legislative representatives of the Republican and Democratic parties remain the faithful servants of the oppressors. Measures Growth of designed to secure to the wage earners of this nation as humane Plutocracy. and just treatment as is already enjoyed by the wage earners of all other civilized nations have been smothered in committee without debate and laws ostensibly designed to bring relief to the farmers and general consumers are juggled and transformed into instruments for the exaction of further tribute. The growing unrest under oppression has driven these two old parties to the enactment of a variety of regulative measures, none of which has limited in any appreciable degree the power of the plutocracy, and some of which have been perverted into means for increasing that power. Anti-trust laws, railroad restrictions and regulations, with the prosecutions, indictments and investigations based upon such legislation, have proved to be utterly futile and ridiculous.

Nor has this plutocracy been seriously restrained or even threatened by any Republican or Democratic executive. It has continued to grow in power and insolence alike under the administrations of Cleveland, McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft.

In addition to this legislative juggling and this executive connivance, the courts of America have sanctioned and strengthened the hold of this plutocracy as the Dred Scott and other decisions strengthened the slave power before the Civil War. They have been used as instruments for the oppression of the working class and for the suppression of free speech and free assembly.

We declare, therefore, that the longer sufferance of these conditions is impossible, and we purpose to end them all. We declare them to be the product of the present system in which industry is carried on for private Only Relief greed instead of for the welfare of society. We declare, furtherSocialism. more, that for these evils there will be and can be no remedy and no substantial relief except through Socialism, under which industry will be carried on for the common good and every worker receive the full social value of the wealth he creates.

Society is divided into warring groups and classes, based upon material interests. Fundamentally this struggle is a conflict between the two main classes, cne of which-the capitalist class-owns the means of production, and the other -the working class-must use these means of production on terms dictated by the owners.

The capitalist class, though few in numbers, absolutely controls the government-legislative, executive and judicial. This class owns the machinery of gathering and disseminating news through its organized press. It subsidizes seats of learning the colleges and schools-and even religious and moral agencies. It has also the added prestige which established customs. give to any order of society, right or wrong.

The working class, which includes all those who are forced to work for a living, whether by hand or brain, in shop, mine or on the soil, vastly outnumbers the capitalist class. Lacking effective organization and class solidarity, this class is unable to enforce its will. Given such class solidarity and effective organization, the workers will have the power to make all laws and control all industry in their own interest.

All political parties are the expression of economic class interests. All other parties than the Socialist party represent one or another group of the ruling capitalist class. Their political conflicts reflect merely superficial rivalries between competing capitalist groups. However they result, these conflicts have no issue of real value to the workers. Whether the Democrats or Republicans win politically, it is the capitalist class that is victorious economically. The Socialist party is the political expression of the economic interests of the workers. It's defeats have been their defeats and its Representative of victories their victories. It is a party founded on the science Workers' Interests. and laws of social development. It proposes that, since all social necessities are to-day socially produced, the means of their production and distribution shall be socially owned and democratically con

trolled.

In the face of the economic and polical aggressions of the capitalist class the only reliance left the workers is that of their económic organizations and their political power. By the intelligent and class-conscious use of these, they may resist successfully the capitalist class, break the fetters of wage slavery, and fit themselves for the future society which is to displace the capitalist system. The Socialist party appreciates the full significance of class organization and urges the wage earners, the working farmers and all other useful workers everywhere to organize for economic and political action, and we pledge ourselves to support the toilers of the fields as well as those in the shops, factories and mines of the nation in their struggles for economic justice.

In the defeat or victory of the working class party in this new struggle for freedom lies the defeat or triumph of the common people of all economic groups, as well as the failure or the triumph of popular government. Thus the Socialist party is the party of the present day revolution, which marks the transition from

The average salary of male teachers in the public schools of the United States In 1910 was $65 a month; of women teachers, $34.

economic individualism to Socialism, from wage slavery to free co-operation, from capitalist oligarchy to industrial democracy.

As measures calculated to strengthen the working class in its fight for the realization of its ultimate aim, the co-operative commonwealth, and to increase its power of resistance against capitalist oppression, we advocate and pledge ourselves and

The Socialist

Working Programme.

our elected officers to the following programme:

1-The collective ownership and democratic management of railroads, wire and wireless telegraphs and telephones, express services, steamboat lines and all other social means of transportation and communication and of all Collective large-scale industries. 2.-The immediate acquirement by the municiOwnership. palities, the states or the federal government of all grain elevators, stock yards, storage warehouses and other distributing agencies, in order to reduce the present extortionate cost of living. 3. The extension of the public domain to include mines, quarries, oil wells, forests and water power. 4. The further conservation and developmnt of natural resources for the use and benefit of all the people: (a) By scientific forestation and timber protection; (b) by the reclamation of arid and swamp tracts; (c) by the storage of flood waters and the utilization of water power; (d) by the stoppage of the present extravagant waste of the soil and of the products of mines and oil wells; (e) by the development of highway and waterway systems. 5. The collective ownership of land wherever practicable, and, in cases where such ownership is impracticable, the appropriation by taxation of the annual rental value of all land held for speculation or exploitation. 6.-The collective ownership and democratic management of the banking and currency system.

Industrial Demands.

The immediate government relief of the unemployed by the extension of all useful public works. All persons employed on such works to be engaged directly by the government under a workday of not more than eight hours Unemployment. and at not less than the prevailing union wages. The government also to establish employment bureaus; to lend money to states and municipalities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public works, and to take such other measures within its power as will lessen the widespread misery of the workers caused by the misrule of the capitalist class. The conservation of human resources, particularly of the lives and well-being of the workers and their families: 1.-By shortening the workday in keeping with the increased productiveness of machinery. 2. By securing to every worker a rest period of not less than a day and a half in each week. 3. By securing a more effective inspection of workshops, factories and mines. 4.-By forbidding the employment of children under sixteen years of age. 5. By the co-operative organization of the industries in the federal penitentiaries for the benefit of the convicts and their dependent's. 6. By forbidding the interstate transportation of the products of child labor, of convict labor and of all uninspected factories and mines. 7. By abolishing the profit system in government work, and substituting either the direct hire of labor or the awarding of contracts to co-operative groups of workers. 8. By establishing minimum wage scales. 9. By abolishing official charity and substituting a noncontributory system of old-age pensions, a general system of insurance by the state of all its members against unemployment and invalidism and a system of compulsory insurance by employers of their workers, without cost to the latter, against industrial diseases, accidents and death.

1. The absolute freedom of press, speech and assemblage. 2. The adoption of a graduated income tax, the increase of the rates of the present corporation tax and the extension of inheritance taxes, graduated in proportion Political to the value of the estate and to nearness of kin-the proceeds of these Demands. taxes to be employed in the socialization of industry, 3. The abolition of the monopoly ownership of patents and the substitution of collective ownership, with direct rewards to inventors by premiums or royalties. 4.-Unrestricted and equal suffrage for men and women. 5.-The adoption of the initiative, referendum and recall and of proportional representation, nationally as well as locally.

6. The abolition of the Senate and of the veto power of the President. 7. The election of the President and the Vice-President by direct vote of the people. 8. The abolition of the power usurped by the Supreme Court of the United States to pass upon the constitutionality of the legislation enacted by Congress. National laws to be repealed only by act of Congress or by referendum vote of the whole people. 9. The abolition of the present restrictions upon the amendment of the Constitution, so that that instrument may be made amendable by a majority of the voters in the country. 10. The granting of the right of suffrage in the District of Columbia, with representation in Congress and a democratic form of municipal government for purely local affairs. 11. The extension of democratic government to all United States territory. 12. The enactment of further measures for general education and particularly for vocational education in useful pursuits. The bureau of education to be made a department. 13.-The enactment of further measures for the conservation of health. The creation of an independent bureau of health, with such restrictions as will secure full liberty to all schools of practice. 14. The separation of the present bureau of labor from the Department of Commerce and Labor and its elevation to the rank of a department. 15.-Abolition of all federal district courts and the United States Circuit Court of Appeals. State courts to have jurisdiction in all cases arising between citizens of the several states and foreign corporations. The election of all judges for short terms. 16. The immediate curbing of the power of the courts to issue injunctions. 17. The free administration of the law. 18. The calling of a convention for the revision of the Constitution of the United States. Such

The first American edition of the Bible in English was published in 1782 by Robert Altkin, printer and bookseller, in Philadelphia.

measures of relief as we may be able to force from capitalism are but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole powers of government, in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of socialized industry and thus come to their rightful inheritance.

PROHIBITION.

The Prohibition National Convention was held at Atlantic City, N. J., July 10-12. On July 12 Eugene W. Chafin, of Arizona, and Aaron S. Watkins, of Ohio, the Presidential and Vice-Presidential nominees in 1908, were renominated by

acclamation.

The platform adopted on July 11 was as follows:

The Platform.

The Prohibition party, in National Convention at Atlantic City, N. J., July 10, 11 and 12, 1912, recognizing God as the source of all governmental authority, makes the following declarations of principles and policies:

1. The alcoholic drink traffic is wrong, is the most serious drain on the wealth and resources of the nation, is detrimental to the general welfare and destructive of the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. All laws taxing or licensing a traffic which produces crime, poverty and political corruption and spreads disease and death should be repealed. To destroy such a traffic there must be elected to power a political party which will administer the government from the standpoint that the alcoholic drink traffic is a crime and not a business, and we pledge that the manufacture, importation, exportation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages shall be prohibited. We favor: 2. The election. of United States Senators by direct vote of the people. 3.-A uniform marriage and divorce law, the extermination of polygamy and the complete suppression of the traffic in girls. 4.-Absolute protection of the rights of labor, without impairment of the rights of capital.

5. The settlement of all international disputes by arbitration.

6. The abolition of child labor in mines, workshops and factories, the rigid enforcement of the laws, now flagrantly violated.

7.-Suffrage for women on the same terms as for men.

8. A Presidential term of six years, and one term only.

th

9.-Court review of postoffice and other department decisions and orders, the extension of the postal savings bank system and of rural delivery, and the establishment of an efficient parcels post.

10. The initiative, referendum and recall.

11. As the tariff is a commercial question, it should be fixed on scientific basis of accurate knowledge, secured by means of a permanent, omni-partisan tariff commission, with ample powers.

12.-Equitable graduated income and inheritance taxes.

13. Conservation of our forest and mineral reserves and the reclamation of waste lands. All mineral and timber lands and water powers now owned by the government should be held perpetually and leased for revenue purposes.

14. Clearly defined laws for the regulation and control of corporations transacting an interstate business.

15.-Efficiency and economy in governmental administration.
16.-Protection of one day in seven as a day of rest.

To these fundamental principles the National Prohibitionist party renews its long allegiance, and on these issues invites the co-operation of all good citizens, to the end that the true object of government may be attained-namely, equal and exact justice for all.

SOCIALIST LABOR.

The Socialist Labor National Convention was held in New York City on April 10, 1912. It nominated Arthur Reiner, of Massachusetts, for President, and August Gilhaus, of New York, for Vice-President. The platform adopted was as follows:

The Platform.

Social conditions, as illustrated by the events that crowded into the last four years, have ripened so fast that each and all the principles hitherto proclaimed by the Socialist Labor Party, and all and each the methods that the Socialist Labor Party has hitherto advocated, stand to-day most conspicuously demonstrated.

The capitalist social system has wrought its own destruction. Its leading exponents, the present incun.bent in the Presidential Chair and his "illustrious predecessor," however seemingly at war with each other on principles, cannot conceal the identity of their political views. The oligarchy proclaimed by the tenets of the one, the monarchy proclaimed by the tenets of the other, jointly proclaim the conviction of the foremost men in the Ruling Class that the Republic of Capital is at the end of its tether.

True to the economic laws from which Socialism proceeds, dominant wealth has to such an extent concentrated into the hands of a select few, the Plutocracy, that the lower layers of the Capitalist Class feel driven to the ragged edge, while the large majority of the people, the Working Class, are being submerged.

True to the sociologic laws by the light of which Socialism reads its forecasts, the Plutocracy is breaking through its republic-democratic shell and is stretching out its hands toward absolutism in government; the property-holding

The first Bible printed in America was Eliot's Indian translation, issued at Cambridge, Mass., in 1663.

layers below it are turning at bay; the proletariat is awakening to its consciousness of class, and thereby to the perception of its historic mission.

In the midst of this hurly, all the colors of the rainbow are being projected upon the social mists from the prevalent confusion of thought.

From the lower layers of the Capitalist Class the bolder, yet foolhardy, portion bluntly demands that "the Trust be smashed."

Even if the trust could it should not be smashed; even if it should it cannot. The law of social progress pushes toward a system of production that shall crown the efforts of man, without arduous toil, with an abundThe Trust ance of the necessaries for material existence, to the end of allowa Necessity. ing leisure for mental and spiritual expansion. The Trust is a mechanical contrivance wherewith to solve the problem. To smash the contrivance were to re-introduce the days of small-fry competition and set back the hands on the dial of Tin.e. The mere thought is foolhardy. He who undertakes the feat might as well brace himself against the cascade of Niagara. The cascade of Social Evolution would whelm him.

The less bold among the smaller property-holding element proposes to "curb" the Trust with a variety of schemes. The very forces of social evolution that propel the development of the Trust stamp the "curbing" schemes, whether political or economic, as childish. They are attempts to hold back a runaway horse by the tail. The laws by which the attempt has been tried strew the path of the runaway. They are splintered to pieces with its kicks, and serve only to furnish a livelihood for the Corporation and the Anti-Corporation lawyer.

From still lower layers of the same property-holding class, social layers that have sniffed the breath of Socialism and imagine themselves Socialists, comes the iridescent theory of capturing the Trust for the people by the ballot only. The "capture of the Trust for the people" implies the Social Revolution. To imply the Social Revolution with the ballot only, without the means to enforce the ballot's fiat, in case of Reaction's attempt to override it, is to fire blank cartridges at a foe. It is worse. It is to threaten his existence without the means to carry out the threat. Threats of revolution, without provisions to carry them out, result in one of two things only-either the leaders are bought out or the revolutionary class, to which the leaders appeal and which they succeed in drawing after themselves, are led like cattle to the shambles. The Commune disaster of France stands a monumental warning against the blunder.

An equally iridescent hue of the rainbow is projected from a still lower layer, a layer that lies almost wholly within the submerged class the theory of capturing the Trust for the Working Class with the fist only. The capture of the Trust for the people implies something else besides revolution. It implies revolution carried on by the masses. For reasons parallel to those that decree the day of small-fry competition gone by. mass-revolutionary conspiracy is, to-day, an impossibility. The Trust-holding Plutocracy may successfully put through a conspiracy of physical force. The smallness of its numbers makes a successful conspiracy possible on its part. The hugeness of the numbers requisite for a revolution against the Trust-holding Plutocracy excludes Conspiracy from the arsenal of the Revolution. The idea of capturing the Trust with physical force only is a wild chimera.

Versus Plutocracy.

Only two programmes-the programme of the Plutocracy and the programme of the Socialist Labor Party-grasp the situation. The Political State, another name for the Class State, is worn out in this, the leading Socialism capitalist nation of the world, most prominently. The Industrial or Socialist State is throbbing for birth. The Political State, being a Class State, is government separate and apart from the productive energies of the people; it is government mainly for holding the ruled class in subjection. The Industrial or Socialist State, being the denial of the Class State, is government that is part and parcel of the productive energies of the people.

As their functions are different, so are the structures of the two States different.

The structure of the Political State contemplates territorial "representation" only; the structure of the Industrial State contemplates representation of industries, or useful occupations only.

The economic or industrial evolution has reached that point where the Political State no longer can maintain itself under the forms of democracy. While the Plutocracy has relatively shrunk, the enemies it has raised against itself have become too numerous to be dallied with. What is still worse, obedient to the law of its own existence the Political State has been forced not merely to multiply enemies against itself; it has been forced to recruit and group the bulk of these enemies, the revolutionary bulk, at that.

The Working Class of the land, the historically revolutionary element, is grouped by the leading occupations. agricultural as well as industrial, in such manner that the "autonomous craft union," one time the palladium of the workers, has become a harmless scare-crow upon which the capitalist birds roost at ease, while the Industrial Unions cast ahead of them the constituencies of the government of the future, and, jointly, point to the Industrial State.

Nor yet is this all. Not only has the Political State raised its own enemies; not only has itself multiplied them; not only has itself recruited and drilled them; not only has itself grouped them into shape and form to succeed it; it is, furthermore, driven by its inherent necessities, prodding on the Revolutionary Class by digging ever more fiercely into its flanks the harpoon of exploitation.

With the purchasing power of wages sinking to ever lower depths; with cer

The average city birth rate in the State of New York in 1910 was 25.4, and the rural, 16.2.