Our Presidents and how we make themMcClure, Alexander K. (Alexander Kelly)
History
Our Presidents and how we make them
McClure, Alexander K. (Alexander Kelly)
Presidents -- United States -- Election
We believe in honest money, the gold and silver coinage of the
Constitution, and a circulating medium convertible into such money
without loss.
Asserting the equality of all men before the law, we hold that it is
the duty of the Government, in its dealings with the people, to mete
out equal and exact justice to all citizens, of whatever nativity,
race, color, or persuasion, religious or political.
We believe in a free ballot and a fair count; and we recall to
the memory of our people the noble struggle of the Democrats in
the Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Congresses, by which a reluctant
Republican opposition was compelled to assent to legislation making
everywhere illegal the presence of troops at the polls as the
conclusive proof that a Democratic administration will preserve
liberty, with order.
The selection of Federal officers for the Territories should be
restricted to citizens previously resident therein.
We oppose sumptuary laws, which vex the citizens and interfere with
individual liberty.
We favor honest civil service reforms and the compensation of all
United States officers by fixed salaries, the separation of Church
and State, and the diffusion of free education by common schools, so
that every child in the land may be taught the rights and duties of
citizenship.
While we favor all legislation which will tend to the equitable
distribution of property, to the prevention of monopoly, and to the
strict enforcement of individual rights against corporate abuses, we
hold that the welfare of society depends upon a scrupulous regard for
the rights of property as defined by law.
We believe that labor is best rewarded where it is freest and most
enlightened. It should, therefore, be fostered and cherished. We favor
the repeal of all laws restricting the free action of labor, and the
enactment of laws by which labor organizations may be incorporated,
and of such legislation as will tend to enlighten the people as to the
true relation of capital and labor.
We believe that the public land ought, as far as possible, to be kept
as homesteads for actual settlers; that all unearned lands heretofore
improvidently granted to railroad corporations by the action of the
Republican party should be restored to the public domain, and that no
more grants of land shall be made to corporations or be allowed to
fall into the ownership of alien absentees.
We are opposed to all propositions which, upon any pretext, would
convert the General Government into a machine for collecting taxes to
be distributed among the States or the citizens thereof.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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