The
Omaha Platform of the Populist Party
The
platform adopted by the Populist party in 1892 shows what the Populists thought
was wrong with America and how they proposed to remedy these ills.
National
People's Party Platform
Assembled
upon the 116th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the People's
Party of America, in their first national convention, invoking upon their
action the blessing of Almighty God, put forth in the name and on behalf of the
people of this country, the following preamble and declaration of principles:
Preamble
The
conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the
midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin.
Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and
touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the
States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to
prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely
subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes
covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the
hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for
self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages, a hireling
standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and
they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil
of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few,
unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of those, in turn,
despite the Republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of
governmental injustice we breed the two great classes--tramps and millionaires.
The
national power to create money is appropriated to enrich bondholders; a vast
public debt payable in legal tender currency has been funded into gold-bearing
bonds, thereby adding millions to the burdens of the people.
Silver,
which has been accepted as coin since the dawn of history, has been demonetized
to add to the purchasing power of gold by decreasing the value of all forms of
property as well as human labor, and the supply of currency is purposely
abridged to fatten usurers, bankrupt enterprise, and enslave industry. A vast
conspiracy against mankind has been organized on two continents, and it is
rapidly taking possession of the world. If not met and overthrown at once it
forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or the
establishment of an absolute despotism.
We
have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two
great political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been
inflicted upon the suffering people. We charge that the controlling influences
dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions
to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they
now promise us any substantial reform. They have agreed together to ignore, in
the coming campaign, every issue but one. They propose to drown the outcries of
a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle over the tariff, so that
capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, the
demonetization of silver and the oppressions of the usurers may all be lost
sight of. They propose to sacrifice our homes, lives, and children on the altar
of mammon; to destroy the multitude in order to secure corruption funds from
the millionaires.
Assembled
on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation, and filled with the spirit of
the grand general and chief who established our independence, we seek to
restore the government of the Bepublic to the hands of "the plain
people," with which class it originated. We assert our purposes to be
identical with the purposes of the National Constitution; to form a more
perfect union and establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for
the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of
liberty for ourselves and our posterity.
We declare that this Republic can only
endure as a free government while built upon the love of the whole people for
each other and for the nation; that it cannot be pinned together by bayonets;
that the civil war is over, and that every passion and resentment which grew
out of it must die with it, and that we must be in fact, as we are in name, one
united brotherhood of free men.
Our
country finds itself confronted by conditions for which there is no precedent
in the history of the world; our annual agricultural productions amount to
billions of dollars in value, which must, within a few weeks or months, be
exchanged for billions of dollars' worth of commodities consumed in their
production; the existing currency supply is wholly inadequate to make this
exchange; the results are falling prices, the formation of combines and rings,
the impoverishment of the producing class. We pledge ourselves that if given
power we will labor to correct these evils by wise and reasonable legislation,
in accordance with the terms of our plat-
form.
We
believe that the power of government--in other words, of the people--should be
expanded (as in the case of the postal service) as rapidly and as far as the
good sense of an intelligent people and the teachings of experience shall justify,
to the end that oppression, injustice, and poverty shall eventually cease in
the land.
While
our sympathies as a party of reform are naturally upon the side of every
proposition which will tend to make men intelligent, virtuous, and temperate,
we nevertheless regard these questions, important as they are, as secondary to
the great issues now pressing for solution, and upon which not only our
individual prosperity but the very existence of free institutions depend; and
we ask all men to first help us to determine whether we are to have a republic
to administer before we differ as to the conditions upon which it is to be
administered, believing that the forces of reform this day organized will never
cease to move forward until every wrong is remedied and equal rights and equal
privileges securely established for all the men and women of this country.
We declare, therefore--
First.--That the union of the labor
forces of the United States this day consummated shall be permanent and
perpetual; may its spirit enter into all hearts for the salvation of the
Republic and the uplifting of mankind.
Second.--Wealth belongs to him who
creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an equivalent is
robbery. "If any will not work, neither shall he eat." The interests
of rural and civic labor are the same; their enemies are identical.
Third.--We believe that the time has
come when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people
must own the railroads, and should the government enter upon the work of owning
and managing all railroads, we should favor an amendment to the Constitution by
which all persons engaged in the government service shall be placed under a
civil-service regulation of the most rigid character, so as to prevent the increase
of the power of the national administration by the use of such additional
government employees.
Finance.--We
demand a national currency safe, sound, and flexible, issued by the general
government only, a full legal tender for all debts, public and private, and
that without the use of banking corporations, a just, equitable, and efficient
means of distribution direct to the people, at a tax not to exceed 2 per cent
per annum, to be provided as set forth in the sub-treasury plan of the Farmers'
Alliance, or a better system; also by payments in discharge of its obligations
for public improvements.
1. We demand free and unlimited coinage
of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1.
2. We demand that the amount of
circulating medium be speedily increased to not less than $50 per capita.
3. We demand a graduated income tax.
4. We believe that the money of the
country should be kept as much as possible in the hands of the people, and
hence we demand that all State and national revenues shall be limited to the
necessary expenses of the government, economically and honestly administered.
5. We demand that postal savings banks
be established by the government for the safe deposit of the earnings of the
people and to facilitate exchange.
Transportation.--Transportation
being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the government should own and
operate the railroads in the interest of the people. The telegraph, telephone,
like the post-office system, being a necessity for the transmission of news,
should be owned and operated by the government in the interest of the people.
Land.--The
land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the
people, and should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien
ownership of land should be prohibited. All land now held by railroads and
other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by
aliens should be reclaimed by the government and held for actual settlers only.
Expression
of Sentiments
Your
Committee on Platform and Resolutions beg leave unanimously to report the
following:
Whereas,
Other questions have been presented for our consideration, we hereby submit the
following, not as a part of the Platform of the People's Party, but as
resolutions expressive of the sentiment of the Convention.
1. Resolved, That we demand a free
ballot and a fair count in all elections, and pledge ourselves to secure it to
every legal voter without Federal intervention, through the adoption by the
States of the unperverted Australian or secret ballot system.
2. Resolved, That the revenue derived
from a graduated income tax should be applied to the reduction of the burden of
taxation now levied upon the domestic industries of this country.
3. Resolved, That we pledge our support
to fair and liberal pensions to ex-Union soldiers and sailors.
4. Resolved, That we condemn the
fallacy of protecting American labor under the present system, which opens our
ports to the pauper and criminal classes of the world and crowds out our wage earners;
and we denounce the present ineffective laws against contract labor, and demand
the further restriction of undesirable emigration.
5. Resolved, That we cordially
sympathize with the efforts of organized workingmen to shorten the hours of
labor, and demand a rigid enforcement of the existing eight-hour law on
Government work, and ask that a penalty clause be added to the said law.
6. Resolved, That we regard the
maintenance of a large standing army of mercenaries, known as the Pinkerton
system, as a menance to our liberties, and we demand its abolition; and we
condemn the recent invasion of the Territory of Wyoming by the hired assassins
of plutocracy, assisted by Federal officers.
7. Resolved, That we commend to the
favorable consideration of the people and the reform press the legislative
system known as the initiative and referendum.
8. Resolved, That we favor a
constitutional provision limiting the office of President and Vice-President to
one term, and providing for the election of Senators of the United States by a
direct vote of the people.
9. Resolved, That we oppose any subsidy
or national aid to any private corporation for any purpose.
10. Resolved, That this convention
sympathizes with the Knights of Labor and their righteous contest with the
tyrannical combine of clothing manufacturers of Rochester, and declare it to be
the duty of all who hate tyranny and oppression to refuse to purchase the goods
made by the said manufacturers, or to patronize any merchants who sell such
goods.
[The
World Almanac, 1893 (New York: Publisher, 1893), pp. 8385, reprinted in A Populist Reader, edited by George B.
Tindall (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), pp. 90-96]
Questions
for Reflection
What
ideas expressed in the preamble do you recognize from your study of this
period? (For example, the "hireling standing army" refers to the
Pinkerton detectives often used in cases of industrial violence.)
Which
planks of the platform and expressions of sentiments were later enacted in one
form or another?