APPENDIX CONVENTIONS, CANDIDATES, AND PLATFORMS CANVASS OF 1916 SOCIALIST LABOR PARTY CONVENTION, HELD AT Candidates For President, Arthur Reimer, of Massachusetts. Platform THE Socialist Labor Party, in national convention assembled, reaffirming its previous platform declarations, reasserts the right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We hold that the purpose of government is to secure to every citizen the enjoyment of this right; but taught by experience we hold furthermore that such right is illusory to the majority of the people, to wit, the working class, under the present system of economic inequality that is essentially destructive of their life, their liberty, and their happiness. We hold that the true theory of economics is that the means of production must be owned, operated, and controlled by the people in common. Man cannot exercise his right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without the ownership of the land on, and the tool with which to work. Deprived of these, his life, his liberty, and his fate fall into the hands of that class which owns these essentials for work and production. We hold that the existing contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation - the latter resulting from the private ownership of the natural and social opportunities — divides the people into two classes: the Capitalist Class and the Working Class; throws society into the convulsions of the Class Struggle; and perverts government in the interests of the Capitalist Class. Thus Labor is robbed of the wealth it alone produces, is denied the means of self-employment, and by compulsory idleness in wage-slavery, is even deprived of the necessaries of life. Against such a system the Socialist Labor Party raises the ban ner of revolt, and demands the unconditional surrender of the Capitalist Class. In place of such a system the Socialist Labor Party aims to substitute a system of social ownership of the means of production, industrially administered by the Working Class—the workers to assume control and direction as well as operation of their industrial affairs. This solution of necessity requires the organization of the Working Class as a class upon revolutionary political and industrial lines. We therefore call upon the wage workers to organize themselves into a revolutionary political organization under the banner of the Socialist Labor Farty; aud to organize themselves likewise upon the industrial field into a revolutionary industrial union in keeping with their political aims. And we also call upon all other intelligent citizens to place themselves squarely upon the ground of Working Class interests, and join us in this mighty and noble work of human emancipation, so that we may put summary end to the existing barbarous class conflict by placing the land and all the means of production, transportation, and distribution into the hands of the people as a collective body, and substituting the Coöperative Commonwealth for the present state of planless production, industrial war, and social disorder a commonwealth in which every worker shall have the free exercise and full benefit of his faculties, multiplied by all the factors of modern civilization. REPUBLICAN PARTY CONVENTION, HELD AT CHICAGO, JUNE 7 Candidates For President, Charles Evans Hughes, of New York. Platform In 1861 the Republican party stood for the Union. As it stood for the Union of States, it now stands for a united people, true to American ideals, loyal to American traditions, knowing no allegiance except to the Constitution, to the Government, and to the Flag of the United States. We believe in American policies at home and abroad. We declare that we believe in and will enforce the protection of every American citizen in all the rights secured to him by the Constitution, treaties, and the law of nations, at home and abroad, by land and by sea. These rights, which, in violation of the specific promise of their party made at Baltimore in 1912, the Democratic President and the Democratic Congress have failed to defend, we will unflinchingly maintain. We desire peace, the peace of justice and right, and believe in maintaining a straight and honest neutrality between the belligerents in the great war in Europe. We must perform all our duties and insist upon all our rights as neutrals without fear and without favor. We believe that peace and neutrality, as well as the dignity and influence of the United States, cannot be preserved by shifty expedients, by phrase-making, by performances in language, or by attitudes ever changing in an effort to secure votes or voters. The present Administration has destroyed our influence abroad and humiliated us in our own eyes. The Republican party believes that a firm, consistent, and courageous foreign policy, always maintained by Republican Presidents in accordance with American traditions, is the best, as it is the only true, way to preserve our peace and restore us to our rightful place among the nations. We believe in the pacific settlement of international disputes and favor the establishment of a world court for that purpose. We deeply sympathize with the fifteen million people of Mexico who, for three years have seen their country devastated, their homes destroyed, their fellow citizens murdered, and their women outraged, by armed bands of desperadoes led by self-seeking, conscienceless agitators who, when temporarily successful in any locality, have neither sought nor been able to restore order or establish and maintain peace. We express our horror and indignation at the outrages which mave been and are being perpetrated by bandits upon American men and women who were or are in Mexico by invitation of the laws and of the Government of that country, and whose rights to security of person and property are guaranteed by solemn treaty obligations. We denounce the indefensible methods of interference employed by this Administration in the internal affairs of Mexico and refer with shame to its failure to discharge the duty of this country as next friend to Mexico, its duty to other Powers, who have relied upon us as such friend, and its duty to our citizens in Mexico, in permitting the continuance of such conditions, first, by failure to act promptly and firmly, and second, by lending its influence to the continuation of such conditions through recognition of one of the factions responsible for these outrages. We pledge our aid in restoring order and maintaining peace in Mexico. We promise to our citizens on and near our border, and to those in Mexico, wherever they may be found, adequate and absolute protection in their lives, liberty, and property. We reaffirm our approval of the Monroe Doctrine, and declare its maintenance to be a policy of this country essential to its present and future peace and safety and to the achievement of its manifest destiny. We favor the continuance of Republican policies, which will result in drawing more and more closely the commercial, financial, and social relations between this country and the countries of Latin America. We renew our allegiance to the Philippine policy inaugurated by McKinley, approved by Congress, and consistently carried out by Roosevelt and Taft. Even in this short time it has enormously improved the material and social conditions of the islands, given the Philippine people a constantly increasing participation in their Government, and if persisted in will bring still greater benefits in the future. We accepted the responsibility of the islands as a duty to civilization and the Filipino people. To leave with our task half done would break our pledges, injure our prestige among nations, and imperil what has already been accomplished. We condemn the Democratic Administration for its attempt to abandon the Philippines, which was prevented only by the vigorous opposition of Republican members of Congress, aided by a few patriotic Democrats. We reiterate our unqualified approval of the action taken in December, 1911, by the President and Congress to secure with Russia, as with other countries, a treaty that will recognize the absolute right of expatriation and prevent all discrimination of whatever kind between American citizens, whether native-born or alien, and regardless of race, religion, or previous political allegiance. We renew the pledge to observe this principle and to maintain the right of asylum, which is neither to be surrendered nor restricted, and we unite in the cherished hope that the war which is now desolating the world may speedily end, with a complete and lasting restoration of brotherhood among the nations of the earth and the assurance of full equal rights, civil and religious, to all men in every land. In order to maintain our peace and make certain the security of our people within our own borders, the country must have not only adequate but thorough and complete national defence ready for any emergency. We must have a sufficient and efficient regular army, and a provision for ample reserves, already drilled and disciplined, who can be called at once to the colors when the hour of danger comes. We must have a navy so strong and so well proportioned and equipped, so thoroughly ready and prepared, that no enemy can |