The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1878-01-07
California Workingmen's Parity
Address.

California Workingmen's Parity
Address.
The workingmen's party of California
has issued the following:
To THE WoRKFNGMEN OF THE UNITED
STATEs-Fellow Workingmen: The work
ingmen of the state of California send you
brotherly greeting and ask assistance at
your hands in the many grievous calam-
tiles under which they labor. They ask
your calm consideration of this their APP
peal to you, and they promise in return to
aid you in effecting such reforms as may
be necessary to place the laboring poor of
the United States, on a safe, solid, and
respectable basis, such as becomes free
people. They say, first, that when our
fathers discarded the king and placed the
government in the hands of the people
they were wise and just, and did a grand
thing. That when they eschewed all
state churches and remanded religion to
the consciences of the people, they did
well and paved the way for peaceful pro-
gress and high enlightenment. But they
left slavery to plot against freedom and
levy war against republican institutions,
And they left wealth, unbridled wealth.
ungoverned greed and usury, unchecked
monopoly to work their own way among
the people, to corrupt, to vitiate, to de-
stroy the morals and patriotism of the
rich and to grind the poor into abject
slavery, vice, crime, and despair.
Our moneyed men have ruled for the
past thirty years. Under the flag of the
STAKEHOLDER they hoped to destroy our
liberty. Failing in that, they have
rallied under the banner of the millionaire,
the banker, the land monopolist. the rail-
road king, and the false politician to effect
their purpose. We have permitted men
TO become immensely rich, against all sound
republican policy, and they have turned
upon us to sting US to death. They have
seized upon the government by bribery and
corruption. They have made population
and public robbery science. They have
loaded the nation, the state, the county
and the city with debt. They have stolen
the public land. They have grasped all
to themselves, and by their unprincipled
greed brought crisis of unparalleled dis
tress on forty millions of people who have
natural resources to feed, clothe, and shell
ter the whole humanIrace.
Such misgOvernment, such mismanage-
ment, may challenge the whole world fol
intense stupidity, and would put to shame
the darkest tyranny of the barbarous past
We, here in California, feel it as we'll al
you, We feel that the day and hour have
} come for the workingmen of America II
depose capital, and put labor in the presi-
Dental chair in the senate and congress, il
the state-house and on the judicial bench
We are with you in this work. Working
men must form a party of their own, TAX
charge of the government, depose gildet
fraud and put honest toll in power. Then
only, will the people be cared for, tn
masses be elevated and the republi
assured.
t Iu our golden state all these evils hav
. been satisfied Land monopoly has seize
upon all the best soil of this fair land. 4
few men own from ten thousand to tw
: hundred thousand acres each. The poo
D laborer can find no resting place save O
the barren mountain or on the trackles
desert. Money monopoly has reached it
greatest proportions. Here in San Fran
cisco the great palace of the millionair
looms up above the howell of the starvin
poor, with as wide contrast as anywher
on earth. To add to our misery and d.
spair a bloated aristocracy has sent
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