Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1888-01-05
Platform Adopted by the National Con.
ventiOn OF Republican Clubs.


At the National Convention of Re-
publican Clubs, held in Chickcring hall
New York Dec. Is III the following
platform was adopted:
81. We emphatically refuse to abandon
the policy of home protection, on which
our unexampled national progress and
prosperity are founded.
I'll. The effect of the Democratic
policy would be disastrous by transfer
ing many of our industries to England,
and robbing our work-people of their
employment and wages, for the benefit
of British manufacturers, by exhausting
our accumulated capital in the payment
OF foreign debts incurred for imported
merchandise. and by deranging the en-
tire system of our industrial and COM
mercial intercourse. We protest
against it in the name of all American
labor and of all American enterprise.
''llI. We recognize in the message
of the head of the Democratic party a
tender to our country of the choice be-
tween supporting the laborers and the
industries of Great Britain and Europe
generally on the one hand, and on the
other the support of the laboring men
and the industrial enterprises of Amer :
lea. We respectfully decline the former
which he recommends, and will stand
by our people when we elect President.
"IV. The principal of protection is
not founded upon the interests of any
one section, or of any one class of indi-
viduals, but upon the interests of the en-
tire country; its supreme object to rem
der America independent of Europe; to
render the United States entirely self
sustaining; to keep our money at home
and give employment to our own work
ing people; to substitute home com.
petition for foreign; to build up towns
and villages;to encourage agriculture
and enhance the value of farms;to pro-
vide home markets for the farmer; to
adapt our manufactures to our domestic
wants; to promote the opening Of rapid
and cheap communication between the
states and territories; to open mines and
to develop all the vast resources of our
country, so richly blessed of God in all
that is needed to make a people great,
contented and happy. While the Re-
publican party has, since the War, re-
peatedly cut down taxation, and has
uniformly, when in power, kept the
surplus within safe limits, the Dem
ocracy have shown themselves incom-
petent for either duty, and by presst-
emily refusing any reduction of taxes
unless coupled with destructive assault
on American industries, are responsible
for the accumulation of the existing
surplus and all the danger it involves
We believe that only the restoration of
Republican supremacy gives assurance
of uniting reduced taxes, revised tariff
and limited surplus with the preserva-
ton of the policy which alone saves us
from becoming the commercial slaves
of Europe.
"VI. The continual refusal Of the
Democratic House of Representatives to
admit territories having population of
high character and intelligence exceed
ing in number that of several states of
the Union, old and new, should arouse
the Indignation of all true Americans
who believe in home rule and constitu-
tional rights.
"VII. We condemn the hostility of
the Democratic Party in the House of
Representatives to all means for the adj
vancement of broad popular education,
and denounce its arbitrary conduct in
thwarting every effort to consider any
measure for this purpose.
VIII. Reyiving no past issues, we
insist, as living question and
an indispensable bulwark of national
security, upon free, honest ballot, and
Il fair count in all the states of this
Union.
TX. We charge the Democratic
Party with falling to provide, out of the
abundant resources of the nation, for the
upbuilding of more efficient navy for
the protection of our defenseless seacoast,
for the restoration of our commercial
marine, so essential to the training of
American seamen, and to the extention
now of American trade. and we urge
the necessity of prompt and energetic
measures for these important objects.
*. We charge the Democratic adj
ministration with culpable weakness in
guarding American interests and in
dividual rights on the high seas and in
foreign lands, while the vessels and
property of our citizens have been seized
and sacrificed in foreign ports, and in
formation of what they were Justly
entitled to under our treaties withheld
from them or made dependent on foreign
interpretations and we demand a more
vigorous assertion of American states
menship, which shall restore the respect
once accorded to the Just demands of
our Republic.
XXI. We charge the Democratic
Party with being recreant to the Re-
public and pledges of the President in
prostituting the Civil Service to partisan
purposes. We hold that those protested
friends of Civil Service Reform who ac-
cept and follow this faithless action, in
preference to the party which placed the
Civil Service law on the statute book,
are themselves untrue to their profess
sions. We condemn any backward step
in this reform and all hypocrisy in its
administration.
xxi. We charge the Democratic adj
minstration with trampling upon the
Just claims of the soldiers of the Repub-
lie, and with reopening the accepted
settlements of deplorable sectional strife
by ordering the removal of the emblems
of such strife from the place where they
quietly reposed in the archives of the
nation, and yielding only after the in
dignant protest of the American people.
XIII. Upon this history and these
declarations we confidently summon to
our aid not only the patriotism of the
country. but its labor, its industry, its
commerce and its craftsmanship.
According TO Mr.. G. II. Oldham, an
authority on flax cultivation, the south
of Ireland is much better fitted in re-
eooot IF coil and climatic for the