Waterbury Democrat., 1902-07-31
RApIcAL CHANGES wANrEp.
Economic League Advocates Voting
 Machines and Other Things.

The afternoon session of the Econo- mic League convention in New Haven yesterday, opened at 2:3O The plat form committee held a meeting subse- quent to the morning session and pre- pared the appended platform which was adopted after considerable dis cassion. In the contention over the seating Mayor Sullivan of Hartford, the latter had no more ardent suppor- ters than the Waterbury delegates, notwithstanding the contrary report sent out by one of the New Haven papers and copiel by other papers throughout the state.
 A state executive committee, consist ing of one from each senatorial dis trict, was provided for and fnan- cial committee of two from the same
 ddstricts. The executive committee will meet at the call of I. A. Smith Of Bridgeport within two weeks and attend to all the details of organiza- tion that may be necessary. Water
 bury will elect it's representatives on the executive and financial committees at it's meeting Monday night. The following is the complete pre- amble and platform adopted:
 Preamble stating the conditions that
 demand political remedies
 The situation is as follows: There are in this country about one
 million of people who own most of the wealth including the great corpora | Mons Seventy five millions belong to the middle and laboring classes and are supported by twenty five millions of workers earning on the average not over four hundred dollars per an- mum.
 The workers together earn about thfrty-four millions of dollars per day or ten billions per annum. Modern politics consists in devising ways and means of getting at that ten billion dollars of annual earnings of poor people.
 The workers have got to go into pol itics themselves, and must go in other wise than as puppets of machine poli- ticians The Economic League offers the worker a medium for going in, and in the sequel will propose the ways by which he may throw corporations and politicians off his back and wrench their hands out of his pocket.
 The machine politician is nothing but the agent and tool of the special privileged corporation, and his whole baneful actiyiy is devoted to plumb ing political connection betNeen the pockets of the wage earners and the tills of corporations
 Labor applied to land produces capital, the logical order is Land, Labor, Capital. If one can take pos session of land and capital he can
 hang labor in the air. The great na- tura1 resources, including rights of way over the earth, are assets of sO- ciety. Fortunes are constantly being immorally amassed in this country, first, by taking possession of society's assets; and second by shaving the wages and income of the laboring and middle classes.
 The political evils to be remedied, then arise from the unprotected con- dition of the wages of labor and of the assets of society, and their conse- quent attack and absorbtion by the rich, organized into corporations and assisted by machine politicians.
 1. We believe in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, in civil liberty, the golden rule, and pure dem- ocracy.
 2. It should be made the issue of the next Gubernatorial campaign with can, didate for governor pledged, if elected, to call Constitutional convention by executive proclamation, delegates to be chosen according to population instead of acreage of land.
 3 The electorate should be taken out of the hands of the machine by em- bodying it, as the other departments are, in law. We favor the direct prim- ary, the making of the secret ballot secret, the use of the voting machine, and the election of President and vice. President of the United States, United States senators, all judges and county commissioners directly by the people. Chapter 1O6 of the New Revised statutes, concerning registration for voting at primaries, should be repealed, as piece of red tape devised by the machines to deprive voters of their rights.
 4. Ten per cent of the freemen af- fected should have the right to initiate measures to be referred to the same voting constituency for acceptance or rejection at the ballot box; they should
 also have the right to demand, within
 a limited time after passage, a like reference to the people, for acceptance
 or rejection, of any measure passed by the general assembly or the city coun- Cll OI OllleIa SllulfdI 1GSlSldIIFG OOuy. ,. With the free local use of the initiative and referendum, the people of each city should be permitted to
 make and amend their charters with
 out resort to the legislature, restrained only by the general law under which such action would be taken. We favor local option in taxation, the right of
 the people of each city and town to l tax the franchises of their public ser vice corporations, and, through public representatives in the directorate of such corporations, to assist in fixing l the rate for public utilities. We
 favor home rule in-all purely local mat 1 ters
 G. We demand that the public ser vice corporations be compelled to stand their fair share of the tax burden, and | that they be permitted to make no
 profit on water in their stocks and
 bonds, and none on the peoples street franchise valuation, that they be per
 mitted to charge such rates only as will insure a fair business return on what their plants could be duplicated for. We believe that the rates for public utilities are inordinately high, and demand a substantial reduction
 along the whole line, especially in cleo tric transportation rates.
 '. Chapter 122 of the revised sta tutes, so far at it compels municipal