The news=record. [volume] (Enterprise, Wallowa County, Oregon) 1907-1910, 1908-05-07

The Socialist Party, in convention
assembled, makes it's appeal to the
American people as the defender and
self government in which the nation
was born; as the only political move
ment standing for the program and
principles by which the liberty of the
individual may become fact; as the
only political organization that is
democratic, and that has for it's pur-
pose the democratizing of the whole
of society.
To this idea of liberty the republic
can and Democratic parties are equal
ly false. They alike struggle for
power to maintain and profit by an
industrial system which can be pre-
served only by the complete over
throw of such liberties as we already
have, and by the still further en-
slavement and degradation of labor.
Our American institutions came in
to the world in the name of freedom
They have been seized upon by the
capitalist class as the means of root
ing cut the idea of freedom from
among the people. Our state and ma
tional legislatures have become the
mere agencies of great propertied in
terests. These interests control the
appointments and decisions of the
judges of our courts. They have
come into what is practically pri-
vate ownership of all the functions
and forcessof government. They are
using these to betray and conquer
foreign and weaker peoples, in order
to establish new markets for the sur
plus goods which the people make,
but are too poor to buy. They are
gradually so invading and restrict
ing the right of suffrage as to take
away unawares the right of the
worker to a vote or voice in public
affairs. By enacting new and misin-
terpreting old laws, they are prepar-
ing to attack the liberty of the in
| diyidual even to speak or think for
| himself, or for the common good.
BY controlling all the sources of
social revenue, the possessing class is
able to silence what might be the
voice of protest against the passing
of liberty and the coming of tyranny.
1t completely controls the university
and public school, the pulpit and the
press, and the arts and literatures.
By making these economically de-
| pendent upon itself, it has brought
all the forms of public teaching into
servile submission to its own inter-
est5.
Our political institutions are also
being used as the destroyers Of that
individual property upon which all
liberty and opportunity depend. The
promise Of economic Independence to
each man was one of the faiths upon
which our institutions were founded
But, under the guise of defending
private property, capitalism is using
our political institutions to make II
impossible for the vast majority oi
human beings ever to become posses
sors Of private property in the mean.
!, of life.
Capitalism is the enemy and de
stroyer of essential private property
It's development is through the legal
lied confiscation of all that the labol
of the working class produces, above
, les gubsistence-wage The private
ownership of the means of employ
ment grounds society in an economi'
slavery which renders intellectual
and political tyranny Inevitable.
Socialism comes so to organize In
dustry and society that every individ
ual shall be secure in. that private
property in the means of life upoI
which his liberty of being, though