Preamble

The American Declaration of Independence, adopted July 4, 1776, states that governments are instituted to secure to the people the rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Democracy cannot exist unless all power is preserved to the people. The only excuse for the existence of government is to serve, not to rule, the people.

In the United States of America, the power of government, the priceless and inalienable heritage of the people, has been stolen from the people—has been seized by a few men who control the wealth of the nation and by the tools of these men, maintained by them in public office to do their bidding.

The administrative offices of the government and congress are controlled by the financial barons—even the courts have been prostituted—and the people as a result of this usurpation have been reduced to economic and industrial servitude.

Under the prevailing order in the United States, wealth is monopolized by a few and the people are kept in poverty, while costs of living mount until the burden of providing the necessaries of life is well-nigh intolerable.

Having thus robbed the people first of their power and then of their wealth, the wielders of financial power, seeking new fields of exploitation, have committed the government of the United States, against the will of the people, to imperialistic policies and seek to extend these enterprises to such lengths that our nation to-day stands in danger of becoming an empire instead of a republic.

Just emerging from a war which we said we fought to extend democracy to the ends of the earth, we find ourselves helpless while the masters of our government, who are also the masters of industry and commerce, league themselves with the masters of other nations to prevent self-determination by helpless people and to exploit and rob them, notwithstanding that we committed ourselves to guaranty of self-government for all such peoples.

Following the greedy spectacle of the peace conference, the money-masters feared an awakening of the people which threatened to exact for mankind those benefits for which the war was said to have been fought. Thereupon these masters, in the United States, through their puppets in public office, in an effort to stifle free discussion, stripped from the inhabitants of this land, rights and liberties guaranteed under American doctrines on which this country was founded and guaranteed also by the federal constitution.

These rights and liberties must be restored to the people.

More than this must be done. All power to govern this nation must be restored to the people. This involved industrial freedom, for political democracy is only an empty phrase without industrial democracy. This can not be done by superficial, palliative measures such as are, from time to time, thrown as sops to the voters by the Republican and Democratic parties. Patchwork cannot repair the destruction of democracy wrought by these two old parties. Reconstruction is necessary.

The invisible government of the United States maintains the two old parties to confuse the voters with false issues. These parties, therefore, can not seriously attempt reconstruction, which, to be effective, must smash to atoms the money power of the proprietors of the two old parties.

Into this breach step the amalgamated groups of forward looking men and women who perform useful work with hand and brain, united in the FARMER-LABOR Party of the United States by a spontaneous and irresistible impulse to do righteous battle for democracy against its despoilers, and more especially determined to function together because of the exceptionally brazen defiance shown by the two old parties in the selection of their candidates and the writing of their platforms in this campaign. This party, financed by its rank and file and not by big business, sets about the task of fundamental reconstruction of democracy in the United States, to restore all power to the people and to set up a governmental structure that will prevent seizure, henceforth, of that power by a few unscrupulous men.

The reconstruction proposed is set forth in the following platform of national issues, to which all candidates of the Farmer-Labor Party are pledged: