The Democratic Party
ANTI-TRUST
LAW
A private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable. We therefore favor the vigorous
enforcement of the criminal as well as the civil law against trusts and trust officials,
and demand the enactment of such additional legislation as may be necessary to make it
impossible for a private monopoly to exist in the United States.
We favor the declamation by law of the conditions upon which corporations shall be
permitted to engage in interstate trade, including, among others, the prevention of
holding companies, of interlocking directors, of stock watering, of discrimination in
price, and the control by any one corporation of so large a proportion of any industry as
to make it a menace to competitive conditions.
We condemn the action of the Republican administration in compromising with the
Standard Oil Company and the tobacco trust and its failure to invoke the criminal
provisions of the anti-trust law against the officers of those corporations after the
court had declared that from the undisputed provisions of the law.
We regret that the Sherman anti-trust law has received a judicial construction
depriving it of much of its efficiency and we favor the enactment of legislation which
will restore to the statute the strength of which it has been deprived by such
interpretation.
The Republican Party
MONOPOLY
AND PRIVILEGE
The Republican party is opposed to special privilege and to monopoly. It placed upon
the statute-book the interstate commerce act of 1887, and the important amendments
thereto, and theanti-trust act of 1890, and it has consistently and successfully enforced
the provisions of these laws. It will take no backward step to permit the reestablishment
in any degree of conditions which were intolerable.
Experience makes it plain that the business of the country may be carried on without
fear or without disturbance and at the same time without resort to practices which are
abhorrent to the common sense of justice. The Republican party favors the enactment of
legislation supplementary to the existing anti-trust act which will define as criminal
offenses those specific acts that uniformly mark attempts to restrain and to monopolize
trade, to the end that those who honestly intend to obey the law may have a guide for
their action and those who aim to violate the law may the more surely be punished. The
same certainty should be given to the law prohibiting combinations and monopolies that
characterize other provisions of commercial law; in order that no part of the field of
business opportunity may be restricted by monopoly or combination, that business success
honorably achieved may not be converted into crime, and that the right of every man to
acquire commodities, and particularly the necessaries of life, in an open market
uninfluenced by the manipulation of trust or combination, may be preserved.
FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION
In the enforcement and administration of Federal Laws governing interstate commerce and
enterprises impressed with a public use engaged therein, there is much that may be
committed to a Federal trade commission, thus placing in the hands of an administrative
board many of the functions now necessarily exercised by the courts. This will promote
promptness in the administration of the law and avoid delays and technicalities incident
to court procedure.
The Progressive Party
Business
We believe that true popular government, justice and prosperity go hand in hand, and so
believing, it is our purpose to secure that large measure of general prosperity which is
the fruit of legitimate and honest business, fostered by equal justice and by sound
progressive laws.
We demand that the test of true prosperity shall be the benefits conferred thereby on
all the citizens not confined to individuals or classes and that the test of corporate
efficiency shall be the ability better to serve the public; that those who profit by
control of business affairs shall justify that profit and that control by sharing with the
public the fruits thereof.
We therefore demand a strong National regulation of inter-State corporations. The
corporation is an essential part of modern business. The concentration of modern business,
in some degree, is both inevitable and necessary for National and international business
efficiency. but the existing concentration of vast wealth under a corporate system,
unguarded and uncontrolled by the Nation, has placed in the hands of a few men enormous,
secret, irresponsible power over the daily life of the citizen--a power insufferable in a
free government and certain of abuse.
This power has been abused, in monopoly of National resources, in stock watering, in
unfair competition and unfair privileges, and finally in sinister influences on the public
agencies of State and Nation. We do not fear commercial power, but we insist that it shall
be exercised openly, under publicity, supervision and regulation of the most efficient
sort, which will preserver its good while eradicating and preventing its evils.
To that end we urge the establishment of a strong Federal administrative commission of
high standing, which shall maintain permanent active supervision over industrial
corporations engaged in inter-State commerce, or such of them as are of public importance,
doing for them what the Government now does for the National banks, and what is now done
for the railroads by the Inter-State Commerce Commission.
Such a commission must enforce the complete publicity of those corporation transactions
which are of public interest; must attack unfair competition, false capitalization and
special privilege, and by continuous trained watchfulness guard and keep open equally to
all the highways of American commerce.
Thus the business man will have certain knowledge of the law, and will be able to
conduct his business easily in conformity therewith; the investor will find security for
his capital; dividends will be rendered more certain, and the savings of the people will
be drawn naturally and safely into the channels of trade.
Under such a system of constructive regulation, legitimate business, freed from
confusion, uncertainty and fruitless litigation, will develop normally in response to the
energy and enterprise of the American business man.
We favor strengthening the Sherman law by prohibiting agreements to divide territory or
limit output; refusing to sell to customers who buy from business rivals; to sell below
cost in certain areas while maintaining higher prices in other places; using the power of
transportation to aid or injure special business concerns; and other unfair trade
practices.
The Socialist Party
Working
Program.
As measures calculated to strengthen the working class, in its fight for the
realization of its ultimate aim, the co-operative commonwealth, and to increase its power
of resistance against capitalist oppression, we advocate and pledge ourselves and our
elected officers to the following program:
Collective Ownership.
1. The collective ownership and democratic management of railroads, wire and wireless
telegraphs and telephones, express services, steamboat lines and all other social means of
transportation and communication and of all large-scale industries.
2. The immediate acquirement by the municipalities, the states or the federal
government of all grain elevators, stock yards, storage warehouses, and other distributing
agencies, in order to reduce the present extortionate cost of living.
3. The extension of the public domain to include mines, quarries, oil wells, forests
and water power.
4. The further conservation and development of natural resources for the use and
benefit of all the people:
(a) By scientific forestation and timber protection.
(b) By the reclamation of arid and swamp tracts.
(c) By the storage of flood waters and the utilization of water power.
(d) By the stoppage of the present extravagant waste of the soil and of the products of
mines and oil wells.
(e) By the development of highway and waterway systems.
5. The collective ownership of land wherever practicable, and in cases where such
ownership is impracticable, the appropriation by taxation of the annual rental value of
all land held for speculation or exploitation.
6. The collective ownership and democratic management of the banking and currency
system. |
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