Conspectus of the History of Political Parties and the Federal Government/1880 Prohibition Reform Party Platform
Prohibition Reform Platform, Cleveland, Ohio, June 17.
The Prohibition Reform party of the United States, organized, in the name of the people, to revive, enforce, and perpetuate in the government the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, submit, for the suffrage of all good citizens, the following platform of national reforms and measures:
In the examination and discussion of the temperance question, it has been proven, and is an accepted truth, that alcoholic drinks, whether fermented, brewed, or distilled, are poisonous to the healthy human body, the drinking of which is not only needless but hurtful, necessarily tending to form intemperate habits, increasing greatly the number, severity, and fatal termination of diseases, weakening and deranging the intellect, polluting the affections, hardening the heart and corrupting the morals, depriving many of reason and still more of its healthful exercise, and annually bringing down large numbers to untimely graves, producing, in the children of many who drink, a predisposition to intemperance, insanity, and various bodily and menial diseases, causing diminution of strength, feebleness of vision, fickleness of purpose, and premature old age, and inducing, in all future generations, deterioration of moral and physical character. Alcoholic drinks are thus the implacable foe of man as an individual.
First. The legalized importation, manufacture, and sale of intoxicating drinks ministers to their use, and teaches the erroneous and destructive sentiment that such use is right, thus tending to produce and perpetuate the above mentioned evils.
Second. To the home it is an enemy—proving itself to be a disturber and destroyer of its peace, prosperity, and happiness; taking from it the earnings of the husband; depriving the dependent wife and children of essential food, clothing, and education; bringing into it profanity, abuse, and violence; setting at naught the vows of the marriage altar; breaking up the family and sundering the children from the parents, and thus destroying one of the most beneficent institutions of our Creator, and removing the sure foundation of good government, national prosperity, and welfare.
Third. To the community it is equally an enemy—producing vice, demoralization, and wickedness; its places of sale being resorts of gaming, lewdness, and debauchery, and the hiding-place of those who prey upon society; counteracting the efficacy of religious effort, and of all means of intellectual elevation, moral purity, social happiness, and the eternal good of mankind, without rendering any counteracting or compensating benefits; being in its influence and effect evil and only evil, and that continually.
Fourth. To the state it is equally an enemy—legislative inquiries, judicial investigations, and official reports of all penal, reformatory, and dependent institutions showing that the manufacture and sale of such beverages is the promoting cause of intemperance, crime, and pauperism, and of demands upon public and private charity, imposing the larger part of taxation, paralyzing thrift, industry, manufactures, and commercial life, which, but for it, would be unnecessary; disturbing the peace of streets and highways; filling prisons and poor-houses; corrupting politics, legislation, and the execution of the laws; shortening lives; diminishing health, industry, and productive power in manufactures and art; and is manifestly unjust as well as injurious to the community upon which it is imposed, and is contrary to all just views of civil liberty, as well as a violation of the fundamental maxim of our common law, to use your own property or liberty so as not to injure others.
Fifth. It is neither right nor politic for the state to afford legal protection to any traffic or any system which tends to waste the resources, to corrupt the social habits, and to destroy the health and lives of the people; that the importation, manufacture, and sale of intoxicating beverages is proven to be inimical to the true interests of the individual home, community, and state, and destructive to the order and welfare of society, and ought, therefore, to be classed among crimes to be prohibited.
Sixth. In this time of profound peace at home and abroad, the entire separation of the general government from the drink-traffic, and its prohibition in the District of Columbia, territories, and in all places and ways over which, under the constitution, Congress has control and power, is a political issue of the first importance to the peace and prosperity of the nation. There can be no stable peace and protection to personal liberty, life, or property, until secured by national or state constitutional provisions, enforced by adequate laws.
Seventh. All legitimate industries require deliverance from the taxation and loss which the liquor traffic imposes upon them; and financial or other legislation could not accomplish so much to increase production and cause a demand for labor, and, as a result, for the comforts of living, as the suppression of this traffic would bring to thousands of homes as one of its blessings.
Eighth. The administration of the government and the execution of the laws are through political parties; and we arraign the Republican party, which has been in continuous power in the nation for twenty years, as being false to duty, as false to loudly-proclaimed principles of equal justice to all and special favors to none, and of protection to the weak and dependent, insensible to the mischief which the trade in liquor has constantly inflicted upon industry, trade, commerce, and the social happiness of the people; that 5,652 distilleries, 3,830 breweries, and 175,266 places for the sale of these poisonous liquors, involving an annual waste to the nation of one million five hundred thousand dollars, and the sacrifice of one hundred thousand lives, have, under its legislation, grown up and been fostered as a legitimate source of revenue; that during its history, six territories have been organized and five states been admitted into the Union, with constitutions provided and approved by Congress, but the prohibition of this debasing and destructive traffic has not been provided, nor even the people given, at the time of admission, power to forbid it in any one of them. Its history further shows, that not in a single instance has an original prohibitory law been passed by any state that was controlled by it, while in four states, so governed, the laws found on its advent to power have been repealed. At its national convention in 1872, it declared, as part of its party faith, that “it disapproves of the resort to unconstitutional laws for the purpose of removing evils, by interference with rights not surrendered by the people to either the state or national government,” which, the author of this plank says, was adopted by the platform committee with the full and implicit understanding, that its purpose was the discountenancing of all so-called temperance, prohibitory, and Sunday laws.
Ninth. We arraign, also, the Democratic party as unfaithful and unworthy of reliance on this question; for, although not clothed with power, but occupying the relation of an opposition party during twenty years past, strong in numbers and organization, it has allied itself with liquor-traffickers, and become, in all the states of the Union, their special political defenders, and in its national convention in 1876, as an article of its political faith, declared against prohibition and just laws in restraint of the trade in drink, by saying it was opposed to what it was pleased to call “all sumptuary laws.” The National party has been dumb on this question.
Tenth. Drink-traffickers, having the history and experience of all ages, climes, and conditions of men, declaring their business destructive of all good—finding no support in the Bible, morals, or reason—appeal to misapplied law for their justification, and intrench themselves behind the evil elements of political party for defense, party tactics and party inertia become battling forces, protecting this evil.
Eleventh. In view of the foregoing facts and history, we cordially invite all voters, without regard to former party affiliations, to unite with us in the use of the ballot for the abolition of the drinking system, under the authority of our national and state governments. We also demand, as a right, that women, having the privileges of citizens in other respects, be clothed with the ballot for their protection, and as a rightful means for the proper settlement of the liquor question.
Twelfth. To remove the apprehension of some who allege that a loss of public revenue would follow the suppression of the direct trade, we confidently point to the experience of governments abroad and at home, which shows that thrift and revenue from the consumption of legitimate manufactures and commerce have so largely followed the abolition of drink as to fully supply all loss of liquor taxes.
Thirteenth. We recognize the good providence of Almighty God, who has preserved and prospered us as a nation; and, asking for His spirit to guide us to ultimate success, we all look for it, relying upon His omnipotent arm.