repeal of the litigant act; expressed its approval of aid from the federal government for the construction of a railroad from Portland, Oregon, to Salt Lake City, and from Jackson County to Humboldt County, California, and pledged its party representatives to support the same. It favored a discriminating license of the liquor traffic and national aid to build a wagon road from Portland to The Dalles, and favored the continuance of its party in power.
The democratic state convention which met March 18, 1874, adopted a platform consisting of fourteen resolutions. The chairman of the committee on resolutions in that convention was C. B. Bellinger. It declared in favor of the rights of the states; asserted that the danger of corruption in public office was the greatest issue, and that the cardinal principle of the party's future political action was "retrenchment, economy, and reform," and that this was imperatively demanded; opposed the so-called "salary grab,' the actions of ring politicians and land monopolies, and appealed to honest men everywhere, without regard to past political affiliations, to join the representatives of the party in branding, as they deserved, "these corrupt leeches on the body politic, and assist us to purge official stations of their unwholesome and baneful presence.' It condemned the national administration and federal interference at the polls; favored the regulation and control of corporations by the legislature, and declared in favor of a speedy return to specie payments, just and equal taxation for support of federal and state governments, and opposed all discrimination in the assessment of federal revenue for the purposes of protection; favored free navigation and improvement of the Columbia and the construction of a breakwater at Port Orford, improvement of the Coquille and Willamette rivers, and the construction of a railroad from Portland
