700 



UNITED STATES. 



Seven hundred millions ot the public debt become 

 redeemable, at the option of the Government, during 

 this and the ensuing year. Two funding bills are now 

 pending before Congress one introduced by the Dem- 

 ocratic and the other by the Republican leader of the 

 House, whereby it is proposed to deprive the people 

 for twenty and thirty years of the lawful right to pay 

 said bonds. This is a crime against the laborer and 

 the tax-payer, and should cause widespread alarm 

 among all classes. . . . 



The two great agents of commerce are money and 

 transportation. It is undeniable that both of these 

 agents are under absolute control of monopolies. By 

 controlling the volume of money, the banks fix the 

 price of all labor and property ; and the railroads, by 

 combination, render competition impossible, and con- 

 trol absolutely the price of transportation. . . . 



The Republican and Democratic platforms are either 

 silent with regard to these vital issues, or they have 

 pronounced in favor of the monopolies and against 

 the people. With fifty millions of people looking 

 them in the face and pleading for relief they utter not 

 one word of promise or hope. Their leaders and 

 platform makers are in the toils of the syndicate, 

 gigantic bank corporations and railroad monopolies, 

 and have neither the disposition nor the courage to 

 strike one generous blow for industrial emancipation. 



An area of our public domain larger than the ter- 

 ritory occupied by the great German Empire has been 

 wantonly donated to wealthy corporations ; while a 

 bill introduced by Hon. Hendrick B. Wright, of 

 Pennsylvania, to enable our poor people to reach and 

 occupy the few acres remaining, has been scouted, 

 ridiculed, and defeated in Congress. In consequence 

 of this stupendous system of land-grabbing, millions 

 of the young men of America, and millions more of 

 industrious people from abroad, seeking homes in the 

 New World, are left homeless and destitute. The pub- 

 lic domain must be sacredly reserved to actual set- 

 tlers, and where corporations have not complied 

 strictly with the terms of their grants, the lands 

 should be at once reclaimed. 



The immigration of persons from foreign countries, 

 seeking honies and desiring to become citizens of the 

 United States, should be encouraged, but the impor- 

 tation of Chinese servile laborers should be prohibited 

 by stringent laws. . . . 



One of the grand missions of our party is to banish 



for ever from American politics that deplorable spirit 

 of sectional hatred which for base purposes has been 

 fostered by the leaders of the old parties. This has 

 greatly deceived and embittered the public mind, 

 both North and South. 



Our civilization demands a new party, dedicated to 

 the pursuits of peace, and which will not allow the 

 war issues ever to be reopened, and will render the 

 military strictly subordinate to the civil power. The 

 war is over, and the sweet voice of Peace, long neg- 

 lected, calls us to worship at her altars ; let us crowd 

 her temples with willing votaries. Let us have a free 

 ballot, a fair count, and equal rights for all classes- 

 for the laboring-man in Northern inamifactories, 

 mines, and workshops, and for the struggling poor, 

 both white and black, in the cotton-fields of the 

 South. 



I most earnestly and solemnly invoke united action 

 of all industrial classes, irrespective of party, that we 

 may make a manly struggle for the independence of 

 labor, and to reestablish in the administration of public 

 affairs the old-time Democracy of Jefferson and Jack- 

 son, and the pure Republicanism of Abraham Lincoln 

 and Thaddeus Stevens. 



General Garfield accepted the nomination 

 of the Chicago Convention in the following 

 letter addressed to its president : 



MENTOR, OHIO, July 10, 1880. 



DEAR SIR: On the evening of the 8th of June last 

 I had the honor to receive from you, in the presence 

 of the committee of which you were chairman, the 



official announcement that the Republican National 

 Convention at Chicago had that day nominated me as 

 their candidate for President of the United States. I 

 accept the nomination ; with gratitude for the confi- 

 dence it implies, and with a deep sense of the responsi- 

 bilities it imposes. I cordially endorse the principles 

 Bet forth in the platform adopted by the Convention. 

 On nearly all the subjects of which it treats, my opin- 

 ions are on record among the published proceedings 

 of Congress. I venture, however, to make special 

 mention of some of the principal topics which are 

 likely to become subjects of discussion. 



Without reviewing the controversies which have 

 been settled during tne last twenty years, and with no 

 purpose or wish to revive the passions of the late war, 

 it should be said that while the Republicans fully 

 recognize and will strenuously defend all the rights 

 retained by the people, and all the rights reserved to 

 the States, they reject the pernicious doctrine of State 

 supremacy, which so long crippled the functions of 

 the national Government, and at one time brought 

 the Union very near to destruction. They insist that 

 the United States is a nation, with ample power of 

 self-preservation ; that its Constitution and the laws 

 made in pursuance thereof are the supreme law of the 

 land ; that the rig^ht of the nation to determine the 

 method by which Its own Legislature shall be created, 

 can not be surrendered without abdicating on 3 of the 

 fundamental powers of government ; that the national 

 laws relating to the election of Representatives in Con- 

 gress shall neither be violated nor evaded ; that every 

 elector shall be permitted, freely and without intimi- 

 dation, to cast his lawful ballot at such election, and 

 have it honestly counted, and that the potency of his 

 vote shall not be destroyed by the fraudulent vote of 

 any other person. The best thoughts and energies of 

 our people should be directed to those great questions 

 of national well-being, in which all have a common 

 interest. Such efforts will soonest restore to perfect 

 peace those who were lately in arms against each 

 other, for justice and good- will will outlast passion. 

 But it is certain that the wounds of the war can not 

 be completely healed, and the spirit of brotherhood 

 can not fully pervade the Avholc country, until every 

 citizen, rich or poor, white or black, is secure in the 

 free and equal enjoyment of every civil and political 

 ria-ht guaranteed by the Constitution and the laws. 

 Wherever the enjoyment of these rights is not assured, 

 discontent will prevail, immigration will cease, and 

 the social and industrial forces will continue to be dis- 

 turbed by the migration of laborers and the conse- 

 quent diminution of prosperity. The national Gov- 

 ernment should exercise all its constitutional authority 

 to put an end to these evils ; for all the people and all 

 the States are members of one body, and no member 

 can suffer without injury to all. 



The most serious evils which now afflict the South 

 arise from the fact that there is not such freedom and 

 toleration of political opinion and action that the mi- 

 nority party can exercise an effective and wholesome 

 restraint upon the party in power. Without such re- 

 straint party rule becomes tyrannical and corrupt. 

 The prosperity which is made possible in the South 

 by its great advantages of soil and climate will never 

 be realized until every voter can freely and safely sup- 

 port any party he pleases. 



Next in importance to freedom and justice is popu- 

 lar education, without which neither justice nor free- 

 dom can be permanently maintained. Its interests 

 are intrusted to the States and to the voluntary action 

 of the people. Whatever help the nation can justly 

 afford should be generously given to aid the States' in 

 supporting common schools, but it would be unjust to 

 our people and dangerous to our institutions to apply 

 any portion of the revenues of the nation or of the 

 States to the support of sectarian schools. The sepa- 

 ration of the Church and the state in everything re- 

 lating to taxation should be absolute. 



On the subject of national finances, my views have 

 been so frequently and fully expressed that little is 

 needed in the way of additional statement. The pub- 



