Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1873 — The Workingmen’s Platform. [ARTICLE]

The Workingmen’s Platform.

The National Industrial Congress, recently in session at Cleveland, Ohio, adopted the following platform: Whereas, The recent alarming development and aggression of aggregated wealth, which, unless checked, will Inevitably lead to the pauperization and hopeless depredation of the toiling masses, render it imperative, If we desire to enjoy the blessings of the Government bequeathed us by the founders of the Republic, that a check sbonld be placed upon the power and unjust accumulation of wealth, and a system adopted which will secure to the laborer the fruits of hut toil; and. Whereas, This mnch desired object can only be accomplished by the thorough unification of labor and the united efforts of those who obey the divine injunction that “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”; and, Whereas, While we recognize in the ballot-box an agency by which these wrongs can be redressed when other means fail, yet the great desideratum of the hour Is the organization, consolidation, and co-operative effort of the producing masses as a stepping-stone to that edncatlon that will in the fntnre lead to more advanced action, through which the necessary reforms can be obtained; and, Whereas, While we fullyrecognize the power and efficiency of Trade and Labor Unions, local and international, as now organized, in regulating purely trade matters, yet upon all questions appertaining to their welfare as a whole the influence of these organizations without closer union mast prove comparatively futile; therefore, Resolved , That we submit to the people of the United States the objects sought to be accomplished by the Industrial Congress: 1. To briug within the folds of the organization every department of productive industry, making knowledge a standpoint for action, and industrial, moral, and social worth, not wealth, the true standard of individual and national greatness. 2. To secure to the toiler an equal share of the wealth which he helps to create; more of the leisure that rightly belongs to him; more society advantages; more of the benefits, privileges, and emoluments of the world; In a word, all those rights and privileges necessary to make him capable of enjoying, appreciating, defending and perpetuating the blessings of Republican institutions. 3. To arrive at the true condition of the producing masses in their educational, moral, and financial condition, we demand from the several States and from the National Government the establishment of Bureaus of Labor Statistics. 4. The establishment of co-operative institutions, productive and distributive. 5. The reserving of the public lands, the heritage of the people, for the actual settler, and not another acre for railroads or speculators. 6. The abrogation of all laws that do not bear equally upon capital and labor, and by the adoption of measures providing for the health aDd safely of those engaged In manufacturing or bnilding pursuits. 7. The substitution of arbitration for strikes, whenever and wherever employers and employes are willing to meet on equitable grounds. 8. The prohibition of tne Importation of all servile races, the discontinuance of all subsidies granted to mall vessels bringing them to onr shores, and the abrogation, or at least the modification, of the Bnrlingame Treaty. 9. To advance the standard of American mechanics by the enactment and enforcement of equitable apprentice laws. 10. To discountenance the system of contracting the labor of convicts in our prisons and reformatory institutions. 11. The reduction of the hours of labor to eight per day, so that laborers may have more time for social enjoyment and Intellectual improvement, and be enabled to reach the advantage conferred by labor-saving machinery which its brain bas created. 12. The providing of a purely National circulating medium, based on the faith and resources of the Nation, and issued directly to the people, so instituted as to constitute a circulating medium of the necessary flexibility and receivable for all demands, public and private.