hich it is to be
understood as used in the Constitution." The Supreme Court, quoting
these very words with approval, has adopted Hamilton's construction.
With the writing of those two opinions in the Cabinet of Washington,
the enduring lines of party division in America were drawn. There
ought to be early recognition of the fact, that in case a new party of
the people shall be formed, a party determined upon reform of existing
abuses and oppressions, upon the suppression of the liquor traffic as
we know it, upon the overthrow of every semblance of plutocracy, upon
opening to every child of the American democracy an equality of
opportunity as yet unknown, resort must be had to those broad,
liberal, and constructive constitutional doctrines which the existing
Democratic party steadily opposes, and which the Republican party does
not sufficiently apply for the benefit of the masses. It is the duty
and opportunity of the prohibitionists to make such a party. A party
going to Thomas Jefferson for a baptism of Democratic feeling, and
content with no sprinkling, and to the school of Hamilton for its
constitutionalism, can supplant the Republicans, and only such a party
can meet the case of labor. The woollen manufacturers of Massachusetts
have just remonstrated against further reduction of the hours of labor
unless the reduction be uniform in all the manufacturing States, and
they made the significant suggestion that Congress has power to
establish uniform hours of labor. Congress does have that power as a
part of the power to regulate commerce. The eight-hour day can only
come in this country by act of Congress, and the construction that
sustains such an act sustains national regulation of the liquor
traffic. The general welfare of the Union is involved in each case.
American industry is a unit so far as the interests of American homes
require the rule of uniformity, and the home life of America is a unit
so far as it needs that protection which, in order to be complete,
must come from the national authority. I venture to suggest that one
thing that has hindered the cementing of the alliance between labor
and prohibition, is the tendency of the prohibitionists while
recognizing the importance of labor problems to insist that
prohibition must come first. The labor men will never go into any
party that puts it quite in that way. Is it not sufficient to claim
urgency for the prohibition issue, to say that no work should take
pre