cedence of prohibition in party performance? I think the time has
come when this issue can be taken up by a political party and I
recommend a party that shall declare for prohibition with the same
emphasis with which the Republican party declared for protection in
1884 and in 1888. I think, however, that the party that carries a bill
for national control of the manufacture and traffic in liquors through
Congress, to be signed by a President chosen with a knowledge of his
prohibition principles, will have to have a good running mate for its
prohibition issue. Yet I believe the prohibition plank in the platform
of the great progressive party, lineally descending, would be the
centre of attraction and of repulsion. I grant that. But the balance
will be so kept that multitudes who take, at first at least, a
livelier interest in some other measure which also is promoted by
party ascendancy, will vote for partisan prohibition because it is the
policy of the party of human progress with which they are keeping
step.

I refrain from going at length into a discussion of labor issues.
Shall prohibitionists come out for State Socialism, shall they pledge
themselves to make that economic nationalism which is now only a
prophecy and an ideal, a political fact when they came into
administration? No political party should do this. But the word
socialism is a word of good meaning. It means fraternity, industry
upon a Christian basis. In the discussion that impends in this
country, concerning the rights and the wrongs of the wage-earners, and
concerning the demands for relief, constantly growing louder, of the
agricultural producing classes, the question arises in the mind at
the outset, whether our policy, state and national, shall be based
upon the _laissez faire_ doctrine, the "let alone" principle; or upon
the principle of the intervention of public opinion through the agency
of government to effect the ends of justice and of aid to the weaker
classes whether by regulative laws, or by the assumption by the public
(through local, state, or national government, as the nature of the
case may require,) of such business or industrial enterprises as are
natural monopolies or can be best performed by the people
collectively. I say this question arises in the mind at the outset,
but after all, it is, I think, not a question requiring much argument
in this day of the world; because, although there are some men more
busy with their own daily