Timeline

Eugene Debs for President 1912, The Socialist Party of the United States of America.

Working Program

As measures calculated to strengthen the working class in its fight for the realization of its ultimate aim, the co-operative commonwealth, and to increase its power against capitalist oppression, we advocate and pledge ourselves and our elected officers to the following program:

Collective Ownership
• The collective ownership and democratic management of railroads, wire and wireless telegraphs and telephones, express service, steamboat lines, and all other social means of transportation and communication and of all large scale industries.
• The immediate acquirement by the municipalities, the states or the federal government of all grain elevators, stock yards, storage warehouses, and other distributing agencies, in order to reduce the present extortionate cost of living.
• The extension of the public domain to include mines, quarries, oil wells, forests and water power.
• The further conservation and development of natural resources for the use and benefit of all the people . . .
• The collective ownership of land wherever practicable, and in cases where such ownership is impracticable, the appropriation by taxation of the annual rental value of all the land held for speculation and exploitation.
• The collective ownership and democratic management of the banking and currency system.

Unemployment

The immediate government relief of the unemployed by the extension of all useful public works. All persons employed on such works to be engaged directly by the government under a work day of not more than eight hours and at not less than the prevailing union wages. The government also to establish employment bureaus; to lend money to states and municipalities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public works, and to take such other measures within its power as will lessen the widespread misery of the workers caused by the misrule of the capitalist class.

Industrial Demands
• The conservation of human resources, particularly of the lives and well-being of the workers and their families:
• By shortening the work day in keeping with the increased productiveness of machinery.
• By securing for every worker a rest period of not less than a day and a half in each week.
• By securing a more effective inspection of workshops, factories and mines.
• By the forbidding the employment of children under sixteen years of age.
• By the co-operative organization of the industries in the federal penitentiaries for the benefit of the convicts and their dependents.
• By forbidding the interstate transportation of the products of child labor, of convict labor and of all uninspected factories and mines.
• By abolishing the profit system in government work and substituting either the direct hire of labor or the awarding of contracts to co-operative groups of workers.
• By establishing minimum wage scales.
• By abolishing official charity and substituting a non-contributary system of old age pensions, a general system of insurance by the State of all its members against unemployment and invalidism and a system of compulsory insurance by employers of their workers, without cost to the latter, against industrial diseases, accidents and death.
Political Demands • The absolute freedom of press, speech and assemblage.
• The adoption of a graduated income tax and the extension of inheritance taxes, graduated in proportion to the value of the estate and to nearness of kin-the proceeds of these taxes to be employed in the socialization of industry.
• The abolition of the monopoly ownership of patents and the substitution of collective ownership, with direct rewards to inventors by premiums or royalties.
• Unrestricted and equal suffrage for men and women.
• The adoption of the initiative, referendum and recall and of proportional representation, nationally as well as locally.
• The abolition of the Senate and of the veto power of the President.
• The election of the President and Vice-President by direct vote of the people.
• The abolition of the power usurped by the Supreme Court of the United States to pass upon the constitutionality of the legislation enacted by Congress. National laws to be repealed only by act of Congress or by a referendum vote of the whole people.
• Abolition of the present restrictions upon the amendment of the Constitution, so that instrument may be made amendable by a majority of the voters in a majority of the States.
• The granting of the right of suffrage in the District of Columbia with representation in Congress and a democratic form of municipal government for purely local affairs.
• The extension of democratic government to all United States territory.
• The enactment of further measures for the conservation of health. The creation of an independent bureau of health, with such restrictions as will secure full liberty to all schools of practice.
• The enactment of further measures for general education and particularly for vocational education in useful pursuits. The Bureau of Education to be made a department.
• The separation of the present Bureau of Labor from the Department of Commerce and Labor and its elevation to the rank of a department.
• Abolition of an federal districts courts and the United States circuit court of appeals. State courts to have jurisdiction in all cases arising between citizens of several states and foreign corporations. The election of all judges for short terms.
• The immediate curbing of the power of the courts to issue injunctions.
• The free administration of the law.
• The calling of a convention for the revision of the constitution of the U. S.

Such measures of relief as we may be able to force from capitalism are but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole powers of government, in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of socialized industry and thus come to their rightful inheritance.


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