1129

Phila. Inquirer
March 8,1918

DECLARE PRINCIPLES,
IS BARKER'S APPEAL

Well-known Financier and
Publicist Urges Election
Platform

For Defeat of Huns' Demo-
cratic Home Rule, Prohibi-
tion and Suffrage

Wharton Barker, prominent Philadel-
phia financier and publicist, in a pub-
lic statement issued yesterday, called
upon citizens of Pennsylvania and the
Nation to adopt a "Declaration of Prin-
ciples" upon which the coming political
campaign shall be waged. He said:

"Citizens Ponder and act upon the
great issues now paramount and im-
perative. Your ballots can and should
secure and maintain public rights; use
hem as your intelligence dictates, and
machinations of politicians who would
be your masters will end. Publish your
declaration of principles, nominate your
candidates for all legistative, executive
and judicial offices, and you will have
an invincible organization of the peo-
ple, and politicians, tools of able and
unscrupulous combinations, will be pow-
erless and you will be free.

"I suggest for campaign of this year
the following declaration of principles:

"To secure government of, by and
for the people, the war must continue
until German autocrats and aggressions
are destroyed and restorations and com-
pensitions are made.

"To secure abolition of trespass upon
the rights of one people by other peo-
ples there must be an association of na-
tions to prevent trespass.

Democratic Home Rule Essential

"To secure freedom, justice and con-
equent growth and happiness within
nations, there must be democratic Home
Rule.

"To secure equitable burden of taxa-
tion, direct, not indirect, taxes must
be imposed, and so taxes upon accu-
mulated wealth and earnings of all kinds
must be imposed.

"To secure maximum well-being, self-
respect and development, individual ef-
fort must be free from public hin-
drance, associations of individuals for
aggression upon common weal rights can-
not be tolerated, therefore, operations
that by nature or by law are monopo-
lies, must be public, not private monop-
olies.

"The political campaigns of this year
in the several States must be made upon
paramount issues. In Pennsylvania the
great issues are:

"1. We demand suffrage without re-
gard to sex.

"2. We demand an economic indus-
trial system that will facilitate the un-
limited production of all desirable forms
of wealth; so that mental and physical
workers will receive an adequate and
generous wage, with right, jealously
guarded, of unrestricted rational co-op-
eration thus recognizing that intelli-
gent labor applied to the varied boun-
ties of nature develops latent wealth.
The conflict between capital and labor
nust end, both must be free from dic-
tation and aggression: confiscation by
violence or chicanery cannot be toler-
ated.

For Constitutional Prohibition

"3. We demand that the distilling and
brewing and the licensing of the sale of
intoxicating liquors be abolished by Con-
stitutional prohibition. Stimulants more
dangerous than alcohol must be aban-
doned, either by individual determination
or by Constitutional prohibition.

"4. We demand the elevation and pu-
rification of our public and private life
through creation of and use of perma-
nent public interest organizations in ev-
ery voting precinct, founded and con-
ducted upon democratic principles, for
in no other way can there be regenera-
tion, reorganization and constant inter-
est in the discussion of all religious, so-
cial, economic and political problems.

A free people cannot and will