Dixit

Mr. Davis's speech of acceptance was divided into four main sections 1)preliminary remarks addressed to the Notification Committee; 2) a general review, point by point, of the Republican Administration; 3) a general resume of what the Democratic Party promises; 4) a peroration dealing with the terms of Mr Davis's acceptance.

Preliminary Remark. "These are the hills that cradled me and to which as boy and man, I lifted my eyes for help. In this soil rest four generations of my people--artisans, tradesmen, farmers and a sprinkling of the professions--laborers all, who played in simple fashion their appointed parts in the life of this community. . . . These witnesses who surround us are the companions of my youth and manhood. . . .

"I have read your platform and its declarations of party principle and find them such as I can heartily approve. For these things I thank God and take courage."

Republican Record. "There is abroad in the land a feeling too general to be ignored, too deep-seated for any trifling, that men in office can no longer be trusted to keep faith with those who sent them there and that the powers of government are being exercised in the pursuit of personal gain instead of common service. ... In 1920 we passed through a political campaign in which materialism was preached as a creed and selfishness as a national duty.

"I speak with restraint when I say that it has brought forth corruption in high places, favoritism in legislation, division and discord in party councils, impotence in Government and a hot struggle for profit and advantage which has bewildered us at home and humiliated us abroad."

1) Corruption. "The time demands plain speaking. It is not a welcome task to recount the multiplied scandals of these melancholy years: a Senator of the United States convicted of corrupt practice in the purchase of his senatorial seat; a Secretary of the Interior in return for bribes granting away the Naval Oil Reserves so necessary to the security of the country; a Secretary of the Navy ignorant of the spolLaon in progress if not indifferent to it; an Attorney General admitting bribe- takers to the Department of Justice, making them his boon companions and utilizing the agencies of the law for purposes of private and political vengeance; a Chief of the Veterans Bureau stealing and helping others to steal the millions in money and supplies provided for the relief of those defenders of the nation most entitled to the nation's gratitude and care. Such crimes are too gross to be forgotten or forgiven."

2) Responsibility for Corruption. "The revelation of these crimes was not the result of any action taken by the Executive. . . . When discovery was threatened, instead of aid and assistance from the Executive Branch there were hurried efforts to suppress testimony, to discourage witnesses, to spy upon investigators and finally, by trumped-up indictment, to frighten and deter them from the pursuit. . . . With what patience shall we greet the libelous suggestion that, after all, these are but incidents provoked by the demoralization attendant upon the Great War? . . . Shall we forget that no taint of dishonesty or corruption has ever attached to any man who held public office during that great struggle or to any man who continued to hold office under the Federal Government until March 4, 1921? Shell shock was late, indeed, in arriving if it is to be put forward now as the excuse for these gross misdeeds."

3) Fordney-McCumber Tariff. "I charge the Republican Party with this corruption in office. I charge it also with favoritism in legislation. In the passage of the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act, imposing the highest rates and duties in the tariff history of the Nation, there was an unblushing return to the evil days of rewarding party support and political contributions with legislative favors. . . . For every dollar that this statute has drawn into the treasury of the United States it has diverted five from the pocket of the consumer into the pockets of the favored few. . ."

4) Tax Reduction. "When a reduction in the burden of income taxes could no longer be denied, the country was presented with the Mellon bill, offered by the Administration to the people as the last word on that subject. When it met the test of impartial analysis, here, too, there appeared the motive to favor the few possessors of swollen incomes beyond the many of moderate means. . ."

5) Republican Discord. "The Executive proposes adherence to the existing World Court. The request falls on dull ears. The Executive demands the Mellon bill and members of his party in both houses of Congress, regular and insurgent, hasten to reject it. He disapproves the Adjusted Compensation Act but Congress reenacts it. Congress passes a measure granting to postal employes an increase in their meager salaries; the President disapproves it. He protests against the restriction on Japanese immigration; Congress adopts it. Whenever before did a party in control of the Executive and of a majority in both houses of Congress present so pitiable a spectacle of discord and division? Four years ago the Republican Party, in snarling criticism of the great leader then in office, promised to 'end executive autocracy.' It has fallen into the pit that it dug.

Foreign Policy. "Not only have the Executive recommendations for adherence to the World Court, sanctioned as they are by long American tradition and example, been flouted and ignored, but no evidence is in sight that the Republican Party as now constituted can frame and carry to its conclusion any definite and consistent foreign policy. The Washington Conference alone aside, and that of more than doubtful value, what single contribution has the United States of America, as an organized nation among nations, made to world peace in the last four years?

" 'Unofficial observers' have appeared at international conferences where America, if present at all, should have been present as an equal among equals. When, but yesterday, three Americans went to the Conference on Reparations, whose fruitful outcome all the world desires, Washington was prompt to disclaim all responsibility for their going though eager to take credit for whatever they might accomplish. We must face the humiliating fact that we have a government that does not dare to speak its mind beyond the three mile limit."

7) Summary. "I indict the Republican Party in its organized capacity for having shaken public confidence to its very foundations. I charge it with having exhibited deeper and more widespread corruption than any that this generation of Americans has been called upon to witness. I charge it with complacency in the face of that corruption and with ill will toward the efforts of honest men to expose it. I charge it with gross favoritism to the privileged and with utter disregard of the unprivileged. I charge it with indifference to world peace and with timidity in the conduct of our foreign affairs. I charge it with disorganization, division and incoherence."

The Democratic Program. "We are prepared to offer a Democratic program based on Democratic principles and guaranteed by a record of Democratic performance. These principles are: A belief in equal rights to all men and special privilege to none; in an ever wider and more equitable distribution of the rewards of toil and industry; in the suppression of private monopoly as a thing indefensible and intolerable; in the largest liberty for every individual; in local self-government as against a centralized bureaucracy; in public office as a public trust; in a government administered without fear abroad or favoritism at home. . . .

"The civic unit of America is not the dollar but the individual man. We shall strive, therefore, for the things that look to these great ends; for the education of our youth, not only in knowledge gathered from past ages but in the wholesome virtue of selfhelp; for the protection of women and children from human greed and unequal laws; for the prevention of Child Labor and for the suppression of the illicit traffic in soul-destroying drugs. We shall conserve all the natural resources of the country and prevent the hand of monopoly from closing on them and on our water powers, so that our children after us shall find this still a fair land to dwell within. And to the veterans of our wars, especially to those who were stricken and wounded in the country's service and whose confidence has been so cruelly and corruptly abused, we shall give, in honor and in honesty, the grateful care they have so justly earned. . . ."

1) Labor. "The right of Labor to an adequate wage earned under healthful conditions, the right to organize in order to obtain it and the right to bargain for it collectively, through agents and representatives of its own choosing, have been established after many years of weary struggle. These rights are conceded now by all fair-minded men. They must not be impaired either by injunction or by any other device. . . ."

2) Farmers. "To the farmers of the United States also we promise not patronage but such laws and such administration of the laws as will enable them to prosper in their own right. . . . They feel today, more severely perhaps than any others, the depressing effect of discriminatory taxation. Buying in a protected market and selling in a market open to the world, they have been forced to contribute to the profits of those in other industries with no compensating benefit to themselves. . . . We propose to see to it that the discriminations which the tariff makes against the farmer shall be removed; that his Government by doing its share toward a European settlement shall help to revive and enlarge his foreign markets; that, instead of lip service to the principle of cooeperative marketing, the forces of the Government shall be put actively at work to lend assistance to these endeavors; that the farmer shall be supplied not only with information on problems of production but with information such as the dealer now receives concerning the probable use and demand for his product, so that he may be enabled to think as intelligently as the dealer in terms of consumption and demand. . . . He is entitled, too, to demand an adequate service of transportation at reasonable rates. In spite of the failures and shortcomings of existing laws, this is an ideal which I cannot believe to be beyond the reach of attainment. . . ."

3) Taxation. "The exorbitant rates and discriminatory provisions of the present tariff law must be wiped out, and in their place must be written, with fairness to all and favors to none, a statute designed primarily to raise revenue for the support of the government and framed on a truly competitive basis. . . .

" 4) Economy. "I shall, if elected, welcome the opportunity to support and strengthen the beginnings which have been made in the direction of a national budget. We must have, in addition, an economy which consists not merely in securing a dollar's worth for every dollar spent, but that far less popular form of economy which imitates the prudent householder in doing without the things one wishes but cannot at the time afford. Economy, however, begins at the wrong end when it attacks the pay of government employes, who are justly entitled to pay equal to that they would receive from private employers for similar work. . . .

" 5) Law Enforcement. "To the enforcement of the law, and all the law, we stand definitely pledged. We shall enforce it as fearlessly against wealth that endeavors to restrain trade and create monopoly as against poverty that counterfeits the currency; as vigorously against ambition which seeks to climb to office through the corrupt use of money as against the lesser greed that robs the mails. For no reason that is apparent to me the question has been asked, as perhaps it will continue to be asked until it has been definitely answered, what views I hold concerning the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment and the statutes passed to put it into effect. Why the question; is it not the law? . .

" 6) Disarmament. "But all that we do will be undone; all that we build will be torn down; all that we hope for will be denied, unless in conjunction with the rest of mankind we can lift the burden of vast armaments which now weighs upon the world and silence the recurring threat of war. This we shall not do by pious wishes or fervid rhetoric. We will not contribute to it as a nation simply by offering to others, no more concerned than ourselves, our unsolicited advice. ... In the name of the Democratic Party, therefore, I promise to the country that no enterprise sincerely directed to this end will lack our approval and cooeperation. . . ."

7) World Court. "We favor the World Court in sincerity and not merely for campaign purposes nor as an avenue of escape from the consideration of larger questions. . . ."

8) League of Nations. "We do not and we cannot accept the dictum unauthorized by any expression of popular will that the League of Nations is a closed incident so far as we are concerned. . . . The march of events has shown not only that the League has within it the seed of sure survival hut that it is destined more and more to become the bulwark of peace and order to mankind. Fifty-four nations now sit around its council table. Ireland, I rejoice to say, has shaken off her long subjection; and once more a nation has made her entry into the League the sign and symbol of her glorious rebirth. The time cannot be far distant when Germany will take the seat to which she is rightly entitled. Russia, Mexico and Turkey will make the roll, with one exception, entire and complete. None of the nations in all this lengthening list have parted with their sovereignty or sacrificed their independence, or have imperilled by their presence their safety at home or their security abroad. . . . On sheerest grounds of national safety, I cannot think it prudent that the United States should be absent whenever all the other nations of the world assemble to discuss world problems. ... Neither have I at any time believed, nor do I now believe, that the entrance of America into the League can occur, will occur or should occur until the common judgment of the American people is ready for the step.. . . Nor can I reconcile it with my ideas of the dignity of a great nation to be represented at international gatherings only under the poor pretense of 'unofficial observation.' If I become President of the United States, America will sit as an equal among equals whenever she sits at all."

9) Ku Klux Klan. "We have taken occasion to reaffirm our belief in the constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and to deplore and condemn any effort from whatever source to arouse racial or religious dissension in this country. . . . From one who aspires to the Presidency, however, a declaration even more direct than this may rightfully be expected. I wish also to state how and in what way the views I entertain are to influence my actions. Into my hands will fall, when I am elected, the power to appoint thousands of persons to office under the Federal Government. When that time arrives I shall set up no standard of religious faith or racial origin as a qualification for any office. . . ."

Peroration. "It is known of all men that the nomination which you tender me was not made of my seeking. It comes, I am proud to believe, as the unanimous wish of one of the most deliberative conventions in American history, which weighed in the balance with soberness my too scanty virtues and my manifold shortcomings. I am happy, however, in the thought that it finds me free from pledge or promise to any living man. . . . When it becomes necessary, as no doubt it will, to raise funds for the conduct of the campaign, they will be contributed with this understanding and this only: that neither the Democratic Party nor I, as its leader, have any favors for sale. We can make but one promise to all men alike, that of an honest, an impartial and, so far as human wisdom will permit, a just government. In this spirit I accept your nomination. . . ."