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The wage earners constitute so large a proportion of our population that all political and economic questions effect them, but there are certain questions in which they feel a special interest. They’re interested, for instance, in an eight-hour day, and the Democratic platform declares in favor of eight-hour day on all government work. The laboring men are also interested in the Employers Liability Act, and the Democratic platform endorses this measure. The antitrust law has been so construed as to apply to labor organizations, but the distinction between an association of laboring men or farmers, or other citizens organized for mutual benefit -- and industrial combinations known as trusts, is so clear that the two subjects ought to be treated separately. And the Democratic platform puts the party on record against legislation which passes labor organizations with illegal combinations in restraint of trade. One of the most acute questions affecting labor is that which involves the issue of the written injunction. The Republican leaders have attempted to raise a false issue and have accused the laboring men of lack of respect for the courts. They do injustice to the wage earners. There is no lack of respect for the courts and there is no thought of interfering with the legitimate use of the written injunction. Courts, however, are creatures of law and it is their province to interpret the laws which the people make. Experience has shown the necessity for a modification of the law relating to injunction, and the Democratic party favors the enactment of a measure which passed the United States Senate 12 years ago, but which a Republican Congress has ever since refused to enact. This measure gives to the accused the right of trial by jury when the alleged contempt was not committed in the presence of the court. The demand for a jury trial in such cases is not revolutionary. It is simply a demand that those who are known as wage earners shall be given the protection always accorded to persons who are tried in a criminal court. The Democratic platform also insists that injunction should not be issued in industrial dispute in cases where the injunction would not lie if no industrial disputes were involved. In other words, the wage earner should not be discriminated against, and the industrial dispute itself should not be a sufficient cause for the issuance of an injunction. Before an injunction is issued in an industrial dispute, the conditions ought to be such as to justify the writ of injunction if there were no disputes between employer and employee. Our platform goes a step further and declares in favor of a Department of Labor with a cabinet officer at its head. This is but a reiteration of the position taken by the party in 1900, and who will say that the laborers of the country are not entitled representation at the President’s council table. They have so large a part in the production of the nations wealth in time of peace, and they are so prompt to offer their services in time of war, that no one should begrudge them a spokesman in the President’s cabinet.

Biography:

A former U.S. representative of Nebraska, Bryan was first nominated for the presidency in 1896, but he lost a bitterly fought contest to Republican William McKinley. In November of 1900, this election match-up was repeated, and again Bryan was defeated in a narrow vote. However, he continued to dominate the Democratic party, and in 1908 he made a third unsuccessful bid for the presidency, this time against Republican William Howard Taft. In 1912, Bryan's support of Woodrow Wilson helped the latter win the presidency, and Bryan was appointed secretary of state. However, because of his antiwar beliefs, Bryan resigned in 1915 rather than support Wilson's official condemnation of the German sinking of the Lusitania. In his later years, Bryan, a Presbyterian, devoted himself to the defense of Christian fundamentalism. He urged measures against teaching evolution, and in 1925 aided the prosecution in the so-called "Scopes Monkey Trial." In the famous case, biology teacher John T. Scopes was accused of teaching Darwinism in violation of Tennessee state law. Although Scopes was convicted, Bryan's literal interpretation of the Bible was subjected to severe ridicule in a searching examination by defense lawyer Clarence Darrow. Five days after the trial ended, William Jennings Bryan died in his sleep.