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education, leisure, and culture. When America, the richest country in the world, gives its workers half of what Communism gives in the Soviet Union, it will be time enough to boast. The Communist Party and its platform are in this election campaign for one purpose, and only one - to unite the broadest masses of the toiling people effectively around a program which, if carried out, would bring about a better life; would relieve the present suffering of millions of men, women and children; would preserve our democratic rights and civil liberties; would keep America out of war by keeping war out of the world. In accepting this nomination, I pledge to fight for the achievement of this program. The realization of these progressive and democratic demands would preserve the rights and liberties of the people; they will learn and find in struggle the best way to the final solution of their problems. We are firmly convinced that the majority of the American people will finally choose the way of socialism, which is the common ownership and operation of the mills, mines, factories, railroads, banks - our whole highly-organized economic plant - through a government really of, by, and for the people. This is the full program of the Communist Party, which causes Wall Street and Hearst to hate us so much. This is socialism, that is revolution, which the reactionaries want you to fear. The majority of the American people are not this year ready for this revolution toward which the full Communist program leads. But the American people must and will always retain the freedom to choose that road when they are ready. Americans will never permit the victory of fascism in our land. We must join hands, millions of us, to smash this menace. There shall be no American Hitler. Hearst and the Liberty League carry on a campaign of incitement against the Communist Party, trying to make the people believe that because we are a revolutionary party we are something horrible and shameful. But thereby they only dishonor our American revolutionary traditions which are the heart of Americanism. 10 Our country was born in revolution and preserved by revolutionary war. Hearst's diatribes against us are only bad copies of the incitements of the Slave Power against the great Lincoln. Americans have always been among the most revolutionary peoples of the world. Americans will not shrink from a new revolution, when they understand that only by this road can they once and for all break the corrupting power of Wall Street over our land. The Communist Party shows the way to a better life now, and to the future of peace, freedom, and security for all. As the candidate of the Communist Party, I will carry its program to the country—the fight for a united people's front in the Farmer-Labor Party, the fight for organizing the basic industries into industrial unions, in a united and powerful American Federation of Labor, the fight for unity of all progressive forces in America to defeat the threat of reaction, fascism, and war. The Communist Party banner is the only consistent banner of progress, of liberty, and through liberty to socialism. I accept your nomination as a charge to carry this banner to the great masses of the American people. Forward to a progressive, free, prosperous, and happy America. Vote Communist! 11
