Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/66

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William D. Fenton.

to Salt Lake City and an early completion of the Oregon and California Railroad to the state line. The platform approved the "Patrons of Husbandy," commonly known as the "Grange," and opposed schoolbook monopolies; favored the reduction of fees of clerks and sheriffs, and an amendment to the state constitution permitting the state printing to be let to the highest bidder, and favored the retention of the litigant act. It opposed the state buying, leasing, or speculating in anything not directly belonging to the state's business; favored the construction of a wagon road from Portland to The Dalles, and congressional aid to build the railroad from Portland to Salt Lake, and for continuation of the Oregon Central from St. Joseph to Junction City.

The republican platform adopted April 8, 1874, consisted of fifteen resolutions, and was a general eulogy of honest government; defined and declared the uses of a political party, and the necessity therefor; expressed a desire to control corporate franchises; opposed interference by state officials with conventions; demanded political reform and honest economy; sympathized with the agricultural classes; demanded congressional aid for rivers and harbors and liberal grants of public land in the aid of the construction of railroads and other public works, and particularly of the railroad from Portland to Salt Lake, the construction of the Oregon Central from St. Joseph to Junction City, the improvement of the Willamette River, and congressional aid for a wagon road from Rogue-river Valley to the coast and Portland to The Dalles; opposed the purchase or lease of the locks at Oregon City; favored the repeal of the litigant law, Portland charter, and the law for the increase of salaries and. the schoolbook monopoly; favored the payment of the expenses or claims growing out of the Indian wars in 1872 and 1873 in Southern Oregon, and favored the