Excerpt from Platforms of Political Parties in Texas "We believe that a platform pledge is a covenant with the people, and, therefore, we declare it to be the highest duty of every Democratic nominee to earnestly support and to urge the fulfillment of each promise set forth herein." (Democratic State platform, 1902.) This expression defines the ideal before the makers of party platforms. The problems confronting the State government are enumerated from term to term. A collection of the platforms presents the ambitions and also the failures of the party issuing them. They chart the course that the several parties of this State have run. This collection of platforms of the political parties of Texas aims at completeness. It is the first attempt to collect them. Newspaper files have been drawn upon almost exclusively for the data presented. The files of newspapers prior to 1880, available for this work, were very incomplete. The conventions of the minor parties are given only brief space in the daily papers; their proceedings are correspondingly more difficult to locate. In some instances, they have, perhaps, been passed over without any notice at all. The lists of candidates are usually those nominated by the conventions; many changes occur between the date of the convention and the election, but it has been impossible to follow them up. The same is true of the personnel of the State executive committees. Great care has been used to have all names correct, but the opportunities for error are so great that doubtless many escaped correction. The demands of several organizations, not strictly political parties, have been included, for the side-lights they throw upon the contemporary platforms. Here, too, there is much room for difference of opinion. The histories of these organizations as well as of the parties have yet to be written, so far as Texas is concerned. When this has been done some of the documents here included may appear out of perspective, while others may have been omitted. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.