DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PLATFORM


  We have enforced the anti-trust laws more vigorously than at any
time in our history, thus affording the maximum protection to the
competitive system.
  We favor strict supervision of all forms of the insurance business by
the several States for the protection of policy-holders and the public.
   The full force of our policies, by raising the national income by
thirty billion dollars from the low of 1932, by encouraging vast re-
employment, and by elevating the level of consumer demand, has quick-
ened the flow of buying and selling through every artery of industry
and trade.
  With mass purchasing power restored and many abuses eliminated,
American business stands at the threshold of a great new era, richer
in promise than any we have witnessed-an era of pioneering and pro-
gress beyond the present frontiers of economic activity-in transpor-
tation, in housing, in industrial expansion, and in the new utilization
of the products of the farm and the factory.
  We shall aid business in redeeming America's promise.

                           Electric Power
  During the past seven years the Democratic Party has won the first
major victories for the people of the Nation in their generation-old
contest with the Power Monopoly.
  These victories have resulted in the recognition of certain self-evi-
dent principles and the realization of vast benefits by the people. These
principles, long opposed by the Republican Party, are:
  That the power of falling water is a gift from God, and consequently
belongs not to a privileged few, but to all the people, who are entitled
to enjoy its benefits;
  That the people have the right through their Government to develop
their own power sites and bring low-cost electricity to their homes,
farms and factories;
  That public utility holding companies must not be permitted to serve
as the means by which a few men can pyramid stocks upon stocks for
the sole purpose of controlling vast power empires.
  We condemn the Republican policies which permitted the victimizing
of investors in the securities of private power corporations, and the
exploitation of the people by unnecessarily high utility costs.
  We condemn the opposition of utility power interests which delayed
for years the development of natural defense projects in the Tennessee
Valley, and which obstructed river basin improvements and other pub-
lic projects bringing low-cost electric power to the people. The success-
ful power developments in the Tennessee and Columbia River basins
show the wisdom of the Democratic Party in establishing government-
owned and operated hydro-electric plants in the interests of power and
light consumers.
  Through these Democratic victories, whole regions have been revived
and restored to prosperous habitation. Production costs have been re-


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