regulation of the sale of liquor so as to restrain abuses, and favored the opening of the Wallowa Valley to settlement.
The independent state convention which convened. on April 15, 1874, adopted a platform consisting of fifteen resolutions, and condemned the extravagance of the state and national administrations, and declared that there was no ground to hope for a remedy for these evils through the agencies of the two political parties that had heretofore ruled the country. It condemned the multiplication of offices, state and national; favored means, both state and national, which would give cheap transportation, and to this end favored the construction of a railroad to Salt Lake and the completion of the Oregon and California Railroad to the south line of the state; the construction of the Oregon Central from St. Joseph to Junction City, and the completion of the same to Astoria; the construction of roads across the mountain chains; the wagon road from The Dalles to Portland, and demanded that freight rates should be fixed by law, state and national; that there should be a return to the salaries of the constitution, and a repeal of the law increasing the same; and a law protecting the state against the extravagant charges of the state printer. It declared itself in favor of the common schools and the repeal of the schoolbook monopoly and litigant act; it opposed the purchase of the locks at Oregon City; condemned the swamp land legislation and the lease of the lands thereunder; declared that personal character was the test of fitness for office; expressed its desire to regulate the liquor traffic by local precinct option and civil damage laws, and noted, with approval, the uprising of the agricultural masses.
At this time the Portland Bulletin was published as a daily paper at Portland, Oregon, in opposition to the
