The Omaha Platform, which articulated the principles of the Populist movement, was adopted by the Populist Party—more formally, the People’s Party—at its founding convention in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 4, 1892. With great fervor, the delegates to the convention embraced the platform, written by a lawyer, farmer, novelist, amateur scientist, and politician from Minnesota named Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901). Donnelly held a variety of offices, ranging from lieutenant governor of Minnesota to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. (He was also the Populist Party’s 1900 vice presidential candidate.) The objectives outlined in the Omaha Platform included regulation and reform of national politics. Among its tenets, it expressed opposition to the gold standard to counter deflation in agricultural prices and favored a graduated income tax, postal savings banks, federal loans to farmers, public ownership of the railroad and telecommunications, stricter immigration laws, and the institution of an eight-hour workday.