Chapter XCIX: Section 29 (19)

"During the past year rapid progress has been made toward the
completion of the scheme adopted for the erection and armament
of fortifications along our seacoast, while equal progress has
been made in providing the material for submarine defense in
connection with these works. … We shall soon have complete
about one-fifth of the comprehensive system, the first step in
which was noted in my message to the Congress of December 4,
1893. When it is understood that a masonry emplacement not
only furnishes a platform for the heavy modern high-power gun,
but also in every particular serves the purpose and takes the
place of the fort of former days, the importance of the work
accomplished is better comprehended. In the hope that the work
will be prosecuted with no less vigor in the future, the
Secretary of War has submitted an estimate by which, if
allowed, there will be provided and either built or building
by the end of the next fiscal year such additional guns,
mortars, gun carriages, and emplacements, as will represent
not far from one-third of the total work to be done under the
plan adopted for our coast defenses—thus affording a prospect
that the entire work will be substantially completed within
six years. In less time than that, however, we shall have
attained a marked degree of security. The experience and
results of the past year demonstrate that with a continuation
of present careful methods the cost of the remaining work will
be much less than the original estimate. We should always keep
in mind that of all forms of military preparation coast
defense alone is essentially pacific in its nature."

_Message of the President, 1896
(54th Congress, 2d Session, House Document, volume 1)._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (January).
Admission of Utah to the Union.

See (in this volume)
UTAH: A. D. 1895-1896.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (January-February).
Appointment of commission to investigate the
Venezuela boundary.
Re-opening of discussion with Great Britain on the
arbitration of the dispute.

See (in this volume)
VENEZUELA: A. D. 1896-1899.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (February).
New treaty with Great Britain for arbitration of
Bering Sea claims.

See (in this volume)
BERING SEA QUESTIONS.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (February).
Weyler made Governor of Cuba.
His Concentration Order.

See (in this volume)
CUBA: A. D. 1896-1897.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (March).
Removal of Confederate disabilities.

The following enactment of Congress, which may, with
propriety, be styled an "Act of Oblivion," was approved by the
President on the 31st of March, 1896:

"That section twelve hundred and eighteen of the Revised
Statutes of the United States, as amended by chapter forty-six
of the laws of 1884, which section is as follows: 'No person
who held a commission in the Army or Navy of the United States
at the beginning of the late rebellion, and afterwards served
in any capacity in the military, naval, or civil service of
the so-called Confederate States, or of either of the States
in insurrection during the late rebellion, shall be appointed
to any position in the Army or Navy of the United States,' be,
and the same is hereby, repealed."

_United States of America, Statutes at Large,
volume 29, page 84._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (May).
Extension of civil service rules by President Cleveland.

See (in this volume)
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM: A. D. 1893-1896.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (June-November).
The Presidential election.
The silver question at issue.
Party Platforms and Nominations.

A national conference held at Washington, in March, 1895, may
be looked upon as the beginning of a widely and powerfully
organized movement to force the demand for a free and
unlimited coinage of silver, on equal terms, as legal tender
money, with gold, into the front of the issues of the
presidential canvass of 1896. The agitation then projected was
carried on with extraordinary ardor and skill and had
astonishing success. It was helped by the general depression
of business in the country, and especially by the long
continued ruling of low prices for the produce of the
farms,—for all of which effects the gold standard of values
was held to be the one relentless cause. In both political
parties the free silver propaganda was pushed with startling
effect, and there seemed to be doubt, for a time, whether the
controlling politicians in either would take an opposing
stand. Southern influences proved decisive of the result in
the Democratic party; eastern influences in that of the
Republicans. The ranks of the former were swept rapidly into
the movement for free silver, and the party chiefs of the
latter were driven to a conflict with it, not wholly by
convictions or will of their own. During the spring and early
summer of 1896, the Democratic Party in State after State
became committed on the question, by declarations for the
unlimited free coinage of silver, at the ratio of 16 to 1;
until there was tolerable certainty, some weeks before the
meeting of the national convention, that its nominee for
President must be one who represented that demand. How
positively the Republican Party would champion the gold
monetary standard was somewhat less assured, though its stand
on that side had been taken in a general way.

{564}

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
Republican Platform and Nominations.

The Republican national convention was held at St. Louis, on
the 16th, 17th and 18th of June. The "platform" reported by
the committee on resolutions was adopted without amendment on
the last named date. Its declarations were as follows:

"The Republicans of the United States, assembled by their
representatives in National Convention, appealing for the
popular and historical justification of their claims to the
matchless achievements of the thirty years of Republican rule,
earnestly and confidently address themselves to the awakened
intelligence, experience, and conscience of their countrymen
in the following declaration of facts and principles:

"For the first time since the civil war the American people
have witnessed the calamitous consequences of full and
unrestricted Democratic control of the Government. It has been
a record of unparalleled incapacity, dishonor, and disaster.
In administrative management it has ruthlessly sacrificed
indispensable revenue, entailed an unceasing deficit, eked out
ordinary current expenses with borrowed money, piled up the
public debt by $262,000,000 in time of peace, forced an
adverse balance of trade, kept a perpetual menace hanging over
the redemption fund, pawned American credit to alien
syndicates, and reversed all the measures and results of
successful Republican rule.

"In the broad effect of its policy it has precipitated panic,
blighted industry and trade with prolonged depression, closed
factories, reduced work and wages, halted enterprise, and
crippled American production while stimulating foreign
production for the American market. Every consideration of
public safety and individual interest demands that the
Government shall be rescued from the hands of those who have
shown themselves incapable to conduct it without disaster at
home and dishonor abroad, and shall be restored to the party
which for thirty years administered it with unequalled success
and prosperity, and in this connection we heartily endorse the
wisdom, patriotism, and the success of the administration of
President Harrison.

"We renew and emphasize our allegiance to the policy of
protection as the bulwark of American industrial independence
and the foundation of American development and prosperity.
This true American policy taxes foreign products and
encourages home industry; it puts the burden of revenue on
foreign goods; it secures the American market for the American
producer; it upholds the American standard of wages for the
American workingman; it puts the factory by the side of the
farm, and makes the American farmer less dependent on foreign
demand and price; it diffuses general thrift, and founds the
strength of all on the strength of each. In its reasonable
application it is just, fair, and impartial; equally opposed
to foreign control and domestic monopoly, to sectional
discrimination, and individual favoritism.

"We denounce the present Democratic tariff as sectional,
injurious to the public credit, and destructive to business
enterprise. "We demand such an equitable tariff on foreign
imports which come into competition with American products as
will not only furnish adequate revenue for the necessary
expenses of the Government, but will protect American labor
from degradation to the wage level of other lands. We are not
pledged to any particular schedules. The question of rates is
a practical question, to be governed by the conditions of the
time and of production; the ruling and uncompromising
principle is the protection and development of American labor
and industry. The country demands a right settlement, and then
it wants rest.

"We believe the repeal of the reciprocity arrangements
negotiated by the last Republican administration was a
national calamity, and we demand their renewal and extension
on such terms as will equalize our trade with other nations,
remove the restrictions which now obstruct the sale of
American products in the ports of other countries, and secure
enlarged markets for the products of our farms, forests, and
factories.

See, in volume 5,
TARIFF LEGISLATION (UNITED STATES):
A. D. 1890, and 1894.

"Protection and reciprocity are twin measures of Republican
policy and go hand in hand. Democratic rule has recklessly
struck down both, and both must be re-established. Protection
for what we produce; free admission for the necessaries of
life which we do not produce; reciprocity agreements of mutual
interests which again open markets for us in return for our
open markets to others. Protection builds up domestic industry
and trade and secures our own market for ourselves; reciprocity
builds up foreign trade and finds an outlet for our surplus.
We condemn the present administration for not keeping faith
with the sugar producers of this country. The Republican party
favors such protection as will lead to the production on
American soil of all the sugar which the American people use,
and for which they pay other countries more than $100,000,000
annually. To all our products—to those of the mine and the
fields as well as to those of the shop and the factory—to
hemp, to wool, the product of the great industry of sheep
husbandry, as well as to the finished woollens of the mill—we
promise the most ample protection.

"We favor restoring the early American policy of
discriminating duties for the upbuilding of our merchant
marine and the protection of our shipping in the foreign
carrying trade, so that American ships—the product of American
labor, employed in American shipyards, sailing under the Stars
and Stripes, and manned, officered, and owned by Americans—may
regain the carrying of our foreign commerce.

"The Republican party is unreservedly for sound money. It
caused the enactment of the law providing for the resumption
of specie payments in 1879; since then every dollar has been
as good as gold. We are unalterably opposed to every measure
calculated to debase our currency or impair the credit of our
country. We are, therefore, opposed to the free coinage of
silver except by international agreement with the leading
commercial nations of the world, which we pledge ourselves to
promote, and until such agreement can be obtained the existing
gold standard must be preserved. All our silver and paper
currency must be maintained at parity with gold, and we favor
all measures designed to maintain inviolably the obligations
of the United States and all our money, whether coin or paper,
at the present standard, the standard of the most enlightened
nations of the earth.

{565}

"The veterans of the Union Army deserve and should receive
fair treatment and generous recognition. Whenever practicable,
they should be given the preference in the matter of
employment, and they are entitled to the enactment of such
laws as are best calculated to secure the fulfillment of the
pledges made to them in the dark days of the country's peril.
We denounce the practice in the Pension Bureau, so recklessly
and unjustly carried on by the present administration, of
reducing pensions and arbitrarily dropping names from the
rolls as deserving the severest condemnation of the American
people.

"Our foreign policy should be at all times firm, vigorous, and
dignified, and all our interests in the Western Hemisphere
carefully watched and guarded. The Hawaiian Islands should be
controlled by the United States, and no foreign power should
be permitted to interfere with them; the Nicaraguan Canal
should be built, owned, and operated by the United States; and
by the purchase of the Danish Islands we should secure a
proper and much needed naval station in the West Indies.

"The massacres in Armenia have aroused the deep sympathy and
just indignation of the American people, and we believe that
the United States should exercise all the influence it can
properly exert to bring these atrocities to an end. In Turkey
American residents have been exposed to the gravest dangers
and American property destroyed. There and everywhere American
citizens and American property must be absolutely protected at
all hazards and at any cost.

"We reassert the Monroe doctrine in its full extent, and we
reaffirm the right of the United States to give the doctrine
effect by responding to the appeal of any American State for
friendly intervention in case of European encroachment. We
have not interfered with and shall not interfere with the
existing possessions of any European power in this hemisphere,
but those possessions must not on any pretext be extended. We
hopefully look forward to the eventual withdrawal of European
powers from this hemisphere and to the ultimate union of all
the English-speaking parts of the continent by the free
consent of its inhabitants.

"From the hour of achieving their own independence the people
of the United States have regarded with sympathy the struggles
of other American people to free themselves from European
domination. We watch with deep and abiding interest the heroic
battle of the Cuban patriots against cruelty and oppression,
and our best hopes go out for the full success of their
determined contest for liberty. The Government of Spain having
lost control of Cuba, and being unable to protect the property
or lives of resident American citizens, or to comply with its
treaty obligations, we believe that the Government of the
United States should actively use its influence and good
offices to restore peace and give independence to the island.

"The peace and security of the Republic and the maintenance of
its rightful influence among the nations of the earth demand a
naval power commensurate with its position and responsibility.
We therefore favor the continued enlargement of the navy and a
complete system of harbor and seacoast defenses.

"For the protection of the quality of our American citizenship
and of the wages of our workingmen against the fatal
competition of low-priced labor, we demand that the
immigration laws be thoroughly enforced and so extended as to
exclude from entrance to the United States those who can
neither read nor write.

"The civil-service law was placed on the statute book by the
Republican party, which has always sustained it, and we renew
our repeated declarations that it shall be thoroughly and
honestly enforced and extended wherever practicable.

"We demand that every citizen of the United States shall be
allowed to cast one free and unrestricted ballot, and that
such ballot shall be counted and returned as cast.

"We proclaim our unqualified condemnation of the uncivilized
and barbarous practice, well known as lynching or killing of
human beings suspected or charged with crime, without process
of law. We favor the creation of a National board of
arbitration to settle and adjust differences which may arise
between employers and employed engaged in interstate commerce.

"We believe in an immediate return to the free-homestead
policy of the Republican party, and urge the passage by
Congress of a satisfactory free-homestead measure such as has
already passed the House and is now pending in the Senate.

"We favor the admission of the remaining Territories at the
earliest practicable date, having due regard to the interests
of the people of the Territories and of the United States. All
the Federal officers appointed for the Territories should be
selected from bona fide residents thereof, and the right of
self-government should be accorded as far as practicable.

"We believe the citizens of Alaska should have representation
in the Congress of the United States, to the end that needful
legislation may be intelligently enacted.

"We sympathize with all wise and legitimate efforts to lessen
and prevent the evils of intemperance and promote morality.

"The Republican party is mindful of the rights and interests
of women. Protection of American industries includes equal
opportunities, equal pay for equal work, and protection to the
home. We favor the admission of women to wider spheres of
usefulness, and welcome their co-operation in rescuing the
country from Democratic and Populist mismanagement and
misrule.

"Such are the principles and policies of the Republican party.
By these principles we will abide and these policies we will
put into execution. We ask for them the considerate judgment
of the American people. Confident alike in the history of our
great party and in the justice of our cause, we present our
platform and our candidates in the full assurance that the
election will bring victory to the Republican party and
prosperity to the people of the United States."

Before the adoption of this platform, a motion to amend its
currency "plank," by substituting a declaration in favor of
"the use of both gold and silver as equal standard money," was
laid on the table by a vote of 818½ to 105½. A protest from
delegates representing Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Montana
and South Dakota was then read, and twenty-two withdrew from
the convention, as a sign of secession from the party.

{566}

Immediately following the adoption of the platform, the
Honorable William McKinley, ex-Governor of Ohio, and of fame
in his connection with the tariff act of 1890, was nominated
on the first ballot for President of the United States, by
661½ votes against 240½ divided among several opposing
candidates, and the nomination was then made unanimous. For
Vice President, the Honorable Garret A. Hobart, of New Jersey,
was named, and similarly by the first voting.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 1896.
Democratic Platform and Nominations.

The Democratic national convention was held in Chicago, July
7-11. The delegates who came to it from the southern States,
and from most of the States west of Ohio, were arrayed with a
close approach to solid ranks for free silver; while those
from New England and the Middle States opposed them in a
phalanx almost equally firm. The "Gold Democrats" or "Sound
Money Democrats," as the latter were called, ably led by
ex-Governor Hill, of New York, fought hard to the end, but
without avail. The financial resolution they strove to place
in the platform was the following:

"We declare our belief that the experiment on the part of the
United States alone of free-silver coinage, and a change in
the existing standard of value independently of the action of
other great nations, would not only imperil our finances, but
would retard or entirely prevent the establishment of
international bimetallism, to which the efforts of the
government should be steadily directed. It would place this
country at once upon a silver basis, impair contracts, disturb
business, diminish the purchasing power of the wages of labor,
and inflict irreparable evils upon our nation's commerce and
industry.

"Until international co-operation among leading nations for
the coinage of silver can be secured, we favor the rigid
maintenance of the existing gold standard as essential to the
preservation of our national credit, the redemption of our
public pledges, and the keeping inviolate of our country's
honor. We insist that all our paper currency shall be kept at
a parity with gold. The democratic party is the party of hard
money, and is opposed to legal-tender paper money as a part of
our permanent financial system; and we therefore favor the
gradual retirement and cancellation of all United States notes
and treasury notes, under such legislative provisions as will
prevent undue contraction. We demand that the national credit
shall be resolutely maintained at all times and under all
circumstances. "

This resolution was rejected by 626 votes against 303. Another
resolution from the same source, commending "the honesty,
economy, courage and fidelity" of the "democratic national
administration" of President Cleveland, was voted down by 564
to 357. Resolutions to protect existing contracts against a
change of monetary standard, and to provide for a suspension
of silver free coinage, at the ratio of 16 to 1, after trial
for one year, if it failed to maintain parity between silver
and gold, were similarly voted down. The declarations then
adopted, for the "platform" of the party, were as follows:

"We, the Democrats of the United States, in National
Convention assembled, do reaffirm our allegiance to those
great essential principles of justice and liberty upon which
our institutions are founded, and which the Democratic party
has advocated from Jefferson's time to our own—freedom of
speech, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience, the
preservation of personal rights, the equality of all citizens
before the law, and the faithful observance of constitutional
limitations.

"During all these years the Democratic party has resisted the
tendency of selfish interests to the centralization of
governmental power, and steadfastly maintained the integrity
of the dual scheme of government established by the founders
of this Republic of republics. Under its guidance and
teachings the great principle of local self-government has
found its best expression in the maintenance of the rights of
the States and in its assertion of the necessity of confining
the General Government to the exercise of the powers granted
by the Constitution of the United States.

"Recognizing that the money question is paramount to all
others at this time, we invite attention to the fact that the
Federal Constitution names silver and gold together as the
money metals of the United States, and that the first coinage
law passed by Congress under the Constitution made the silver
dollar the monetary unit, and admitted gold to free coinage at
a ratio based upon the silver-dollar unit.

"We declare that the act of 1873 demonetizing silver without
the knowledge or approval of the American people has resulted
in the appreciation of gold and a corresponding fall in the
prices of commodities produced by the people; a heavy increase
in the burden of taxation and of all debts, public and
private; the enrichment of the money-lending class at home and
abroad; prostration of industry and impoverishment of the
people.

"We are unalterably opposed to gold monometallism, which has
locked fast the prosperity of an industrial people in the
paralysis of hard times. Gold monometallism is a British
policy, and its adoption has brought other nations into
financial servitude to London. It is not only un-American but
anti-American, and it can be fastened on the United States
only by the stifling of that spirit and love of liberty which
proclaimed our political independence in 1776 and won it in
the war of the Revolution.

"We demand the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and
silver at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one, without
waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation. We demand
that the standard silver dollar shall be a full legal tender,
equally with gold, for all debts, public and private, and we
favor such legislation as will prevent for the future the
demonetization of any kind of legal-tender money by private
contract.

"We are opposed to the policy and practice of surrendering to
the holders of the obligations of the United States the option
reserved by law to the Government of redeeming such
obligations in either silver coin or gold coin.

"We are opposed to the issuing of interest-bearing bonds of
the United States in time of peace, and condemn the
trafficking with banking syndicates which, in exchange for
bonds and at an enormous profit to themselves, supply the
Federal Treasury with gold to maintain the policy of gold
monometallism.

{567}

"Congress alone has the power to coin and issue money, and
President Jackson declared that this power could not be
delegated to corporations or individuals. We therefore demand
that the power to issue notes to circulate as money be taken
from the National banks, and that all paper money shall be
issued directly by the Treasury Department, be redeemable in
coin, and receivable for all debts, public and private.

"We hold that the tariff duties should be levied for purposes
of revenue, such duties to be so adjusted as to operate
equally throughout the country and not discriminate between
class or section, and that taxation should be limited by the
needs of the Government honestly and economically
administered.

"We denounce, as disturbing to business, the Republican threat
to restore the:McKinley law, which has been twice condemned by
the people in national elections, and which, enacted under the
false plea of protection to home industry, proved a prolific
breeder of trusts and monopolies, enriched the few at the
expense of the many, restricted trade, and deprived the
producers of the great American staples of access to their
natural markets. Until the money question is settled we are
opposed to any agitation for further changes in our tariff
laws, except such as are necessary to make the deficit in
revenue caused by the adverse decision of the Supreme Court on
the income tax.

"There would be no deficit in the revenue but for the
annulment by the Supreme Court of a law passed by a Democratic
Congress in strict pursuance of the uniform decisions of that
court for nearly 100 years, that court having sustained
constitutional objections to its enactment which had been
overruled by the ablest judges who have ever sat on that
bench. We declare that it is the duty of Congress to use all
the constitutional power which remains after that decision, or
which may come by its reversal by the court, as it may
hereafter be constituted, so that the burdens of taxation may
be equally and impartially laid, to the end that wealth may
bear its due proportion of the expenses of the Government.

"We hold that the most efficient way to protect American labor
is to prevent the importation of foreign pauper labor to
compete with it in the home market, and that the value of the
home market to our American farmers and artisans is greatly
reduced by a vicious monetary system, which depresses the
prices of their products below the cost of production, and
thus deprives them of the means of purchasing the products of
our home manufacture.

"We denounce the profligate waste of the money wrung from the
people by oppressive taxation and the lavish appropriations of
recent Republican Congresses, which have kept taxes high,
while the labor that pays them is unemployed, and the products
of the people's toil are depressed in price till they no
longer repay the cost of production. We demand a return to
that simplicity and economy which best befit a Democratic
Government and a reduction in the number of useless offices,
the salaries of which drain the substance of the people.

"We denounce arbitrary interference by Federal authorities in
local affairs as a violation of the Constitution of the United
States and a crime against free institutions, and we
especially object to government by injunction as a new and
highly dangerous form of oppression, by which Federal judges,
in contempt of the laws of the States and rights of citizens,
become at once legislators, judges, and executioners, and we
approve the bill passed at the last session of the United
States Senate, and now pending in the House, relative to
contempts in Federal courts, and providing for trials by jury
in certain cases of contempt.

"No discrimination should be indulged by the Government of the
United States in favor of any of its debtors. We approve of
the refusal of the Fifty-third Congress to pass the Pacific
Railroad funding bill, and denounce the effort of the present
Republican Congress to enact a similar measure.

"Recognizing the just claims of deserving Union soldiers, we
heartily endorse the rule of the present Commissioner of
Pensions that no names shall be arbitrarily dropped from the
pension roll, and the fact of an enlistment and service should
be deemed conclusive evidence against disease or disability
before enlistment.

"We extend our sympathy to the people of Cuba in their heroic
struggle for liberty and independence.

"We are opposed to life tenure in the public service. We favor
appointments based upon merit, fixed terms of office, and such
an administration of the civil-service laws as will afford
equal opportunities to all citizens of ascertained fitness.

"We declare it to be the unwritten law of this Republic,
established by custom and usage of 100 years, and sanctioned
by the examples of the greatest and wisest of those who
founded and have maintained our Government, that no man should
be eligible for a third term of the Presidential office.

"The absorption of wealth by the few, the consolidation of our
leading railroad systems, and formation of trusts and pools
require a stricter control by the Federal Government of those
arteries of commerce. ''We demand the enlargement of the
powers of the Inter-state Commerce Commission, and such
restrictions and guarantees in the control of railroads as
will protect the people from robbery and oppression.

"We favor the admission of the Territories of New Mexico and
Arizona into the Union as States, and we favor the early
admission of all the Territories giving the necessary
population and resources to entitle them to Statehood; and
while they remain Territories we hold that the officials
appointed to administer the government of any Territory,
together with the District of Columbia and Alaska, should be
bona fide residents of the Territory or District in which
their duties are to be performed. The Democratic party
believes in home rule, and that all public lands of the United
States should be appropriated to the establishment of free
homes for American citizens.

"We recommend that the Territory of Alaska be granted a
Delegate in Congress, and that the general land and timber
laws of the United States be extended to said Territory.

"The Federal Government should care for and improve the
Mississippi River and other great waterways of the Republic so
as to secure for the interior people easy and cheap
transportation to tidewater. When any waterway of the Republic
is of sufficient importance to demand aid of the Government,
such aid should be extended upon a definite plan of continuous
work until permanent improvement is secured.

{568}

"Confiding in the justice of our cause and the necessity of
its success at the polls, we submit the foregoing declaration
of principles and purposes to the considerate judgment of the
American people. We invite the support of all citizens who
approve them, and who desire to have them made effective
through legislation for the relief of the people and the
restoration of the country's prosperity."

In the course of the debate upon the silver question, a speech
of impassioned eloquence was made by William J. Bryan, of
Nebraska, who had represented his district in Congress for two
terms, 1891-1894, and who was rising to prominence among the
leaders of the free-silver Democracy of the west. The speech
excited an enthusiasm and an admiration which led to the
nomination of Mr. Bryan for the presidency. That unexpected
choice was reached after four ballots, in each of which the
votes for the Nebraska orator rose steadily in number. At the
fifth ballot they had passed the requisite two-thirds, and his
nomination was declared to be unanimous, though protests were
made. The entire delegation from New York and many delegates
from New England and New Jersey cast no votes, refusing to
take any part in the nomination of a candidate on the platform
laid down. The chosen candidate for Vice President was Arthur
Sewall, of Maine.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 1896.
The National Silver Party.

The considerable body of Republicans who desired an unlimited
free coinage of silver, and were prepared to quit their party
on that issue, had made efforts to persuade the Democratic
convention at Chicago to accept their leader, Senator Teller,
of Colorado, for its presidential candidate. Failing in that,
they assembled a convention of delegates at St. Louis, July
22-24, and, under the name of the "National Silver Party,"
took the alternative method of uniting the free-silver
Republican vote with that of the free-silver Democracy, by
accepting the Democratic nominations as their own. William J.
Bryan and Arthur Sewall were duly nominated for President and
Vice President, and a "platform" set forth as follows:

"The National Silver Party in Convention assembled hereby
adopts the following declaration of principles:

"First. The paramount issue at this time in the United States
is indisputably the money question. It is between the gold
standard, gold bonds, and bank currency on the one side and
the bimetallic standard, no bonds, and Government currency on
the other.

"On this issue we declare ourselves to be in favor of a
distinctively American financial system. We are unalterably
opposed to the single gold standard, and demand the immediate
return to the constitutional standard of gold and silver, by
the restoration by this Government, independently of any
foreign power, of the unrestricted coinage of both gold and
silver into standard money at the ratio of sixteen to one, and
upon terms of exact equality, as they existed prior to 1873;
the silver coin to be a full legal tender equally with gold
for all debts and dues, private and public, and we favor such
legislation as will prevent for the future the demonetization
of any kind of legal-tender money by private contract.

"We hold that the power to control and regulate a paper
currency is inseparable from the power to coin money, and
hence that all currency intended to circulate as money should
be issued, and its volume controlled by the General Government
only, and should be legal tender.

"We are unalterably opposed to the issue by the United States
of interest-bearing bonds in time of peace, and we denounce as
a blunder worse than a crime the present Treasury policy,
concurred in by a Republican House, of plunging the country in
debt by hundreds of millions in the vain attempt to maintain
the gold standard by borrowing gold, and we demand the payment
of all coin obligations of the United States as provided by
existing laws, in either gold or silver coin, at the option of
the Government and not at the option of the creditor.

"The demonetization of silver in 1873 enormously increased the
demand for gold, enhancing its purchasing power and lowering
all prices measured by that standard; and since that unjust
and indefensible act the prices of American products have
fallen upon an average nearly fifty per cent., carrying down
with them proportionately the money value of all other forms
of property. Such fall of prices has destroyed the profits of
legitimate industry, injuring the producer for the benefit of
the non-producer, increasing the burden of the debtor,
swelling the gains of the creditor, paralyzing the productive
energies of the American people, relegating to idleness vast
numbers of willing workers, sending the shadows of despair
into the home of the honest toiler, filling the land with
tramps and paupers, and building up colossal fortunes at the
money centres.

"In the effort to maintain the gold standard the country has,
within the last two years, in a time of profound peace and
plenty, been loaded down with $262,000,000 of additional
interest-bearing debt, under such circumstances as to allow a
syndicate of native and foreign bankers to realize a net
profit of millions on a single deal.

"It stands confessed that the gold standard can only be upheld
by so depleting our paper currency as to force the prices of
our product below the European and even below the Asiatic
level to enable us to sell in foreign markets, thus
aggravating the very evils our people so bitterly complain of,
degrading American labor, and striking at the foundations of
our civilization itself.

"The advocates of the gold standard persistently claim that
the cause of our distress is over-production; that we have
produced so much that it has made us poor—which implies that
the true remedy is to close the factory, abandon the farm, and
throw a multitude of people out of employment, a doctrine that
leaves us unnerved and disheartened, and absolutely without
hope for the future.

"We affirm it to be unquestioned that there can be no such
economic paradox as over-production, and at the same time tens
of thousands of our fellow-citizens remaining half-clothed and
half-fed, and who are piteously clamoring for the common
necessities of life.

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"Second. That over and above all other questions of policy we
are in favor of restoring to the people of the United States
the time-honored money of the Constitution—gold and silver,
not one, but both—the money of Washington and Hamilton and
Jefferson and Monroe and Jackson and Lincoln, to the end that
the American people may receive honest pay for an honest
product; that the American debtor may pay his just obligations
in an honest standard, and not in a standard that has depreciated
100 per cent. above all the great staples of our country, and
to the end further that the standard countries may be deprived
of the unjust advantage they now enjoy in the difference in
exchange between gold and silver—an advantage which tariff
legislation alone cannot overcome.

"We therefore confidently appeal to the people of the United
States to leave in abeyance for the moment all other
questions, however important and even momentous they may
appear, to sunder, if need be, all former party ties and
affiliations, and unite in one supreme effort to free
themselves and their children from the domination of the money
power—a power more destructive than any which has ever been
fastened upon the civilized men of any race or in any age, and
upon the consummation of our desires and efforts we invoke the
gracious favor of Divine Providence.

"Inasmuch as the patriotic majority of the Chicago convention
embodied in the financial plank of its platform the principles
enunciated in the platform of the American Bimetallic party,
promulgated at Washington, D. C., January 22, 1896, and herein
reiterated, which is not only the paramount but the only real
issue in the pending campaign, therefore, recognizing that
their nominees embody these patriotic principles, we recommend
that this convention nominate William J. Bryan, of Nebraska, for
President, and Arthur Sewall, of Maine, for Vice President."

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 1896.
People's or Populist Party Platform and Nominations.

The People's Party, more commonly called the Populist Party,
held its national convention at St. Louis on the 22d-25th of
July, simultaneously with that of the National Silver Party,
and with strong influences urging it to act on the same line.
One section of the party strove to bring about a complete
endorsement of the Democratic nominations made at Chicago.
Another section, styled the "Middle-of-the-Road" Populists,
opposed any coalition with other parties; while a third wished
to nominate Bryan, with a Populist candidate for Vice
President, looking to an arrangement with the Democratic
organization for a fusion of electoral tickets in various
States. The idea of the latter prevailed, and William J. Bryan
was nominated for President, with Thomas E. Watson, of
Georgia, for Vice President. The People's Party had little
disagreement with the Chicago declarations of the Democratic
Party, and none at all on financial questions, concerning
which its doctrines were set forth in the following platform:

"The People's Party, assembled in National Convention,
reaffirms its allegiance to the principles declared by the
founders of the Republic, and also to the fundamental
principles of just government as enunciated in the platform of
the party in 1892.

"We recognize that through the connivance of the present and
preceding administrations the country has reached a crisis in
its National life, as predicted in our declaration of four
years ago, and that prompt and patriotic action is the supreme
duty of the hour.

"We realize that while we have political independence, our
financial and industrial independence is yet to be attained by
restoring to our country the constitutional control and
exercise of the functions necessary to a people's government,
which functions have been basely surrendered by our public
servants to corporations and monopolies. The influence of
European money-changers has been more potent in shaping
legislation than the voice of the American people. Executive
power and patronage have been used to corrupt our legislatures
and defeat the will of the people, and plutocracy has been
enthroned upon the ruins of democracy. To restore the
government intended by the fathers, and for the welfare and
prosperity of this and future generations, we demand the
establishment of an economic and financial system which shall
make us masters of our own affairs and independent of European
control, by the adoption of the following declaration of
principles:

"We demand a National money, safe and sound, issued by the
general government only, without the intervention of banks of
issue, to be a full legal tender for an debts, public and
private, and a just, equitable, and efficient means of
distribution direct to the people and through the lawful
disbursements of the Government.

"We demand the free and unrestricted coinage of silver and
gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one, without
waiting for the consent of foreign nations.

"We demand that the volume of circulating medium be speedily
increased to an amount sufficient to meet the demands of the
business population of this country and to restore the just
level of prices of labor and production.

"We denounce the sale of bonds and the increase of the public
interest-bearing bond debt made by the present administration
as unnecessary and without authority of law, and we demand
that no more bonds be issued except by specific act of
Congress.

"We demand such legislation as will prevent the demonetization
of the lawful money of the United States by private contract.

"We demand that the Government, in payment of its obligations,
shall use its option as to the kind of lawful money in which
they are to be paid, and we denounce the present and preceding
administrations for surrendering this option to the holders of
government obligations.

"We demand a graduated income tax, to the end that aggregated
wealth shall bear its just proportion of taxation, and we
denounce the recent decision of the Supreme Court relative to
the income-tax law as a misinterpretation of the Constitution
and an invasion of the rightful powers of Congress over the
subject of taxation.

"We demand that postal savings banks be established by the
Government for the safe deposit of the savings of the people
and to facilitate exchange.

"Transportation being a means of exchange and a public
necessity, the Government should own and operate the railroads
in the interest of the people and on non-partisan basis, to
the end that all may be accorded the same treatment in
transportation, and that the tyranny and political power now
exercised by the great railroad corporations, which result in
the impairment if not the destruction of the political rights
and personal liberties of the citizens, may be destroyed. Such
ownership is to be accomplished gradually, in a manner
consistent with sound public policy.

{570}

"The interest of the United States in the public highways
built with public moneys and the proceeds of extensive grants
of land to the Pacific railroads should never be alienated,
mortgaged, or sold, but guarded and protected for the general
welfare as provided by the laws organizing such railroads. The
foreclosure of existing liens of the United States on these
roads should at once follow default in the payment of the debt
of the companies, and at the foreclosure sales of said roads
the Government should purchase the same if it becomes
necessary to protect its interests therein, or if they can be
purchased at a reasonable price; and the Government should
operate said railroads as public highways for the benefit of
the whole and not in the interest of the few, under suitable
provisions for protection of life and property, giving to all
transportation interests and privileges and equal rates for
fares and freight.

"We denounce the present infamous schemes for refunding those
debts and demand that the laws now applicable thereto be
executed and administered according to their true intent and
spirit.

"The telegraph, like the post-office system, being a necessity
for the transmission of news, should be owned and operated by
the Government in the interest of the people.

"The true policy demands that the National and State
legislation shall be such as will ultimately enable every
prudent and industrious citizen to secure a home, and
therefore the land should not be monopolized for speculative
purposes.

"All land now held by railroads and other corporations in
excess of their actual needs should by lawful means be
reclaimed by the Government and held for actual settlers only,
and private land monopoly, as well as alien ownership, should
be prohibited.

"We condemn the frauds by which the land grant to the Pacific
Railroad Companies have, through the connivance of the
Interior Department, robbed multitudes of bona fide settlers
of their homes and miners of their claims, and we demand
legislation by Congress which will enforce the exemption of
mineral land from such grants after as well as before patent.

"We demand that bona fide settlers on all public lands be
granted free homes, as provided in the National homestead law,
and that no exception be made in the case of Indian
reservations when opened for settlement, and that all lands
not now patented come under this demand.

"We favor a system of direct legislation through the
initiative and referendum under proper constitutional
safeguards.

"We demand the election of President, Vice-President, and
United States Senators by a direct vote of the people.

"We tender to the patriotic people of Cuba our deepest
sympathy in their heroic struggle for political freedom and
independence, and we believe the time has come when the United
States, the great Republic of the world, should recognize that
Cuba is and of right ought to be a free and independent State.

"We favor home rule in the Territories and the District of
Columbia and the early admission of the Territories as States.

"All public salaries should be made to correspond to the price
of labor and its products.

"In times of great industrial depression idle labor should be
employed on public works as far as practicable.

"The arbitrary course of the courts in assuming to imprison
citizens for indirect contempt and ruling by injunction should
be prevented by proper legislation.

"We favor just pensions for our disabled Union soldiers.

"Believing that the elective franchise and untrammelled ballot
are essential to a government of, for, and by the people, the
People's Party condemn the wholesale system of
disfranchisement adopted in some States as unrepublican and
undemocratic, and we declare it to be the duty of the several
State legislatures to take such action as will secure a full,
free, and fair ballot and an honest count.

"While the foregoing propositions constitute the platform upon
which our party stands, and for the vindication of which its
organization will be maintained, we recognize that the great
and pressing issue of the pending campaign, upon which the
present Presidential election will turn, is the financial
question, and upon this great and specific issue between the
parties we cordially invite the aid and co-operation of all
organizations and citizens agreeing with us upon this vital
question."

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 1896.
National Democratic Platform and Nominations.

An extensive revolt in the Democratic Party against the
declarations and the action of the party convention at Chicago
had been quickly made manifest, and steps were soon taken
towards giving it an organized form. These led to the
assembling of a convention of delegates at Indianapolis, on
the 2d and 3d of September, which, in the name of the
"National Democratic Party," repudiated the platform and the
candidates put forward at Chicago, and branded them as false
to the historic party name which they assumed. General John M.
Palmer, of Illinois, was put in nomination for President, and
General Simon Bolivar Buckner, of Kentucky, for Vice
President, of the United States, and a declaration of
Democratic principles adopted, the fundamental passages of
which are quoted in the following:

"This convention has assembled to uphold the principles upon
which depend the honor and welfare of the American people, in
order that democrats throughout the Union may unite their
patriotic efforts to avert disaster from their country and
ruin from their party.

"The democratic party is pledged to equal and exact justice to
all men of every creed and condition; to the largest freedom
of the individual consistent with good government; to the
preservation of the federal government in its constitutional
vigor, and to the support of the states in all their just
rights; to economy in the public expenditures; to the
maintenance of the public faith and sound money; and it is
opposed to paternalism and all class legislation. The
declarations of the Chicago convention attack individual
freedom, the right of private contract, the independence of
the judiciary, and the authority of the president to enforce
federal laws. They advocate a reckless attempt to increase the
price of silver by legislation, to the debasement of our
monetary standard; and threaten unlimited issues of paper
money by the government.
{571}
They abandon for republican allies the democratic cause of
tariff reform, to court favor of protectionists to their
fiscal heresy. In view of these and other grave departures
from democratic principles, we cannot support the candidates
of that convention, nor be bound by its acts. The democratic
party has survived defeats, but could not survive a victory
won in behalf of the doctrine and policy proclaimed in its
name at Chicago.

"The conditions, however, which made possible such utterances
from a national convention, are the direct result of class
legislation by the republican party. It still proclaims, as it
has for years, the power and duty of government to raise and
maintain prices by law, and it proposes no remedy for existing
evils except oppressive and unjust taxation. … The demand of
the republican party for an increase in tariff taxation has
its pretext in the deficiency of the revenue, which has its
causes in the stagnation of trade and reduced consumption, due
entirely to the loss of confidence that has followed the
populist threat of free coinage and depreciation of our money,
and the republican practice of extravagant appropriations beyond
the needs of good government. We arraign and condemn the
populistic conventions of Chicago and St. Louis for their
cooperation with the republican party in creating these
conditions, which are pleaded in justification of a heavy
increase of the burdens of the people by a further resort to
protection. We therefore denounce protection and its ally,
free coinage of silver, as schemes for the personal profit of
a few at the expense of the masses; and oppose the two parties
which stand for these schemes as hostile to the people of the
republic, whose food and shelter, comfort and prosperity are
attacked by higher taxes and depreciated money. In fine, we
reaffirm the historic democratic doctrine of tariff for
revenue only. …

"The experience of mankind has shown that, by reason of their
natural qualities, gold is the necessary money of the large
affairs of commerce and business, while silver is conveniently
adapted to minor transactions, and the most beneficial use of
both together can be insured only by the adoption of the
former as a standard of monetary measure, and the maintenance
of silver at a parity with gold by its limited coinage under
suitable safeguards of law. Thus the largest possible
employment of both metals is gained with a value universally
accepted throughout the world, which constitutes the only
practical bimetallic currency, assuring the most stable
standard, and especially the best and safest money for all who
earn their livelihood by labor or the produce of husbandry. They
cannot suffer when paid in the best money known to man, but
are the peculiar and most defenceless victims of a debased and
fluctuating currency, which offers continual profits to the
money changer at their cost.

"Realizing these truths demonstrated by long and public
inconvenience and loss, the democratic party, in the interests
of the masses and of equal justice to all, practically
established by the legislation of 1834 and 1853 the gold
standard of monetary measurement, and likewise entirely
divorced the government from banking and currency issues. To
this long-established democratic policy we adhere, and insist
upon the maintenance of the gold standard, and of the parity
therewith of every dollar issued by the government, and are
firmly opposed to the free and unlimited coinage of silver and
to the compulsory purchase of silver bullion. But we denounce
also the further maintenance of the present costly patchwork
system of national paper currency as a constant source of
injury and peril. We assert the necessity of such intelligent
currency reform as will confine the government to its
legitimate functions, completely separated from the banking
business, and afford to all sections of our country uniform,
safe, and elastic bank currency under governmental
supervision, measured in volume by the needs of business.