The following resolution, offered by Edwin Petersilea, of the Oshkosh Standard, and ably seconded by M. H. Barnum, of the Wausau Torch of Liberty, was enthusiastically received, and adopted with prolonged applause:

RESOLVED: That the name of Hon. Edward P. Allis be presented to the Greenback-Labor Convention at Chicago, June 9th, as Wisconsin's candidate for President.

A full complement of twenty delegates was chosen to attend the National Convention at Chicago, on June 9, and an Electoral Ticket was also selected.

The Chicago Convention, which passed into history as the "Greenback National Convention," was largely attended and gathered together many new political elements, including women. The call invited all classes of men and women to join in the movement for changes in the laws, especially those respecting finance and labor. There were eight women among the delegates, and Susan B. Anthony, by invitation, addressed the convention. Dennis Kearney, the "Sand Lot" orator, of San Francisco, was a feature, and was put into leading strings by making him sergeant-at-arms.

A split in the party that had been created largely through the annoying activities of "Brick" Pomeroy, was healed, and the delegates to his rival or "Rump" Convention, took seats in the Exposition Building with the regular and larger body.

The Milwaukee Sentinel's report, and others, called the Convention "The Rag Baby Crowd," but the Chicago Inter Ocean, which was edited by William Penn Nixon, had strong Greenback sympathies, and it reported the Convention very fully. It said that "there was an aspect of strong intelligence, the Convention being one of respectability in the general, superior to the character the enemies of the movement are accustomed to portray for its adherents."

The Committee on Credentials reported 617 regular delegates and there were about 244 others added, including the bolting "Farewell Hall" faction, and Socialists, who were also invited to seats.

The Convention on the last day, when nominations were made, got into a state of much excitement and the closing session lasted all night, final adjournment coming at 6:45 A. M. June 12. The ballot for a candidate for President did not begin until 4:10 A. M. No newspaper report, of a number examined, both in Chicago and Wisconsin, makes mention of the presentation to the Convention of several of the candidates who, Mr. Allis among them, received votes.

*There were seven candidates in all, and according to McKee's publication, previously referred to, the nominating ballot was as follows:

Candidates,

James B. Weaver, of Iowa,

Hendrick P. Wright, of Pennsylvania,

Stephen D. Dillaye, of New York,

Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, Solon Chase, of Maine,

Edward P. Allis, of Wisconsin,

Alexander Campbell, of Illinois,

Votes

2242

1261⁄2

119

95

89

41

21

General Weaver, then a member of Congress, was nominated, and Mr. Allis was not the "tail ender." It still stands to his credit that he had the solid vote of his own State Delegation and received twenty one votes, from other states. But one other Wisconsin man, *Gen. Edward S. Bragg, ever received votes for President, in a National Convention of any party, from outside his State, and but two others, Gen. Edward S. Bragg and Edward C. Wall ever had the solid vote of a Wisconsin Delegation for a nomination to the presidency.

At this time the official figures gave the National, or Greenback Party, fourteen members of the House of Representatives, so in many states they were a very important factor.

It was a matter of note that a Wisconsin man was sufficiently prominent, at the zenith of this large National movement, to be one of seven to receive votes for President of the United States, and this too when he was anything but a self-assertive candidate.

Under the cry of "good times" the Republicans made an aggressive campaign for Garfield, and while the Greenback vote in the Nation exceeded 300,000, over three per cent of the total vote, it was not what the successful combination of 1878, and the State campaigns of 1879, had led the hopeful leaders to expect. In Wisconsin Weaver polled but 7,980 votes, less than a third of the vote polled by Mr. Allis, for Governor, in 1877.

"Application to the Librarian of Congress and dilligent search of newspaper files in Chicago and Wisconsin, fail to discover a detailed statement of this vote, by states, so it is impossible to tell whence Mr. Allis's 21 votes from outside Wisconsin, came.

*Bragg had 1242 votes for President in the Gold Democratic National Convention of 1896.

59

But the Greenback Movement was not dead and Mr. Allis, a year later, (1881) was still so faithful to it, that he once more accepted, under protest, the nomination for Governor, though fully aware of its hopelessness. But a strong appeal was made to him by the leaders to give the party the help of his leadership and he was not one to be daunted by apparently overwhelming odds.

Robert Schilling, who had, by this time, become a resident of Milwaukee, was Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions at the State Convention at Watertown, which urged this nomination upon Mr. Allis, and the Platform, which was unique, and politically, very ingenious, he claims to have drawn. It was as follows:

The National Party of Wisconsin, believing that a bonded debt is a system of slavery, and that all bonds should be paid and no more issued; believing that there is no difference in principle between the Republican and Democratic Parties, so-called, both being committed and subservient to the baneful influences of monopolies, whether of money, railroads, telegraphs, land or any other description,-reaffirms the Platform of the National Convention adopted at Chicago June 9, 1880, and submits to the people of the State these extracts from the writings of eminent persons as its declaration of principles:

1. Money is a creation of law.-Artistotle.

2. Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration.-Abraham Lincoln.

3. The great interest of this country, the producing cause of all its prosperity is labor, labor, labor! The Government was made to encourage and protect this industry and give it security. To this very end, with this object in view, power was given to Congress over the currency and over the money system of the country.-Daniel Webster.

4. Bank paper must be suppressed and the circulation restored to the Nation to whom it belongs.-Thomas Jefferson.

5. The experience of the present panic has proven that our currency, based as it is upon the credit of the Nation, is the best money the world ever saw.-U. S. Grant.

6. We believe that the issue of the currency should be commensurate with the industrial and commercial interest of the people.-Ohio Republican Platform, 1868.

7. One currency for the Government and the people; the laborer and the office-holder; the pensioner and the soldier; the producer and the bond-holder.-Democratic National Platform, 1868.

8. The bond-holder who refuses to take the same kind of money for his bonds that he paid for them is a repudiator and extortioner.— John Sherman.

9. It would be an act of folly on our part after having sold these bonds, at an average of sixty cents on the dollar, now to make a new con

tract for the benefit of the holder, and would be an indirect violation of at least four statutes.-Oliver P. Morton.

10. The three great civilizers, the dollar, the telegraph, and the locomotive, should be the intelligent servants and not the greedy and brutal masters of the people.-E. P. Allis.

Resolved, That we recognize in the attempted assassination of President Garfield a natural result of the spoils system in American politics and therefore demand that all public officers as far as possible, should be elected by a direct vote of the people.

Resolved, That suffrage is an inherent right for both men and women, and should not be abridged except for crime or mental incapacity.

Resolved, That the $36,000,000 now loaned to the National Banks be immediately called in, and the amount applied to the payment of the National Debt.

The vote cast for this ticket was less than that cast for General Weaver the year previous. Mr. Allis got 7002 votes, but little more than one fourth of his own vote in 1877. In 1882 there were seven Greenback candidates for Congress in the field, in Wisconsin, but one of whom received as high as 1000 votes. Geo. B. Goodwin, a former Greenbacker, got 1922 votes as a Trades Assembly candidate, in Milwaukee, but the Greenback strength was fast waning. By 1884, Gen. Butler, as the People's Party candidate for President, got only 4598 votes in Wisconsin, and Col. Utley, for Governor, 4274. The party then rapidly disintegrated and its members drifted to other political alliances. Mr. Allis and many others who had been leaders, returned to the Republican Party.

The Greenback Movement, as has been pointed out, was in advance of its time, in many respects, but it had within it many elements of progress. Except its chief financial proposition as to greenback currency, which was impractical and helped to obscure and discredit its other and better proposals, most of the measures advocated, have since been, in whole or in part, appropriated by the Republican Party and incorporated into statute law.

One feature of Greenback Platforms was the demand that silver be remonetized to make amends for "the crime of '73." This Movement also made the earliest demand for the free coinage of silver, which, as has been previously stated, first appeared in the National Greenback Platform of 1880, on which, General Weaver ran for President, which demanded the abolition of National Banks and" the unlimited coinage of silver, as well as gold." The silver legislation had

61

been pointed to by the Greenbackers, from the outset, as an important factor in the contraction of the currency, which they deplored, and thereafter, the subject was up, with practical constancy, until the Bryan Democracy made it their "paramount" National issue in 1896.

In 1888, because the Democrats had repealed the Sherman silver purchase law, the Republican National Platform upon which Benjamin Harrison was elected, condemned the Democratic administration of Grover Cleveland, for its "efforts to demonetize silver," illustrating how partisan political opportunists grasp at any chance to criticise their political opponents, regardless of consistency. Eight years later the Cleveland Gold Democrats saved these same critics from defeat by Bryan.

In 1896, three years after another panic, the Bryan Platform declared "that the act of 1873 demonetizing silver *** has resulted in the appreciation of gold and a *** fall in the prices of commodities purchased by the people *** the enrichment of the money lending class *** the prostration and improverishment of the people." This platform opposed the issue of Government Bonds, and declared against National Banks in terms that sounded very like the demands of the Greenbackers twenty years earlier.

Mr. Bryan captured the organization of the Democratic Party. Fusion with Populists and Silver Republicans, was affected in several states, and although defeated, he polled 6,287,352 of the 13,952,179 votes cast in that campaign.

If the Greenback movement had not been attempted when war prejudices were still so strong that the cry; "Don't help the Democrats!" was enough to drive a host whose prejudices were stronger than their principles, back into the Republican fold, the "Greenback Idea" might have become more formidable in the eighties, than the Free Silver Idea, its descendant, was in 1896. Yet, but for the revolt of the Gold Democrats in 1896, Bryan would have been elected. That movement not only checked and disheartened his followers but it aroused the frightened Republicans into effective action, and candidate McKinley learned to pronounce the word "gold" which he had previously been unable to utter.

Even now, there are many who believe that the unusual production of gold, since 1896, is the only thing that has

warded off the calamities predicted for the country if silver coinage was not made free and unlimited, at an arbitrary ratio of "16 to 1." It is a fact that the value of the world's gold production rose from $202,251,600 in 1896, to $400,342,100 in 1906, nearly 100 per cent in ten years, and year by year, since, gold production increases. Even President Taft has attributed the increase in the cost of living to the depreciation in the value of our gold money.

Within recent years we have had many financial writers, bankers and publicists among them, who adopt "the quantitive theory of money," and take the ground that the rise in prices witnessed in recent years, is due to the cheapening of gold consequent upon this large increase in the world's supply.

The financial problem is, therefore, still with us, and the "Bankers' Panic" of 1907, like its predecessors, has brought all of the old, as well as new doctors, into the case. We are still drifting without a financial system that gives assurance of automatic adaptability to the needs of business under any serious stress of hard times. We are still critics of our banks, and the next panic, like the last, will probably find us still unprepared, and without either a stable currency or an efficient banking system.

THE END.

63