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Who is Garret A Hobart ?

MRS. GARRET A. HOBART.

Mr. Hobart was born in Long Branch, N. J., 52 years ago, and is therefore one year younger than Mr. McKinley. He is a graduate of Rutgers College, and studied law in the town of Paterson, where he now lives. For thirty years, that is, since he was 22 years old,--he has practiced law as a member of the Paterson bar. He has rendered his state much service in both branches of the legislature, and has been at different times Speaker of the House and President of the State Senate. In the recent regeneration of New Jersey poli. tics and the rescue of the state government from a most corrupt and immoral control, Mr. Hobart has been one of the conspicuous leaders. He is a man of very considerable wealth, and is president of several local corporations in the nature of water companies, gas companies, street and suburban railways, and the like. He is also a member of the boards of directors

of a great many manufacturing companies, and several railroad corporations. He is said to be a man of more than usually agreeable personality, who is greatly respected by all those who know him. He is one of the three arbitrators for the Joint Traffic Association,-a fact which testifies to the high esteem in which rival railroad companies have held him both for his ability and judgment, and also for his rectitude and impartiality. Mrs. Hobart is the daughter of the late Mr. Socrates Tuttle, one of the foremost lawyers of New Jersey, in whose office Mr. Hobart as a young man studied for his profession. One of the fortunate circumstances of Mr. Hobart's nomination lies in the fact that there is undoubted sympathy and friendship between him and Mr. McKinley.

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The Vice-Presi

monize."

It has sometimes happened in the Redent Should "Har- publican National Conventions that the vice-presidential place on the ticket has been awarded to a defeated and disgruntled faction, as a means of making it more certain that this faction will not sulk in its tents through the campaign. Thus the New York delegation,-which is usually at the centre of such plotting and mischief-making as the circumstances of a convention will permit,-expects as a matter of course to be placated and brought into line by being allowed to name the second member of the ticket. The consequences of this method of completing the ticket have not always been fortunate for the country. The vice-president ought to be one of the closest of the president's advisers, and he ought to be upon such terms of good understanding with the administration that in case of the presi

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THE HOBART RESIDENCE, PATERSON, NEW JERSEY.

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LEADERS OF THE FREE-SILVER BOLT FROM THE ST. LOUIS CONVENTION.

dent's death there would be no likelihood of any marked change of policy or any re arrangement of the cabinet. An illustration lies near enough at hand. As matters have stood during the present administration, the death of President Cleveland might have precipitated the most overwhelming financial panic this country has ever experienced. While Mr. Cleveland has been doing battle for the gold standard,-with a firmness and boldness that his enemies recognize and admit as freely as his friends, not hesitating to emit issue after issue of gold bonds in pursuance of his policy, his whole cabinet working with him in the most aggressive fashion for the maintenance of gold payments,nobody has ever heard that Vice President Stevenson is in sympathy with the President. On the con trary, it has been generally understood that VicePresident Stevenson is in favor of the free coinage of silver.

A Case in Point.

Thus if, in any one of several emergencies which have arisen within the past two years, death had overtaken the President, nobody could have guessed the consequences. VicePresident Stevenson would have entered the White House, and in all likelihood the cabinet would have been promptly reconstructed. Congress having re fused specifically to authorize the issuance of bonds, it is easy to believe that Mr. Stevenson would have thought it neither lawful nor expedient that he should fall back upon an obsolete statute of twenty years ago which by accident remains unrepealed, and borrow gold to keep replenishing the shrinking redemption fund. He might easily enough have felt himself justified in instructing his new Secretary of the Treasury that silver dollars are full legal tender, and that they are "coin" within the mean

ing of those laws which make government notes and securities redeemable in lawful coin of the United States. Gold would under such circumstances probably have commanded a premium, and the situation would have presented many very difficult and perplexing aspects. Nothing, therefore, could be more ill-advised than the nomination for vice-president of a man whose views of public policy upon the most pressing issues of the day are not known to be in harmony with those of the candidate for the presidency. In the case of the selection of Mr. Garret A. Hobart it happens, fortunately, that there is a complete understanding and agreement between the two men nominated at St. Louis; and, as regards the money plank in particular, the one candidate will stand as unequivocally for the maintenance of the existing gold standard as will the other.

The Protection

There remains little to be said about Banner Flaunted the other planks of the St. Louis plat. High. form. It was to be taken for granted that the resolutions would arraign the Democratic Congress and the administration of Mr. Cleveland for the revenue deficiency and the increase in the bonded debt, and that the expression of allegiance to the policy of a protective tariff would be more unqualified than at any previous time No man who has observed the drift of politics will deny that never before since the party was founded has the Republican camp had so few free traders in it as this year. The platform also demands the restoration of the reciprocity treaties, and it is promised that sugar and wool shall have protection restored to them. Discriminating duties in favor of goods imported in American ships are advocated as a plan for the more rapid growth of our merchant marine.

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A Clear-Cut Foreign Policy.

VICE-PRESIDENT ADLAI E. STEVENSON,
From a new photograph.

The planks which deal with our foreign relations are by no means timid or of doubtful meaning. The Republican party now stands committed to the following propositions, which for brevity we condense, while retaining in general the phraseology of the platform:

1. The Hawaiian Islands should be controlled by the United States, and no foreign power should be permitted to interfere with them.

2. The Nicaragua Canal should be built, owned and operated by the United States.

3. By the purchase of the Danish Islands, we should secure a much needed naval station in the East Indies.

4. American citizens and American property in Armenia and elsewhere in Turkey must be absolutely protected at all hazards, and at any cost.

5. The United States has the right, in reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine, to respond to the appeals of any American state for friendly intervention in case of European encroachment.

6. We hopefully look forward to the eventual withdrawal of the European powers from this hemisphere.

7. [Touching the annexation of Canada], the ultimate union of all the English-speaking part of the continent by the full consent of its inhabitants is hopefully anticipated.

8. The government of Spain has lost control of Cuba, is unable to protect the property or lives of resident American citizens, and cannot comply with treaty obligations; and therefore the United States should actively use its influence and good offices to restore peace and give independence to the island.

These propositions are certainly definite; and. taken in connection with the proposed renewal of reciprocity treaties, they constitute a foreign policy that ought to keep the next Secretary of State sufficiently busy. Nothing is said anywhere in the platform about international arbitration.

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the party stands: "We there. fore favor the continued enlargement of the navy, and a complete system of harbor and seacoast defenses." The subject of immigration is dealt with as follows: "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." As to the reform of the civil service, the following plank is at once concise and satisfactory: "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." Other planks demand a free and unrestricted ballot, condemn lynching, favor a national board to arbitrate the sort of disputes that lead to railway strikes, and favor the pending homestead bill. Of those ambiguous platitudes which are so frequent in most American

political platforms only two can be found in this one. The first of these is a meaningless expression of sympathy" for all wise and legitimate efforts to lessen and prevent the evils of intemperance and promote morality." The other informs us that the Republican party is mindful of the rights and interests of women, and proceeds with a number of sentences which are merely silly and which carefully make no allusion to the suffrage question. The plat form as a whole is the most frank, straight-forward

Drawn for the Journal.

PRESIDENT CLEVELAND.

and well-constructed document of its kind that any great party in the United States has adopted for many years.

Admission

of Territories.

66

We have alluded to all its planks except one, which we have reserved for a little further comment, and which does not seem to us to be as honest and frank a statement of party policy as the rest of the platform. This plank deals with the admission of territories, and its first sentence sums it all up : 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." The remaining territories are not mentioned by name; but, as most of our readers know, they are New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma. These three territories are actively clamoring for admission, and all of them had expected to secure the boon at the hands of Congress during its recent session. If there is one thing more than anything else that the Republican party, as the situation now shapes itself, has good reason squarely and avowedly to oppose, it is the admission in the near future of these three territories. A careful reading of the sentence quoted above will show that the platform makers did not intend to give an open and candid expression of opinion on this subject.

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History.

Several years ago the Republican party, Some Recent believing itself under the practical necessity of admitting North and South Dakota and the territory of Washington, surprised the country by going further and admitting also Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. More recently, upon the urgent advice of leading Republican politicians, Utah has been admitted. It was believed that no matter how solidly Democratic the South might remain, and no matter how adverse might be the fortunes of the Republican party in the doubtful or variable states of the East, the Republican control of the Senate would be certainly assured for a long period of years by virtue of Republican success in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. But what has been the result of this piece of party policy upon the position of the Republican party itself? If it had not been for the representation of these new states in the United States Senate, Congress last winter would have passed the Dingley bill for the relief of the revenues, and the President would have been accorded authority to borrow gold on advantageous terms. These very states which were relied upon to perpetuate the Republican control of the Senate, are now promising to hold the balance of power in the Senate in such a way as to make it impossible for the Republicans to enact any monetary or revenue laws for some years to come, even though McKinley should be triumphantly elected and the House of Representatives should continue to have as large a Republican majority as it contains to-day.

The Bolt Led
by

Western Senators.

The bolt at the St. Louis convention, though headed by Senator Teller and the Colorado delegation, was actively managed by Senators Pettigrew of South Dakota, Dubois of Idaho, and Cannon of Utah. Whether their cause wins or fails in the November election, these gentlemen will remain for some time to come in their seats in the United States Senate; and they, with several other Western senators elected as Republicans standing shoulder to shoulder with them, and by a coalition with the group of Populist senators,-estimate that it will be entirely feasible for them as a silver group to hold the balance of power and obstruct legislation at least for several years to come. The prospect is not a pleasant one for those who like definite action in public affairs. Nevertheless every far-seeing man must recognize the fact that the peculiar structure of the United States Senate bids fair to deadlock all important legislation touching financial questions, at least through the remaining years of the present century. In view of the fact, then, that the admission of these sparsely populated territories is proving to be the most injurious policy ever adopted by the Republican party, so far as its own welfare is concerned, there can be no important reason why Republicans should be zealous for the immediate admission of Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona,

HON. WILLIAM C. WHITNEY, OF NEW YORK.

with the almost certain prospect of adding thereby six more anti-Republican, free-silver senators to the able group whose obstructive policy was so clearly disclosed last winter.

Free Silver and

Situation.

Until the Maryland and Minnesota the Democratic State Democratic conventions opposed the strongly running tide, the Western and Southern conventions had been declaring with such overwhelming majorities and such unmistakable enthusiasm for a free silver plank at the Chicago convention that it had begun to seem absolutely certain that the free silver men would not only find themselves with the simple majority needful to adopt a platform, but also with the requisite two thirds majority which the custom of National Democratic Conventions demands for the choice of the presidential nominee. The administration Democrats seemed to have lost their credit altogether. The Kentucky convention had followed the lead of Blackburn, repudiating Carlisle and gold; Secretary Hoke Smith had shown himself unable to influence the Georgia Democrats, Secretary J. Sterling Morton was similarly disregarded in his own State of Nebraska, Postmaster General Wilson had a like experience in West Virginia, and there seemed no chance to avert the adoption of a free-silver platform, and the nomination of a free-silver candidate at Chicago. On the 17th of June President Cleveland issued a strong appeal to the sound-money Democrats. He urged them to do their utmost to prevent the party from taking a position which he believed would lead it to defeat and to ruin. Hon. William C. Whitney, Ex-Secretary of the Navy, who was on the eve of sailing for Europe, changed his plans and announced his intention to throw himself into the struggle between the Democratic factions. Mr. Whitney is considered the most consummate manager and tactician in the Democratic party. It was due to his strategy that President Cleveland four years ago received the nomination at the hands of an obviously reluctant and unwilling party. But the situation is quite different this year, and at best it seems a very forlorn hope that Mr. Whitney proposes to lead, in the early days of this month, at Chicago. He refuses to be considered as a candidate for the Presidency; but it is not unlikely that if his efforts against silver should be successful, he would be obliged to accept a nomination on his own platform. Ex-Governor Pattison of Pennsylvania is perhaps the most available of all the other Eastern candidates whose names have been mentioned.

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