had a being. I have advocated a cause more unpopular than the silver cause. I have stood for the doctrine of free men, free homes and free speech. I am used to detraction; I am used to abuse and I have had it heaped upon me without stint.

When the Republican party was organized I was there. It has never had a national candidate since it was organized that my voice has not been raised in his support. It has never had a great principle enunciated in its platform that has not had my approbation, until now. With its distinguished leaders, its distinguished men of forty years, I have been in close communion and close friendship. I have shared in its honors and in its few defeats and disasters. Do you think that we can sever our connection with a party like this unless it be as matter of duty-a duty not to our respective States only, but a duty to all people of this great land?

Mr. President, there are few men in the Republican party who have been honored more than I have by the people of the State in which they live. There are few men in this convention or anywhere else who have been longer connected with this organization than I have been. There are few men in it who have been more active, and none in it, no, not one, who have been more attached to the great principles of this party than I have been; and I cannot go out of it without heart burnings and a feeling that no man can appreciate who has not endured it. And yet I cannot, before my country and my God, agree to that provision that shall put upon this country a gold standard, and I will not.

And I do not care what may be the result. If it takes me out of political life, I will go out with a feeling that at least I maintained my consistency and my manhood, and that my conscience is clear and that my country will have no right to find fault with me.

I beg your pardon for saying things so personal, but yet if a personal act that to some implies perfidy and dishonor is about to be taken, I think it but just to myself and my associates that I should proclaim to you that we take this step, not in anger, not in pique, not because we dislike the nominee, prospectively or otherwise, but because our consciences require as honest men that we should make this sacrifice-for sacrifice we feel that it is.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your kind attention. Retiring from you as I do, perhaps, never again to have an opportunity of addressing a Republican convention, I cannot do so without saying that, after all, I have in my heart a hope-nay, I have an expectation-that better counsels will prevail, and that if you should be foolish enough to adopt this platform and force us to leave the Republican party, better counsels will prevail and, ultimately, on a true Republican platform, sustaining Republican principles, I may have the inestimable privilege of again addressing you.

The substitute was voted down by a vote of about ten to one, and the platform submitted by the majority of the committee was adopted by substantially the same vote.

As soon as the result was announced, Senator Teller and those who had acted with him left the convention hall, cheered by those in sympathy with them, and hissed by a few opponents.

Hon. William McKinley, of Ohio, was then nominated as the Republican candidate for the presidency, and Hon. Garrett A. Hobart, of New Jersey, for the vice-presidency.

I was an interested spectator at the convention. Occupying a chair in the space reserved for the press, I sent to the Omaha WorldHerald comments upon the important incidents of the convention. As soon as the platform was adopted, I wired the paper the following:

Money Plank Suggested.

I suggest the following silver plank for the Chicago convention: We are unalterably opposed to the single gold standard and demand the immediate restoration of the free and unlimited coinage of gold and silver at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth. We believe that the standard silver dollar should be a full legal tender, equally with gold coin, for all debts, public and private, and we favor such legislation as is necessary to prevent the demonetization of any kind of legal tender money by private contract. We further insist that all Government obligations should be payable in either gold or silver, at the option of the Government.

This suggestion was published in the World-Herald at the time. Later, at the Chicago convention, I suggested that the words "for the future," be added in the sentence in regard to gold contracts in order to show that we did not mean to interfere with contracts already in existence.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE

THE SILVER REPUBLICANS.

HE Silver Republicans met soon after leaving the convention hall and laid plans for future action. On the 19th of June an address, the writing of which devolved largely upon Senator Cannon, was issued, setting forth the reasons which led the Silver Republicans to leave their party. This address can hardly be surpassed in strength and terseness. It reads as follows:

Address of Silver Republicans.

Obeying the call of duty, and justified by the common citizenship of this Republic, we address this communication to the people and the forthcoming conventions of the United States. In doing so we claim no authority or right other than that which belongs to every man to express personal conviction; but we respectfully solicit the co-operation of all who believe that the time has come for a return to the simpler and more direct method of naming men for national service than has been obtained in recent years.

Political party organization is necessary because without it the individual voter is dumb; but the party is only the means, not the end; it is the voice and not the sense. As the world advances in this wonderful epoch of intellectual development and physical improvement there is a constant requirement for better things. The individual feels that requirement and heeds it, or he fails in life's endeavor. Parties must also obey the same law. It follows, therefore, that the moment a party shall choose to stand still or to retrogress it is no longer efficient to achieve the end to which the people are necessarily destined. There is no sanctity in mere party name; and the mark of decay is set on individual strength in a nation, when the absolute rule of political organization coerces men from the truth for the sake of expediency and establishes insincere submission to partisan rule for the sake of power.

Recognizing the value and the splendid achievements of political parties in this country, as elsewhere, we are yet constrained to believe that for more than twenty years no one of them has been entirely sufficient for the needs of the people. The great trend to better things, resting in the hearts and purposes of all men, has been stayed during the latter part of this generation by the failure of parties to express in their achievements the highest hope and aspiration of the mass of the people who constitute the parties. And there has been growing in this country-swelling with each recurrence of national election-a great mass of independent thinkers and voters, which, failing within itself to control, has gravitated between the two great parties. Since 1872 (excepting possibly the election of 1876) the pendulum has swung from side to side with each four years. In 1872 the Republican party elected

the President; in 1876 the Democracy claimed the election; in 1880 the Republicans elected; in 1884 the Democrats elected; in 1888 the Republicans elected; in 1892 the Democrats elected; in 1896 (until within a few weeks) it has been conceded that the Republicans would elect. What has been the cause of this mighty oscillation of a mass which this year has probably obtained controlling proportions? Every man can answer to himself. If he has been an observer, if he has had interests that were affected, if he has felt a hope to see greater justice done and has seen that hope blasted, he knows that the general dissatisfaction has arisen from the fact that party promises made were broken to the people by party performance; he knows that so soon as the election was over and successful candidates installed they became the servitors of the party and the advocates of a narrow and non-progressive policy within which alone there seemed to be an assurance of selfish safety and partisan approval. During all this period we have lacked a great constructive administration. No new social truth has been put forward in an effective way. While in all the departments of physical life there have been developments and achievements of ease and comfort to the favored of mankind, in the still greater and more important domain of the social reform we have stood still or retrogressed.

It is not that the people have not felt the stirrings of determination, that this inaction has endured; but because of the rule of party which has largely controlled men in and out of office. It has become a source of reproach to any man that he should dare to renounce allegiance to organization. Men have been expected to submit their views to the dictation of conventions, although it is common knowledge that conventions have been swayed to views and declarations not the most approved by the mass of the people nor progressive for their welfare.

We do not arrogate to ourselves one iota more of intelligence, patriotism or courage than is possessed by any of our fellow citizens. But we feel that the time has come for the performance of a duty to the country; and for our part, though we shall stand alone, we will make an endeavor in the direction of that duty. Parties may outlive their usefulness; the truth never becomes obsolete. Every generation of freemen has the right to affirm the truths of past knowledge and present acquirement; and if the enforcement of these truths shall make necessary a departure from party organization, the people have this right and will exercise it until old parties shall return to the truth or new parties shall be created to effect it into law.

If the voices which have sounded to us from every State in this Union are an indication of the real feeling, this year is the appointed time for the people to assert themselves, through such mediums as may give best promise of the achievement of justice. But whether we are mistaken or not concerning the general sentiment in the United States, we have not mistaken our own duty in withdrawing from the Republican convention, feeling that it would be better to be right and with the minority in apparent defeat than to be wrong with the majority in apparent triumph.

We hold that in the great work of social evolution in this country, monetary reform stands as the first requisite. Without it there can no longer be safety or general prosperity. No policy, however promising of good results, can take its

place. Continuation during the next four years upon the present financial system will bring down upon the American people that cloud of impending evil, to avert which should be the first thought of statesmen and the first prayer of patriots. Our very institutions are at stake. Today, with the rapidly increasing population, with widely swelling demands, the basis of our money is relatively contracting; and the people are passing into a servitude all the more dangerous because it is not physically apparent. The nation itself, as to other nations, is losing the sturdy courage which could make it defiant in the face of injustice and international wrong. From the farmer and the tradesman to the Government there is apparent the same shrinking from giving offense, lest the vengeance of some offended financial power shall descend. The business man submits some portion of his judgment and his will, and the nation submits some portion of its international right lest some mighty foreign creditor shall make destructive demands. Where will all this end if the people shall decline to assert themselves? Where will it end if the older parties in their determination to maintain themselves in power for power's sake alone shall refuse to recognize the right and the hope of humanity?

This country can not much longer exist free and independent against all the rest of the world, nor can its people much longer be free in the noblest sense of the term if the United States, a debtor nation, shall follow a policy dictated by creditor nations. We produce all of the necessaries of life. Other nations consume our product. In the race for existence it is a constant struggle between producer and consumer. Our present system of money deliberately submits to the desire and the profit of creditor nations, leaving us in the mass, and as individuals, a prey to the money gathering and the deadly cheapening of the old world. As the debt increases on the masses of the nation toward creditors abroad, the price of human production on the farm and in the workshop is decreased with appalling rapidity, exacting more and more toil from our citizens to meet the given demand, and holding over their heads a threat of the day when confiscation to meet their obligations will leave them bare and defenseless. The only remedy is to stop falling prices-the deadliest curse of national life. Prices never will cease falling under the single gold standard.

The restoration of bimetallism by this country will double the basis of our money system-in time it will double the stock of primary money of the world-will stop falling prices and steadily elevate them until they will regain their normal relation to the volume of debts and credits in the world. Bimetallism will help to bring about the great hope of every social reformer, every believer in the advancement of the race, who realize that the instability of prices has been the deadly foe of our toilers and the servant of the foreign interest gatherer. Bimetallism will help to bring the time when a certain expenditure of human toil will produce a certain financial result. Who among the great masses of our people in the United States but feels that his lot would be made better, his aspiration take new wings, if he could know in the performance of his labor what would be the price of his product?

Is not this purpose worth the attention of the people as individuals, and worth the attention of political conventions yet to be held in this year 1896? Is not this so great an end that all who believe in the possibility of attaining it by the means proposed can yield something of their partisanship both in con