history. While thus differing in opinion, they unite in asserting that the gold standard must be maintained until foreign countries shall signify their willingness that the American people shall exercise the rights of freemen and create a financial system of their own. If we overlook the humiliation and degradation we must feel on account of such a declaration of financial dependency, we may well inquire when the consent of the leading commercial nations will be obtained.

No one who has read the proceedings of the three international monetary conferences that have already been held, or who has examined the impracticable propositions presented at those conferences, can for a moment believe that any international bimetallic agreement can ever be made with the consent of all "the leading commercial nations of the world." When will Great Britain, controlled as she is and ever will be by the creditor classes, who collects vast sums of money for interest due her and her citizens, who buys of us annually many more millions than she sells to us, and whose interest it is to make the pound sterling purchase as much of our products as possible, consent that we shall be financially independent as we are supposed to be politically independent? When did the creditor classes of Great Britain ever give up or in any way yield an advantage such as they now possess through the maintenance of the gold standard? There is no hope for international bimetallism until the United States shall establish bimetallism for itself, and when that is done, international bimetallism may be secured without the consent of Great Britain. The United States on all other subjects of legislation acts independently of any other nation on earth. By what process of reasoning is its right, authority or ability to legislate upon this, the most important subject with which it has to deal, questioned or denied?

With a nation equal in wealth and power to one-fourth of the world, it is cowardly to say that we must ask the permission of Great Britain to establish and maintain a financial policy of our own. Believing, as we do, that a return to the monetary system especially recognized in the Constitution and completely provided for by law from 1792 till 1873, affords the only ground of hope for the betterment of the distressed condition of all the classes except those who live by the increment that money loaned gives to those who loan it, we appeal to all classes to rally to the support of the only candidates whose success indicates any hope of relief.

Let the merchant and business man whose dwindling and lessened profits have, despite his care and economy, brought him face to face with prospective bankruptcy and ruin, the professional man, whose best efforts scarcely afford him compensation for his labor alone, the farmer, the continually falling prices of whose products have left him no returns for capital invested and work performed, and last but not least, let the grand army of laboring men so called, the artisan, the mechanic, and the miner, and every one who depends upon his daily labor for his daily bread, look about him and observe the great number of those who vainly seek for a chance to workupon the great army of enforced idlers-and one and all resolve to try, not an experiment (for bimetallism is not an experiment), but rather a return to a policy that throughout the vicissitudes of our nation's infancy, through the internecine struggle of its manhood kept us a great, free and prosperous

nation, in which labor was not only respected and employed, but was so compensated that want and distress, such as now weigh upon us, were unknown. Let the lesson of history, too recent and too plain to be gainsaid or denied, be heeded, and let there be no fear that a system that so wonderfully protected labor, developed business enterprise and secured to the nation a contented and prosperous people in the past, will do aught but bring to us a return of like prosperity, the prediction of disaster of our opponents to the contrary notwithstanding.

In Mr. Bryan the Chicago convention placed at the head of its ticket a gentleman of exceptional ability and of high character. No man of his age was better known throughout the United States than he. A member of Congress for four years, he commanded the admiration and respect of all his associates in that body as a scholarly statesman and profound thinker. No man had ever assailed his character or in any way questioned his integrity or moral worth. His character is a fit example for the young men of this country. He has shown in all his public utterances that he loves his country and his countrymen, and that he sympathizes with them in their distress. He has also shown that he believed the financial system which makes gold the standard of value was in a great degree the cause of the depression and financial distress prevalent throughout the land; that the condition now existing will continue while the present monetary system lasts, and that he would fain return to the use of both gold and silver as they were used prior to 1873, and he has proposed such a change of the financial system by the usual constitutional methods.

Such was the character and such the political opinions of the candidate known to his countrymen, who by their representatives in convention, selected from every State in the Union, put him in nomination for the highest office within the gift of the American people.

This is a critical period in our national history. Our industrial and financial independence of other nations and peoples is involved in this campaign, and we firmly believe there will be no return of prosperity until we shall have changed our financial system so as to restore the bimetallic system established by the fathers of the Republic; and so believing, we urge all friends of gold and silver as standard money and the opponents of a single gold standard to give to Mr. Bryan and Mr. Sewall their hearty support. In advising this course we do not consider it necessary that they shall abandon or surrender their political views on other questions.

Profoundly impressed with the importance of the issues of this campaign, for ourselves and our associates we respectfully submit the foregoing to the candid consideration of the American people.

CHAPTER IX.

THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION.

N pursuance of a call issued by the Bimetallic Democratic National

Committee, the leading silver Democrats met at the Sherman House in Chicago on June 30th, for the purpose of deciding upon the course to be pursued in the National Convention. All were agreed that it was both wise and necessary for the silver Democrats to secure the temporary organization and control the convention at every step. It was generally understood that the National Committee, having a majority against silver, would recommend as temporary chairman some one hostile to bimetallism and at the conference it was decided to urge the minority. of the committee to move to substitute the name of a silver Democrat for the name to be suggested by the majority of the committee. When the convention was called to order this plan was carried out. The committee, through its chairman, Hon. William F. Harrity, recommended Senator David B. Hill, of New York, as temporary chairman, while Hon. Henry D. Clayton, of Alabama, proposed the name of Senator John W. Daniel, of Virginia, and moved that his name be substituted for the name of Senator Hill. Then followed a discussion between the friends of the two candidates, the gold Democrats insisting that it was contrary to precedent and discourteous to the committee to reject its recommendation, while the silver Democrats asserted that the committee should have respected the wishes of the convention, whose servant it was.

As the National Committee had seated the gold delegation from Nebraska, I was present during the temporary organization as a spectator only, and was rather amused at the apparent earnestness with which the gold men begged the convention not to humiliate them. by turning down their candidate; the very obvious answer to their argument being that they could have avoided humiliation by recognizing the right of the majority to rule. Upon roll call, the vote stood 556 for Daniel, and 349 for Hill.

On taking the chair, Senator Daniel paid a well-deserved compliment to Mr. Harrity, who had presided at a very trying time with perfect fairness and impartiality. I give Mr. Daniel's speech in full:

Mr. Daniel's Speech.

Mr. Chairman of the National Democratic Committee: In receiving from your hands this gavel as the temporary presiding officer of this convention, I beg leave to express a sentiment, which I am sure is unanimous, that no national convention was ever presided over with more ability or with more fairness than by yourself. I can express no better wish for myself than that I may be able in some feeble fashion to model my conduct by your model and to practice by your example.

Gentlemen: The high position to which you have chosen me is accepted with profound gratitude for the honor which it confers and with a keen sense of the responsibility which it entails upon me.

That responsibility I would be wholly inadequate to bear did I depend upon myself, but your gracious and sympathetic aid can make its yoke easy and its burden light. That aid I confidently invoke for the sake of the great cause under whose banner we have fought so many battles and which now demands our stanch devotion and loyal service.

I regret that my name should have been brought in even the most courteous competition with that of my distinguished friend the great Senator from New York, but he will readily recognize the fact as I do, that there is no personality in the preferment given me. He must know as we all do that it is solely due to the principle that this great majority of Democrats stands for and that I stand for with them; and that it is given, too, in the spirit of the instructions received by these representatives of the people from the people whom all Democrats bow to as the original and purest fountain of all power.

The birth of the Democratic party was coeval with the birth of the sovereignty of the people. It can never die until the Declaration of American Independence is forgotten, and that sovereignty is dethroned and extinguished.

As the majority of the convention is not personal in its aims, neither is it sectional. It begins with the sunrise in Maine and spreads into a sunburst in Louisiana and Texas. It stretches in unbroken line across the continent from Virginia and Georgia to California. It sends forth its pioneers from Plymouth Rock and waves the palmetto in South Carolina. It has its strongholds in Alabama and Mississippi and its outposts in Delaware and Minnesota, Florida and Oregon. It sticks like a tar heel in the old north State and writes 16 to 1 on the saddle bags of the Arkansas Traveler. It pours down its rivulets from the mountains of New Hampshire and West Virginia and makes a great lake in New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming and Idaho, Montana and Colorado. It stands guard around the National Capitol in the District of Columbia and taps at the door in far off Washington. It sweeps like a prairie fire over Iowa and Kansas and lights up the horizon in Nebraska. It marshals its massive battalions in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri.

Last but not least, when I see this grand array and think of the British gold standard that recently was unfurled over the ruins of Republican promises at St. Louis, I think, too, of the battle of New Orleans of which 'tis said

There stood John Bull in martial pomp,

But there was old Kentucky.

Brethren of the East there is no North, South, East or West in this uprising of the people for American emancipation from the conspiracy of European

kings led by Great Britain, which seeks to destroy one half of the money of the world, and to make American manufacturers, merchants, farmers and mechanics hewers of wood and drawers of water.

But there is one thing golden that let me commend to you. It is the golden rule to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remem ber the creed of Jefferson that absolute acquiescence in the will of the majority is the vital principle of the Republic, and Democrats as you have been, Democrats that you should be, acquiesce now in the will of this great majority of your fellow Democrats who only ask you to go with them as they have often gone with you.

Do not forget that for thirty years we have supported the men that you named for President-Seymour, Greeley, Tilden, Hancock and Cleveland. Do not forget that we have submitted graciously to your compromise platforms and to your repeated pledges for bimetallism and have patiently borne repeated disappointments as to their fulfillment.

Do not forget that even in the last national convention of 1892 you proclaimed yourselves to be in favor of the use of both gold and silver as the standard money of the country and for the coinage of both gold and silver without discrimination against either metal or charge for mintage, and that the only question left open was the ratio between the metals.

Do not forget that just four years ago in that same convention the New York delegation stood here solid and immovable for a candidate committed to the free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the ratio of 16 to 1; and that if we are for it still it is in some measure from your teachings.

That we owe you much is readily acknowledged and gratefully acknowledged, but are not our debts mutual and not one sided as to each other?

The Force bill, the McKinley bill and the Sherman law were the triplet progeny of the Republican party. The first was aimed not more at the South than at the great cities of the East, and chief among them at the great Democratic city of New York with its munificent patronage. It got its death blow in the Senate where there was not a single Democratic vote from New York and all New England. If you helped to save the South it also helped to save you, and neither the East nor the South could have saved itself had not those great American Republican Senators from the West, Teller and Wolcott, Stewart, Jones and Stanford, sunk partisanry in patriotism and come to the rescue of American institutions. No man can revive Force bills now in this glorious reconciled and reunited Republic. Our opponents themselves have abandoned them; there is none that can stand between the union of hearts and hands that Grant in his dying vision saw was coming on angels' wings to all the sons of our common country.

When Chicago dressed with flowers the Southern graves she buried sectionalism under a mountain of fragrance; and when the Southern soldiers cheered but yesterday the wounded hero of the North in Richmond, she answered back, let us have peace-peace and union and liberty forever.

As this majority of Democrats is not sectional neither is it for any privilege of class or for class legislation. The active business men of this country, its manufacturers, its merchants, its farmers, its sons of toil in counting room, factory, field and mine, know that a contraction of the currency sweeps away