The tendency of increasing our exports and decreasing our imports will be, first, to set our spindles running, swell the number of paid operatives, increase their wages, thereby adding to the number and paying capacity of consumers, and thus enlarge our home market for all home products and manufactures, with prosperity in general as the result assured.

The tendency of increasing our exports and decreasing our imports will be, second, to establish a credit balance of trade for the United States. A credit balance of trade means that Europe has become our debtor and must settle with us in money. Europe's silver money is overvalued in her gold, compared with ours, by from three to seven cents on the dollar. The European merchant or banker will therefore make his trade settlements with us in gold more profitably by from three to seven per cent. than in his silver. With the instant that European trade settlements with the United States are made in gold, parity for our gold and silver money is established in the markets of the world.

Therewith, the 371.25 grains of pure silver in our silver dollar and the 23.22 grains of gold in our gold dollar become of exactly equal worth, as bullion, in New York.

Free and unlimited coinage for silver in the United States together with the present free and unlimited coinage for gold, will, thus, provide us an increasing aggregate of money. The increasing number of dollars cheapening the dollar, along with the increasing quantity of commodities cheapening the commodities, will tend to maintain prices when the commodities are in fair abundance. Producers obtaining then more dollars the more abundant their products, will be remunerated in some fair proportion to their toil. Our producers will be thus assured their fair share of the real wealth which they produce. This will tend to the better distribution and dissemination of wealth as against the present pernicious tendency to aggregate wealth in a few hands.

After the permanent organization had been completed a committee was appointed to confer with the Populist Convention, then in session in the same city.

On the second day of the convention little was done in the transaction of business, the convention being disposed to wait to consult further with the Populists. During the day'a speech was delivered by Congressman Charles A. Towne, of Minnesota. Mr. Towne gained a national reputation through a speech which he delivered in the House of Representatives on the 8th day of February, 1896. The speech was very widely circulated immediately after its delivery and still more extensively during the campaign. It treated with great force and clearness the subject of falling prices. The contest for permanent chairman of the Silver Convention lay between him and Mr. St. John, and when the latter was chosen the former was made permanent vice-chairman. Mr. Towne was present at the Republican National Convention, though not a delegate, and constantly conferred with the

silver Republicans. Throughout the campaign his services were in constant demand and his time wholly devoted to the success of bimetallism.

In addition to the speech of Mr. Towne, addresses were made by Judge Joseph Sheldon of Connecticut, a pioneer in the silver cause; Mrs. Helen M. Gougar of Indiana, who rendered most efficient service during the entire campaign, and ex-Governor John P. St. John of Kansas, also an able champion of bimetallism.

At the afternoon session on Thursday a poll was taken to determine the former party affiliations of the delegates present, and the result showed 526 who had been Republicans, 146 who had been Democrats, 49 who had been Populists, 9 who had been Prohibitionists, 9 who had been Independent, I who had been a Nationalist, and I who had been a Greenbacker.

On Friday Senator Stewart, of Nevada, was called for and delivered a speech in which he described the Chicago Convention as he witnessed it. A poll was taken to ascertain how many had seen military service, and it was learned that 196 had served in the Union army during the late war, 49 in the Confederate army, and 4 in the Mexican war.

Senator John P. Jones, of Nevada, chairman of the committee on Resolutions, presented the following platform, which was adopted by unanimous vote.

Silver Party Platform.

The National Silver party, in convention assembled, hereby adopts the following declaration of principles:

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 distinctly 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 16 to 1, 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, 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 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 interestbearing 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 into 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 centers.

In the effort to maintain the gold standard the country has within the past 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 products below the European and even below the Asiatic level, to enable us to sell in foreign markets, thus aggravating the very evils of which our people so bitterly complain, 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 overproduction-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 overproduction 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.

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 an American debtor may pay his just obligations in an honest standard and not in a standard that has appreciated one hundred per cent. above all the great staples of our country; and to the end, further, that silver standard countries may be deprived of the unjust advantage which they now enjoy in the difference in exchange between gold and silver-an advantage which tariff legislation alone cannot overcome.

We therefore appeal to the people of the United States to leave in abeyance for the moment all other questions, however important and even mo.

mentous 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 evoke the gracious favor of Divine Providence.

The nominations were next taken up. My name was presented by Hon. Edward C. Little, of Kansas, who spoke as follows:

Mr. Little's Speech.

By the gracious favor of our neighbor Nebraska, the State of Kansas is accorded the privilege of placing before this convention for your nomination, the next President of the United States. A long generation ago, the twin Territories of Kansas and Nebraska were cast adrift upon the waves of politics, to return to a redeemed and regenerated nation, the bread of human freedom on the waters of human life. In that great epoch Kansas stood first. Her proud history is written yonder in your stars. Nebraska's day and Nebraska's man have come. The ark of the covenant of human freedom which John Brown of Osawatomie pitched at the foot of Mount Oread, we now resign to the Valley of the Platte. Again the doors of the nation's theater are open. The curtain rises and Nebraska takes the stage. The scene has shifted, gentlemen, from the historic, but cabined, cribbed and confined walls of Faneuil Hall, to that vaster arena in which the Father of Waters rolls unfettered to the sea. Through a long term of years the world has experienced a depression in business, such as was never before known, touching every department of human industry, reaching every quarter of the civilized globe, and involving every Christian land. For twenty-three years our people have suffered a financial system which divided all we own and doubled all we owe. Recent events have not reassured those who are interested in maintaining the rights of average Within the last twelve months we have been told that we hold the right of trial by jury at the option of Federal judges. From Runnymede till now no man of Anglo-Saxon blood has ever dreamed that such was the law. Within the last twelve months our highest tribunal has reversed a decision which John Marshall respected and to which Roger Taney bowed, and has annulled a law that was made when the foundations of the Republic were laid. Therefore the incomes of the great fortunes accumulated during the last thirty years pay no tribute to support the government which protects them. That great convention which recently assembled in this city raised no voice of protest, but abandoning the interests and deserting the traditions of the American people for the first time committed the Republican party to the maintenance of a single gold standard. Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the rate of $262,000,000 per annum? They would cover the American flag with dollar marks bigger than the spots on the sun. They put William McKinley on the platform but they put Grover Cleveland in the platform. The hand was the hand of Esau, but the voice was the voice of Jacob. The St. Louis Convention may have changed its mind but the American people have not altered their opinions. They have thrown down the gauntlet and we cannot honorably avoid the conflict.

men.