to our country the constitutional control and exercise of the func tions necessary to a people's government, which functions have been basely surrendered by our public servants to corporate monopolies. The influence of European money changers has been more potent in shaping legislation than the voice of the American people. Executive power and patronage have been used to corrupt our legislatures and defeat the will of the people, and plutocracy has thereby been enthroned upon the ruins of democracy. To restore the government intended by the fathers, and for the welfare and prosperity of this and future generations, we demand the establishment of an economic and financial system which shall make us masters of our own affairs and independent of European control, by the adoption of the following declaration of principles:

FINANCE.

1. We demand a national money, safe and sound, issued by the General Government only, without the intervention of banks of issue, to be a full legal tender for all debts, public and private; a just, equitable and efficient means of distribution direct to the people, and through the lawful disbursements of the Government. 2. We demand the free and unrestricted coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the consent of foreign nations.

3. We demand the volume of circulating medium be speedily increased to an amount sufficient to meet the demands of the business and population of this country, and so restore the just level of prices of labor and production.

4. We denounce the sale of bonds and the increase of the public interest-bearing debt made by the present administration as unnecessary and without authority of law, and that no more bonds be issued except by specific act of Congress.

5. We demand such legislation as will prevent the demonetization of the lawful money of the United States by private contract. 6. We demand that the Government, in payment of its obligations, shall use its option as to the kind of lawful money in which they are to be paid, and we denounce the present and preceding administrations for surrendering this option to the holders of Government obligations.

7. We demand a graduated income tax, to the end that aggregated wealth shall bear its just proportion of taxation, and we regard the recent decision of the Supreme Court relative to the income tax law as a misinterpretation of the Constitution and an invasion of the rightful powers of Congress over the subject of taxation.

8. We demand that postal savings banks be established by the Government for the safe deposit of the savings of the people and to facilitate exchange.

TRANSPORTATION.

1. Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the Government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people and on a non-partisan basis, to the end that all may be accorded the same treatment in transportation, and that the tyranny and political power now exercised by the great railroad corporations, which result in the impairment, if not the destruction, of the political rights and personal liberties of the citizen, may be destroyed. Such ownership is to be accomplished gradually in a manner consistent with sound public policy.

2. The interest of the United States in the public highways, built with public moneys and the proceeds of extensive grants of land to the Pacific railroads, should never be alienated, mortgaged, or sold, but guarded and protected for the general welfare as provided by the laws organizing such railroads. The foreclosure of existing liens of the United States on these roads should at once follow default in the payment thereof of the debt of compa nies, and at the foreclosure sales of said roads the Government shall purchase the same, if it becomes necessary, to protect its interests therein; or if they can be purchased at a reasonable price, and the Government shall operate said railroads as public highways for the benefit of the whole people, and not in the interest of the few, under suitable provisions for protection of life and property, giving to all transportation interests equal privileges and equal rates for fares and freight.

3. We denounce the present infamous schemes for refunding these debts and demand that the laws now applicable thereto be executed and administered according to their true intent and spirit.

4. The telegraph, like the post-office system, being a necessity for the transmission of news, should be owned and operated by the Government in the interest of the people.

LAND.

1. The true policy demands that the national and State legislation shall be such as will ultimately enable every prudent and industrious citizen to secure a home; and therefore the land should not be monopolized for speculative purposes. All lands now held

by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs should by lawful means be reclaimed by the Government and held for actual settlement by settlers only, and private land monopo.y as well as alien ownership should be prohibited.

2. We condemn the frauds by which the land grants to the Pacific railroad companies have, through the connivance of the Interior Department, robbed multitudes of actual bona fide settlers of their homes and miners of their claims; and we demand legis

lation by Congress which will enforce the exemption of mineral lands from such grants after as well as before patent.

3. We demand that bona fide settlers on all public lands be granted free homes, as provided in the national homestead law, and that no exception be made in the case of Indian reservations when open for settlement, and that all lands not now patented come under this demand.

DIRECT LEGISLATION.

We favor a system of direct legislation through the initiative and referendum, under proper constitutional safeguards.

GENERAL PROPOSITIONS.

1. We demand the election of President, Vice-President, and United States Senators by direct vote of the people.

2. We tender to the patriotic people of Cuba our deepest sympathy in their heroic struggle for political freedom and independence, and we believe the time has come when the United States, the great Republic of the world, should recognize that Cuba is, and of right ought to be, a free and independent State.

3. We favor home rule in the Territories and the District of Columbia and the early admission of the Territories as States. 4. All public salaries should be made to correspond to the price of labor and its products.

5. In times of great industrial depression idle labor should be employed on public works as far as practicable.

6. The arbitrary course of the courts in assuming to imprison citizens for indirect contempt and ruling that by injunction should be prevented by proper legislation.

7. We favor just pensions for our disabled Union soldiers.

8. Believing that the election franchise and untrammeled ballot are essential to a government of, for, and by the people, the People's party condemns the wholesale system of disfranchisement adopted in some of the States as unrepublican and undemocratic, and we declare it to be the duty of the several State legislatures to take such action as will secure a full, free, and fair ballot, and an honest count.

9. While the foregoing propositions constitute the platform upon which our party stands, and for the vindication of which its organization will be maintained, we recognize that the great and pressing issue of the pending campaign, upon which the present Presidential election will turn, is the financial question, and upon this great and specific issue between the parties we cordially invite the aid and coöperation of all organizations and citizens agreeing with us upon this vital question.

THE NATIONAL SILVER PLATFORM.

ADOPTED AT ST. LOUIS, JULY 24, 1896.

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

1. 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 distinctively 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 con

tract.

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 interest-bearing 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 in 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 50 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 last 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 aggra vating 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.

2. That over and above all other questions of policy we are in favor of restoring to the people of the United States the timehonored 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 the American debtor may pay his just obligations in an honest standard and not in a standard that has appreciated 100 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 they now enjoy in the difference in exchange between gold and silveran advantage which tariff legislation alone cannot overcome.

We therefore confidently appeal to the people of the United States to leave in abeyance for the moment all other questions, however important and even momentous 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 invoke the gracious favor of divine providence.

Inasmuch as the patriotic majority of the Chicago convention