The decisive day of the Convention was the third, Thursday, the 18th. The platform was approved and the candidates nominated in the course of one session. The Rev. John B. Scott, a colored man, prayed briefly, beginning: "Father of all, from whose hands the centuries fall like grains of sand, we meet to-day united, free, loyal." He asked a blessing on the Convention and its work, and closed with the recital of the Lord's Prayer. His gift in prayer was deeply felt by the Convention.

Senator-elect Foraker, of Ohio, Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions, read the platform in a clear voice.

THE PLATFORM.

The Republicans of the United States, assembled by their representatives in National Convention, appealing for the popular and historical justification of their claims to the bitter fruits of four years of Democratic control, as well as the matchless improvements of thirty years of Republican rule, earnestly and confidently address themselves to the awakened intelligence, experience, and conscience of their countrymen in the following declaration of facts and principles:

For the first time since the Civil War the American people have now witnessed the calamitous consequences of full and unrestricted Democratic control of the government.

It has been a record of unparalleled incapacity, dishonor, and disaster. In the administrative management it has ruthlessly sacrificed indispensable reve

nue, eked out ordinary current running expenses with borrowed money, piled up the public debt $262,000,000 in time of peace, forced an adverse balance of trade, kept a perpetual menace hanging over the redemption fund for pawned American credit to alien syndicates, and reversed all the measures and results of successful Republican rule. In the broad effect of its policy it has precipitated panic, blighted industry and trade with prolonged depression, closed factories, reduced work and wages, halted enterprise, and crippled American production while stimulating foreign production for the American market. Every consideration of public safety and individual interest demands that the government shall be rescued from the hands of those who have shown themselves incapable of conducting it without disaster at home and dishonor abroad, and shall be restored to the party which for thirty years administered it with unequaled success and prosperity.

We renew and emphasize our allegiance to the policy of protection as the bulwark of American industrial independence and the foundation of American development and prosperity. This true American policy taxes foreign products and encourages home industry; it puts the burden of revenue on foreign goods; it secures the American market for the American producers; it upholds the American standard of wages for the American workingman; it puts the factory by the side of the farm, and makes the American farmer less dependent on foreign de

mand and price; it diffuses general thrift and founds the strength of all on the strength of each. In its responsible application it is just, fair, and impartial, equally opposed to foreign control and domestic monopoly, to sectional discrimination and individual favoritism.

We denounce the present Democratic party as sectional, partisan, and one-sided, and disastrous to the Treasury and destructive of business enterprise, and we demand such an equitable tariff on foreign imports which come into competition with American products as will not only furnish adequate revenue for the necessary expenses of the government, but will protect American labor from degradation and the wage level of other lands. We are not pledged to any particular schedule. The question of rates is a practical question, to be governed by the condition of the times and of production. The ruling and uncompromising principle is the protection and development of American labor and industry.

The Republican party renews its pledge for the protection of all American industries against foreign competition, and declares its faith that the supremacy of the United States among the nations is the result of such a policy. We believe in liberal reciprocity and just relation, and demand the application of the golden rule of commerce to all future legislation affecting the tariff and the foreign trade. We believe the repeal of the reciprocity arrangement negotiated by the last Republican administration was

a national calamity, and demand their renewal and extension on such terms as will equalize our trade with other nations, and remove the restrictions that now obstruct the sale of American products in the ports of Europe and secure new markets for the products of our farms, forests, and factories.

We favor restoring the early American policy of discriminating duties for the upbuilding of our merchant marine and the protection of our shipping in the foreign carrying trade, so that American shipping, the product of the American labor employed in American shipyards, sailing under the stars and stripes, and manned, officered, and owned by Americans, may regain the carrying of our foreign com

merce.

The Republican party is unreservedly for sound money. It caused the enactment of the law providing for the resumption of specie payments in 1879; since then every dollar has been as good as gold. We are unalterably opposed to every measure calculated to debase our currency or impair the credit of our country. We are, therefore, opposed to the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world, which we pledge ourselves to promote, and until such agreement can be obtained, the existing gold standard must be preserved. All our silver and paper currency now in circulation must be maintained at parity with gold, and we favor all measures designed to maintain inviolably the obliga

tions of the United States and all our money, whether paper or coin, at the present standard-the standard of the most enlightened nations of the earth.

JUSTICE TO VETERANS.

The veterans of the Union armies deserve and should receive fair treatment and generous recognition. Whenever practicable they should be given the preference in the matter of employment, and they are entitled to the enactment of such laws as are best calculated to secure the fulfillment of the pledges made to them in the dark days of the country's peril. We denounce the practice in the Pension Bureau, so recklessly and unjustly carried on by the present Administration, of reducing pensions and arbitrarily dropping names from the rolls, as deserving the severest condemnation of the American people.

Our foreign policy should be at all times firm, vigorous, and dignified, and all our interests in the Western hemisphere carefully watched and guarded. The Hawaiian Islands should be controlled by the United States, and no foreign power should be permitted to interfere with them; the Nicaragua Canal should be built, owned, and operated by the United States, and, by the purchase of the Danish Islands, we should secure a proper and much-needed naval station in the West Indies.

The massacres in Armenia have aroused the deep sympathy and just indignation of the American