THE SECOND BATTLE.

CHAPTER I.

THE CONTEST BEGINS

The Democratic National Convention was called to order by Chairman Jones at exactly 12 o'clock, July 4, 1900, in Kansas City, Mo. The great Exposition Hall contained over twenty thousand people, and the enthusiasm and heat was intense. The formal call for the convention was read by Secretary Walsh, and prayer was offered by the Rev. S. W. Neel, of Kansas City. Chairman Jones then presented James A. Reed, Mayor of Kansas City, who formally welcomed the delegates to the city. A delegate from Michigan then moved that the Declaration of Independence be read as a rebuke to the Republican party, and this was carried amid great applause. The singing of the "Star Spangled Banner" and "America" by the entire convention aroused the greatest patriotic demonstration of the day, unless it was the entrance of ex-Senator David B. Hill. He was defeated for a place on the Resolution Committee by his own delegation, and his appearance in the convention hall stirred the delegates, and cries of "Hill, Hill," delayed the work of the convention for over half an hour. The committee on organization reported the names of Governor Charles S. Thomas, of Colorado, for temporary chairman, and he was escorted to the platform by Major Rose, of Milwaukee, and Congressman Lentz, of Ohio, his defeated rivals for the position. He was introduced to the convention by Chairman Jones. Owing to the great confusion in the hall, caused by the delegates still yelling

for Hill, it was some time before order was obtained, and the regular business of the convention proceeded with. At this juncture a bust of William J. Bryan was unveiled on the platform, and the perspiring delegates yelled themselves hoarse. When quiet had been secured, Temporary Chairman Thomas advanced to the edge of the platform, and spoke as follows:

“Mr. Chairman: We meet under most auspicious influences. On the nation's birthday, in a great central city of the Republic, at the close and opening of a century, we come together to reaffirm our allegiance to the principles of Thomas Jefferson and our loyalty to their greatest living exponent. We have been selected by the farmer and the artisan, the miner and the mechanic, the producers of wealth in every State and Territory of this mighty nation to register a decree they have already determined, to proclaim a candidate they have already chosen.

"We come not with the pomp and circumstance of consolidated wealth, but as the delegates of the plain people, who believe that all men were created equal and that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We are not here as the representatives of the vast interests which dominate every industrial life, but as the champion of the individual citizen who stands helpless in their presence.

"We speak not for those who would pivot the finances of the world upon a single metal, supplementing its inadequacy by a paper currency issued by a private monopoly at the expense of the people, but for the millions who believe in the money of the constitution and in the ability of their countrymen to legislate for themselves, without the previous permission of foreign parliaments, potentates, or princes.

"The line of division between political forces became, therefore, sharply defined in 1896 upon what was called the money question. That question involved, as we then asserted, and as we now know, every other economic problem. It embraced within its wide limitations the issues of labor and capital, of combination and competition, of production, transportation, and distribution.

"It was predicted that the defeat of bimetallism would be followed by the retirement of all forms of government currency, by the dedication of the power of note issue to the holders of the national obligation, the practical consolidation of all lines of transportation, and the consequent domination of every commercial pursuit by a score of colossal monopolies. These predictions have in general been verified.

"Democratic defeat had scarcely been recorded when the march of consolidation was resumed. Every pursuit that engages the attention of man has been exploited, capitalized, and appropriated. The earth and the water round about it have been explored for sub

jects of monopoly, and those who have thundered against unsound money have used the printing press and the engravers' art to turn out thousands of millions of fictitious values, to whose profit the toilers and consumers pay constant tribute.

"Hence the crisis in our commercial affairs, whose issue, presented in acute form to the voters of 1900, is that of industrial despotism, as against the liberty of the citizen.

"Democracy wages no war against wealth. Under her beneficent rule its creation and amassment have ever been among the most worthy objects of human effort. The desire for material comfort and well-being is the mainspring of progress. The wealth that comes as the reward of honest industry and thrift commands and must receive the encouragement and protection of all.

"But the wealth that comes through partnership with the government, which usurps its prerogatives and perverts its agencies, which absorbs the resources and blasts the opportunities of the individual, crushes competition, levies tribute on the producer, and corrupts and poisons all branches of official life, and reduces the citizen to dependence upon its will, excites our just apprehensions.

"Modern monopoly is the offspring of the Republican party. It is the genius of organized commercialism. It has neither conscience, sentiment, nor patriotism. It knows neither justice nor morality. It blacklists the workingman and sets him adrift to starve in the midst of plenty. It is the enemy of democracy, which has accepted its gage of battle. Either the trust or the government must disappear.

"At the demand of the so-called financial interests the present Congress has enacted a new currency law. By its terms the government has presented to the national banks twenty-five millions of dollars, given them control of our circulation, provided for the payment in cash of the premium values of the greater part of its bonds, and created a perpetual national debt. It has declared for the payment of all obligations in gold, stricken from its contracts the reserved right of the government to use its own money for the payment of debts, and delegated to private interest the power to supplement all deficiencies in the circulation medium by the paper money whose volume they shall regulate and which the people are taxed to support.

"The greenback and the Treasury note are retired, an inert mass of $150,000,000 in gold is to be kept in the Treasury by the issue of bonds whenever necessary, the currency must shrink and swell as the judgment of selfishness shall dictate, and the pretended menace of bimetallism against 'sound money' and the national honor has been evaded.

"Against this iniquitous scheme of finance democracy protests. We will have no money system founded upon the public debt and dictated by those who hold it. We stand for the gold and silver of the constitution. For a paper currency founded upon them and issued by the Government as the embodiment of our sovereignty.

"Those who assert that the money question is dead have given but little heed to the lessons of experience. It can never die until it shall receive the righteous solution.

"The prevailing sentiment of Democratic sympathy for all people struggling for the blessings of liberty compelled the administration two years ago to interfere with the despotic tyranny of Spain over Cuba and secured to the oppressed people of that island the right of self-government. Our ultimatum delivered, we solemnly and officially declared them to be free and independent, and disclaimed to the world any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over the island except for the pacifi. cation thereof, and asserted our determination when that was accomplished to leave the government and control of the island to its people.

"The conditions of the ensuing war sent Admiral Dewey to the distant Philippines, where another people, engaged in the same struggle with the same oppressor, appealed to the same impulses of our nature. There he broke the power of Spain, which, suing for peace, submitted to the liberation of Cuba and the cession of Porto Rico.

"Our Government disdained the spirit of its manifesto of April, and became the purchaser of the Philippines in January. Since then we have given Cuba the benefit of our civic institutions by governing her through the War department.

"We have kept faith with Porto Rico by substituting the sugar baron for the Castillian Duke, and confirmed the Philippine estimate of the white man by prolonging the Spaniards' method of colonial government in those islands of the far-off seas.

"The national sympathy for all who seek self-government has been made the instrument by which cupidity and greed hold a feeble nation in thraldom. The right of purchase is invoked to justify the adoption of a so-called colonial policy by the great Western republic, and her glorious institutions are declared to be for home consump tion, with prohibitive duties against their exportation.

"Imperialism has become a favorite word in the national vocabulary. Destiny is the name of its fateful brother. Trade expansion is the mystic verbal tie that binds them.

"We have cheerfully submitted to a burdensome taxation that Cuba might be free; that Porto Rico might enjoy the heritage of our constitution. We have consecrated our sons to the cause of liberty and sent them freely forth to extinguish the last vestige of despotism in our hemisphere. We protest against payment of tribute or the devotion of life to the cause of empire.

"We realize that a standing army is the attendant of imperialism. We would avoid the latter, because once avowed as a national policy, it must undermine our domestic institutions. We would have no colonial system. It cannot live in the atmosphere of freedom. It is an asylum of dishonesty and incompetency. Our national standard has a stripe for every State that forms the Union, a star for every commonwealth of the sisterhood. It has neither place nor emblem for subject people or colonial systems.

"We would form political alliances with no countries whatever. We neither need nor desire them. For a century and a quarter we have survived the envies and the enmities of Europe. We have