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all such abuses, protect and promote competion and secure the rights of producers, laborers and all who are engaged in industry and commerce.

We renew our faith in the policy of protection to American labor. In that policy our industries have been established, diversified and maintained. By protecting the home market competition has been stimulated and production cheapened. Opportunity for the inventive genius of our people has been secured and wages in every department of labor maintained at high rates, higher now than ever before, and always distinguishing our working people in their better conditious of life from those of any competing country. Enjoying the blessings of the American common school, secure in the right of selfgovernment and protected in the occupancy of their own markets, their constantly increasing knowledge and skill have enabled them finally to enter the markets of the world.

We favor the associated policy of reciprocity so directed as to open our markets on favorable terms for what we do not ourselves produce, in return for free foreign markets.

RESTRICTION OF IMMIGRATION

In the further interest of American workmen we favor a more effective restriction of the immigration of cheap labor from foreign lands, the extension of opportunities of education for working children, the raising of the age limit for child labor, the protection of free labor as against contract convict labor, and an effective system of labor insurance.

Our present dependence upon foreign shipping for nine-tenths of our foreign carrying is a great loss to the industry of this country. It is also a serious danger to our trade, for its sudden withdrawal in the event of European war would seriously cripple our expanding foreign commerce. The National defence and naval efficiency of this country, moreover, supply a compelling reason for legislation which will enable us to recover our former place among the trade carrying fleets of the world.

SOLDIERS AND SAILORS. CIVIL SERVICE

The nation owes a debt of profound gratitude to the soldiers and sailors who have fought its battles, and it is the government's duty to provide for the survivors and for the widows and orphans of those who have fallen in the country's wars. The pension laws, founded in this just sentiment, should be liberal, and should be liberally administered, and preference should be given wherever practicable with respect to employment in the public service to soldiers and sailors and to their widows and orphans.

We commend the policy of the Republican party in maintaining the efficiency of the Civil Service Rules. The Administration has acted wisely in

its effort to secure for public service in Cuba, Porto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippine Islands only those whose fitness has been determined by training and experience. We believe that employment in the public service in these territories should be confined as far as practicable to their inhabitants.

It was the plain purpose of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution to prevent discrimination on account of race or color in regulating the elective franchise. Devices of State governments, whether by statutory or constitutional enactment, to avoid the purpose of this amendment are revolutionary and should be condemned.

Public movements looking to a permanent improvement of the roads and highways of the country meet with our cordial approval, and we recommend this subject to the earnest consideration of the people and of the Legislatures of the Several States.

RURAL FREE DELIVERY

We favor the extension of the rural free delivery service wherever its extension may be justified.

In further pursuance of the constant policy of the Republican party to provide free homes on the public domain, we recommend adequate National legislation to reclaim the arid lands of the United States, reserving control of the distribution of water for irrigation to the respective States and Territories. We favor home rule for and the early admission to statehood of the territories of New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma.

The Dingley act, amended to provide sufficient revenue for the conduct of the war, has so well performed its work that it has been possible to reduce the war debt in the sum of $40,000,000. So ample are the Government's revenues and so great is the public confidence in the integrity of its obligations that its newly funded 2 per cent. bonds sell at a premium. The country is now justified in expecting, and it will be the policy of the Republican party to bring about a reduction of the war taxes.

THE ISTHMIAN CANAL

New markets are Every effort should the Orient, and the

We favor the construction, ownership, control and protection of an Isthmian canal by the government of the United States. necessary for the increasing surplus of our farm products. be made to open and obtain new markets, especially in administration is warmly to be commended for its successful effort to commit all trading and colonizing nations to the policy of the open door in China. In the interest of our expanding commerce we recommend that Congress create a department of commerce and industries in the charge of a secretary with a seat in the Cabinet.

The United States consular system should be reorganized under the supervision of this new department, upon such a basis of appointment and tenure as will render it still more serviceable to the Nation's increasing trade.

The American government must protect the person and property of every citizen wherever they are wrongfully violated or placed in peril.

THE WOMEN CONGRATULATED

We congratulate the women of America upon their splendid record of public service in the volunteer aid association, and as nurses in camp and hospital during the recent campaigns of our armies in the Eastern and Western Indies, and we appreciate their faithful co-operation in all works of education and industry.

President McKinley has conducted the foreign affairs of the United States with distinguished credit to the American people. In releasing us from the vexatious conditions of a European alliance for the government of Samoa his course is especially to be commended. By securing to our undivided control the most important island of the Samoan group and the best harbor in the Southern Pacific, every American interest has been safeguarded.

We approve the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States.

THE PEACE CONFERENCE

We commend the part taken by our government in the Peace Conference at The Hague. We assert our steadfast adherence to the policy announced in the Monroe Doctrine. The provisions of The Hague Convention were wisely regarded when President McKinley tendered his friendly offices in the interest of peace between Great Britain and the South African Republics. While the American government must continue the policy prescribed by Washington, affirmed by every succeeding President and imposed upon us by The Hague Treaty, of non-intervention in European controversies, the American people earnestly hope that a way may soon be found, honorable alike to both contending parties, to terminate the strife between them.

In accepting by the Treaty of Paris the just responsibility of our victories. in the Spanish war, the President and the Senate won the undoubted approval of the American people. No other course was possible than to destroy Spain's sovereignty throughout the West Indies and in the Philippine Islands. That course created our responsibility before the world, and with the unorganized population whom our intervention had freed from Spain, to provide for the maintenance of law and order, and for the establishment of good government and for the performance of international obligations. Our authority could not be less than our responsibility, and wherever sovereign rights were extended it

became the high duty of the government to maintain its authority, to put down armed insurrection and to confer the blessings of liberty and civilization upon all the rescued peoples. The largest measure of self-government consistent with their welfare and our duties shall be secured to them by law.

To Cuba independence and self-government were assured in the same voice by which war was declared, and to the letter this pledge shall be performed.

The Republican party upon its history, and upon this declaration of its principles and policies, confidently invokes the considerate and approving judgment of the American people.

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CHAPTER XXII

The Life and Public Services of

Theodore Roosevelt

Republican Candidate for Vice President Nominated.

June 21, 1900

HEODORE ROOSEVELT is Andrew Jackson educated," said a prominent man, while the hero of the Rough-Riders was making the race for Governor of the State of New York in October, 1898.

No man of his age in America has been a more uncompromising reformer or waged a more relentless warfare against corrupt and designing public officials. Both in public and private, he has been always the staunch, fearless champion of the right.

Mr. Roosevelt is a native of New York City, where he was born October 27, 1858. The family of the Roosevelts have lived in New York from the time of the old Dutch Governor, Peter Stuyvesant, and throughout every generation they have been represented by some upright and honorable man of their name in the public service.

At the age of eighteen young Roosevelt entered Harvard College, where he graduated in 1880, shortly before he was twentytwo years of age, after which he went abroad and continued his studies for a time in Dresden, traveled in Europe and in Asia, and at the age of twenty-three returned to New York and took up the study of law in the office of his uncle, Robert B. Roosevelt, but soon after abandoned it for politics.

In 1882, when the members of the General Assembly met at Albany, Theodore Roosevelt went as the representative of his district. He was the youngest member of the Legislature, but he