(Cheers.) Not a warrior, but a statesman. A man who stands for civil government against military rule.

STEVENSON'S OLD RECORD AS A HEADSMAN

A man who believes that a President of the United States who ignores the Constitution as the present Republican President has done, must be one who loves his own glory far more than he loves the republic. A man who believes American despotism is no better than any other despotism. A man who places human blood above human greed. A man who will not trade away the precious life of an American soldier for a nugget of gold in the Philippine Islands. (Cheers.) A man who would not give the 3,000 or 3,500 brave American soldiers whom McKinley has sacrificed in that hotbed of disease and destruction for all the islands in the seas. (Applause.) A man who, during four years of faithful administration as First Assistant Postmaster General of the United States, demonstrates that he knows a Republican when he sees him in an office that belongs to a Democrat. (Applause.) Nominate our man, and you will not have to explain any speech made against Democracy, for he has never made any of that kind (applause); a man in the full strength of his manhood, able to canvass any state in this Union. Gentlemen of the convention, Illinois makes no exaggeration when she tells you that in that great state the conditions are far better, the prospects are much brighter for Democracy than in 1892, when our candidate for Vice President carried it by 30,000 majority. (Applause.)

We have a state ticket stronger than we ever had before. We have but one Democracy in Illinois. We voice the sincere sentiment of the Democracy of Illinois when we ask you to nominate a man whose name we will present, a man who has been tried, gone through the contest, and no weak spots found in his armor; a man whose high character and ability recommend him to the people in every part of this republic; a man who possesses all the noble attributes of a noble man, great enough and good enough to be President of the United States, with a platform that reads like a Bible, and with these two faithful Democrats standing together, shoulder to shoulder, we can sweep criminal aggression and McKinley hypocrisy off the face of the earth.

Gentlemen of the convention, we now present to you the choice of the united Democracy of our state, that distinguished statesman, that splendid, vigorous, reliable Democrat, former Vice President Adlai E. Stevenson, of Illinois." (Great and continued applause.)

Τ'

CHAPTER XXIX

Platform of the Democratic Party

Adopted at Kansas City, July 5, 1900

HE full text of the platform adopted by the Democratic
National Committee is as follows:

"We, the representatives of the Democratic party of the United States, assembled in Convention on the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, do reaffirm our faith in that immortal proclamation of the inalienable rights of man and our allegiance to the Constitution framed in harmony therewith by the fathers of the Republic. We hold with the United States Supreme Court that the Declaration of Independence is the spirit of our government, of which the Constitution is the form and letter. We declare again that all governments instituted among men derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; that any government not based upon the consent of the governed is a tyranny; and that to impose on any people a government of force is to substitute the methods of imperialism for those of a republic. We hold that the Constitution follows the flag, and denounce the doctrine that an Executive or Congress deriving their existence and their powers from the Constitution, can exercise lawful authority beyond it or in violation of it. We assert that no nation can long endure half republic and half empire, and we warn the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home.

PORTO RICO LAW DENOUNCED

Believing in these fundamental principles, we denounce the Porto Rico law enacted by a Republican Congress against the protest and opposition of the Democratic minority as a bold and open violation of the nation's organic law and a flagrant breach of the national good faith. It imposes upon the people of Porto Rico a government without their consent and taxation without representation. It dishonors the American people by repudiating a solemn pledge made in their behalf by the commanding general of our army, which the Porto Ricans welcomed to a peaceful and unresisted occupation of their land. It dooms to poverty and distress a people whose helplessness appeals with peculiar force to our justice and magnanimity. In this, the first act of its imperialistic programme, the Republican party seeks to commit the United States to a

colonial policy, inconsistent with Republican institutions and condemned by the Supreme Court in numerous decisions.

OUR PLEDGE TO CUBA

We demand the prompt and honest fulfilment of our pledge to the Cuban people and the world, that the United States has no disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over the island of Cuba except for its pacification. The war ended nearly two years ago, profound peace reigns over all the island, and still the Administration keeps the government of the island from its people, while Republican carpet-bag officials plunder its revenues and exploit the colonial theory to the disgrace of the American people.

PHILIPPINE POLICY

We condemn and denounce the Philippine policy of the present Administration. It has involved the Republic in unnecessary war, sacrificed the lives of many of our noblest sons, and placed the United States, previously known and applauded thronghout the world as the champion of freedom, in the false and un-American position of crushing, with military force, the efforts of our former allies to achieve liberty and self-government. The Filipinos cannot be citizens without endangering our civilization, they cannot be subjects without imperiling our form of government, and as we are not willing to surrender our civilization or to convert the Republic into an empire, we favor an immediate declaration of the nation's purpose to give to the Filipinos, first, a stable form of government; second, independence, and third, protection from outside interference, such as has been given for nearly a century to the Republics of Central and South America.

The greedy commercialism which declared the Philippine policy of the Republican Administration, attempts to justify it with the plea that it will pay, but even this sordid and unworthy plea fails when brought to the test of facts. The war of criminal aggression against the Filipinos, entailing an annual expense of many millions, has already cost more than any possible profit that could accrue from the entire Philippine trade for years to come. Furthermore, when trade is extended at the expense of liberty, the price is always too high.

TERRITORIAL EXPANSION.

We are not opposed to territorial expansion when it takes in desirable territory which can be erected into States in the Union and whose people are willing and fit to become American citizens. We favor expansion by every peaceful and legitimate means. But we are unalterably opposed to the seizing or purchasing of distant islands to be governed outside the Constitution and whose people can never become citizens.

We are in favor of extending the Republic's influence among the nations, but believe that influence should be extended, not by force and violence, but through the persuasive power of a high and honorable example.

THE PARAMOUNT ISSUE

The importance of other questions now pending before the American people is in no wise diminished, and the Democratic party takes no backward step from its position on them, but the burning issue of imperialism, growing out of the Spanish War, involves the very existence of the Republic and the destruction of our free institutions. We regard it as the paramount issue of the campaign.

The declaration in the Republican platform adopted at the Philadelphia Convention, held in June, 1900, that the Republican party 'steadfastly adheres to the policy announced in the Monroe Doctrine,' is manifestly insincere and deceptive. This profession is contradicted by the avowed policy of that party in opposition to the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine to acquire and hold sovereignty over large areas of territory and large numbers of people in the eastern hemisphere. We insist on the strict maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine, in all its integrity, both in letter and in spirit, as necessary to prevent the extension of European authority on this continent, and as essential to our supremacy in American affairs. At the same time we declare that no American people shall ever be held by force in unwilling subjection to European authority.

OPPOSE MILITARISM.

We oppose militarism. It means conquest abroad and intimidation and oppressoin at home. It means the strong arm, which has ever been fatal to free institutions. It is what millions of our citizens have fled from in Europe. It will impose upon our peace loving people a large standing army, an unnecessary burden of taxation and a constant menace to their liberties. A small standing army and a well-disciplined state militia are amply sufficient in time of This Republic has no place for a vast military service, and conscription. When the nation is in danger the volunteer soldier is his country's best defender. The National Guard of the United States should ever be cherished in the patriotic hearts of a free people. Such organizations are ever an element of strength and safety. For the first time in our history and co-eval with the Philippine conquest has there been a wholesale departure from our time-honored and approved system of volunteer organization. We denounce it as un-American, un-Democratic and un-Republican, and as a subversion of the ancient and fixed principle of a free people.

Private monopolies are indefensible and intolerable. They destroy competition, control the price of all material and of the finished product, thus robbing both producer and consumer. They lessen the employment of labor and arbitrarily fix the terms and conditions thereof, and deprive individual energy and small capital of their opportunity for betterment. They are the most efficient means yet devised for appropriating the fruits of industry to the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, and unless their insatiate greed is checked, all wealth will be aggregated in a few hands and the republic destroyed. The dishonest paltering with the trust evil by the Republican party in state and national platforms is conclusive proof of the truth of the charge that trusts are the legitimate product of Republican policies; that they are fostered by Republican laws, and that they are protected by the Republican Administration in return for campaign subscriptions and political support.

UNCEASING WARFARE Pledged

We pledge the Democratic party, to an unceasing warfare in nation, state and city against private monopoly in every form. Existing laws against trusts must be enforced, and more stringent ones must be enacted, providing for publicity as to the affairs of corporations engaged in interstate commerce, and requiring all corporations to show, before doing business outside of the state of their origin, that they have no water in their stock, and that they have not attempted and are not attempting to monopolize any branch of business or the production of any articles of merchandise, and the whole constitutional power of Congress over interstate commerce, the mails and all modes of interstate communication shall be exercised by the enactment of comprehensive laws upon the subject of trusts. Tariff laws should be amended by putting the products of trusts upon the free list, to prevent monopoly under the plea of protection.

The failure of the present Republican Administration, with an absolute control over all branches of the National Government, to enact any legislation designing to prevent or even curtail the absorbing power of trusts and illegal combinations, or to enforce the anti-trust laws already on the statute books, prove the insincerity of the high sounding phrases of the Republican platform.

Corporations should be protected in all their rights, and their legitimate interests should be respected, but any attempt by corporations to interfere with the public affairs of the people, or to control the sovereignity which created them, should be forbidden under such penalties as will make such attempts impossible.

THE TARIFF

We condemn the Dingley Tariff law as a trust breeding measure, skilfully devised to give the few favors which they do not deserve and to place upon the many burdens which they should not bear.