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for the very kind and flattering terms in which you convey the formal announcement of my nomination for Vice President of the United States by the Republican National Convention at St. Louis. I am profoundly sensible of the honor which has been done me, and through me to the State in which all my life has been spent, in my selection as a candidate for this high office. I appreciate it the more because it associates me, in a contest which involves the very gravest issues, with one who represents in his private character and public career the highest intelligence and best spirit of his party, and with whom my personal relations are such as to afford a guarantee of perfect accord in the work of the campaign which lies before me.

"It is sufficient for me to say at this time that, concurring without reserve in all the declarations of principle and policy embodied in the St. Louis platform, I accept the nomination tendered to me with a full appreciation of its responsibilities, and with an honest purpose, in the event that the people shall ratify the choices made by the National Convention, to discharge any duties which may devolve upon me, with best reference to the public good.

"Let me add that it will be my earnest effort in the 'coming campaign to contribute in every way possible to the success of the party which we represent, and which as to the important issues of the time stands for the best interests of the people.

"Uncertainty or instability as to the money question involves most serious consequences to every interest and to every citizen of the country.

"The gravity of this question cannot be overestimated. There can be no financial security; no business stability;

no real prosperity where the policy of the Government as to that question is at all a matter of doubt.

"Gold is the one standard of value among all enlightened commercial nations. All financial transactions of whatever character, all business enterprises, all individual or corporate investments are adjusted to it. An honest dollar worth 100 cents everywhere cannot be coined out of 53 cents' worth of silver, plus a legislative fiat.

"Such a debasement of our currency would inevitably produce incalculable loss, appalling disaster and national dishonor. It is a fundamental principle in coinage recognized and followed by all the statesmen of America in the past and never yet safely departed from, that there can be only one basis upon which gold and silver may be concurrently coined as money, and that basis is equality, not in weight, but in the commercial value of the metal contained in the respective coins. This commercial value is fixed by the markets of the world with which the great interests of our country are necessarily connected by innumerable business ties, which cannot be severed or ignored. Great and self-reliant as our country is, it is great not alone within its own borders and upon its own resources, but because it also reaches out to the ends of the earth in all the manifold departments of business, ex. change and commerce, and must maintain with honor the standing and credit among the nations of the earth.

"The question admits of no compromise. It is a vital principle at stake, but it is in no sense partisan or sec tional. It concerns all the people. Ours, as one of the foremost nations, must have a monetary standard equal to the best.

"It is of vital consequence that this question should be

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settled now in such a way as to restore public confidence here and everywhere in the integrity of our purpose. A doubt of that integrity among the other great commercial countries of the world will not only cost us millions of money, but that which, as patriots, we should treasure still more highly-our industrial and commercial supremacy.

"My estimate of the value of a protective policy has been formed by the study of the object lessons of a great industrial State, extending over a period of thirty years. It is that protection not only builds up important industries from small beginnings, but that these and all other industries flourish or languish in proportion as protection is maintained or withdrawn. I have seen it indisputably proved that the prosperity of farmer, merchant and all other classes of citizens goes hand in hand with that of the manufacturer and mechanic.

"I am firmly persuaded that what we need most of all to remove the business paralysis that afflicts this country, is the restoration of a policy which, while affording ample revenue to meet the expenses of the Government, will reopen American workshops on full time and full handed, with their operatives paid good wages in honest dollars. And this can only come under a tariff which will hold the interests of our own people paramount in our political and commercial systems.

"The opposite policy which discourages American enterprise reduces American labor to idleness, diminishes the earnings of American workingmen, opens our markets to commodities from abroad which we should produce at home, while closing foreign markets against our products and which, at the same time, steadily augments the public debt, increasing the public burdens, while diminishing the

ability of the people to meet them, is a policy which must find its chief popularity elsewhere than among American citizens.

"I shall take an early opportunity, gentlemen of the committee, through you to communicate to my fellowcitizens with somewhat more of detail my views concerning the dominant questions of the hour and the crisis which confronts us as a nation.

"With this brief expression of my appreciation of the distinguished honor that has been bestowed upon me, and this signification of my acceptance of the trust to which I have been summoned, I place myself at the service of the Republican party and of the country."

THE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM OF 1896.

The Republicans of the United States, assembled by their representatives in national convention, appealing for the popular and historical jurisdiction of their claims to the matchless achievements 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 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 administrative management it has ruthlessly sacrificed indispensible revenue, entailed an unceasing deficit, eked out ordinary current expenses with borrowed money, piled up the public debt by $262,000,000 in time of peace, forced an adverse balance of trade, kept a perpetual menace hanging over the redemption fund, pawned American credit to alien syndicates and reversed all the measures and results of successful Republican rule. In the broad effort 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 them

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