began to concentrate their oratory, to a marked extent, upon phases of the Trust question and kindred matters, in a way designed to stir up the prejudices of labor against capital. They sought to identify the Republican party with all that is objectionable in the rapid tendency toward the amalgamation of industries, and claimed for Mr. Bryan the position of the highest special authority on the whole subject of trusts-their causes, their development, and especially the means by which they are to be destroyed or rendered harmless. This was the favorite theme of Mr. Bryan's many speeches in the State of New York. Mr. Bryan, indeed, was embarrassed by the multiplicity of his issues. He found himself the foremost champion on too many different fields. He could not abdicate his place as head and foreNor could he repudiate front of the great free silver movement. a position in which the Olneys, Schurzes, and Atkinsons of the anti-Imperialist movement, as well as the Kansas City Convention, had recognized him as the leader in a crusade that proposed to preserve the republic and avert the "empire." But, for political purposes, an even greater question, if possible, than either of the others became, as above said, that involved in the hue and cry against trusts and plutocratic tendencies in government. Here, again, he found practically the whole work of saving the country thrown upon his one pair of sturdy shoulders. SingleIt was he, moreover, who handed, he fought for an income tax. The was selected to champion the cause of the Boers; to denounce the alleged secret alliance of Mr. McKinley and Secretary Hay with Lord Salisbury; and to proclaim the grievances, if they could be found, of the Porto Ricans and the Cubans against this country. The load was too heavy for any candidate that ever lived. only wonder is that Mr. Bryan carried it so well. He made perhaps more out of the situation than any one else could have done. Now, as four years before, the Democratic and Populist standardbearer made a wonderful speaking campaign. Ο CHAPTER XVII Nearing the End N the 1st of January, 1901, the United States entered a new century admirably equipped for the journey that lay before it. In wealth and promise of prosperity it had become the foremost nation of the world. In commercial development it stood supreme; not in the sum of its exports and imports, in which it was surpassed by Great Britain, but in the enormous balance of trade in its favor, in which it far exceeded all the other nations of the world la manufacturing activity and the value of its annual products, and in the superabundant yield of its farms and pastures, it similarly had attained a foremost place, while its working classes enjoyed a degree of comfort and prosperity nowhere tise approached. It was capable not only of feeling its own people, but had become the granary of Europe, which trusted to the United States to save it from possible starvation. And its surlus cf manufactured goods was sent abroad in similar profusion. In a word, the great republic had become the grand almoner of mankind, the Lady Bountiful” Lady Bountiful "whose generous hand gave freely from its abundance to the crowding millions of the outer world. Its progress was not alone in material things The mental wealth of its people was expanding equally with their physical conCitions. Within its broad domain there was no privileged class, no pampered and idle aristocracy, no political magnates with hereditary power and authority; all were equal, all sovereign citizens, the pocrest in the land being equal before the laws and in political opportunities with the richest and highest. Education was the privilege of all, rich and poor alike. In art, in music, in literature, in science, in invention, the West had attained the level of the |