reduced by a vicious monetary system which depresses the prices of their products below the cost of production, and thus deprives them of the means of purchasing the products of our home manufactories; and, as labor creates the wealth of the country, we demand the passage of such laws as may be necessary to protect it in all its rights.

We are in favor of the arbitration of differences between employers engaged in interstate commerce and their employees, and recommend such legislation as is necessary to carry out this principle.

The absorption of wealth by the few, the consolidation of our leading railroad systems, and the formation of trusts and pools require a stricter control by the federal government of those arteries of commerce. We demand the enlargement of the powers of the interstate commerce commission, and such restrictions and guarantees in the control of railroads as will protect the people from robbery and oppression.

We denounce the profligate waste of the money wrung from the people by oppressive taxation and the lavish appropriations of recent Republican Congresses, which have kept taxes high, while the labor that pays them is unemployed and the products of the people's toil are depressed in price till they no longer repay the cost of production. We demand a return to that simplicity and economy which befits a democratic government and a reduction in the number of useless offices, the salaries of which drain the substance of the people.

We denounce arbitrary interference by federal authorities in local affairs as a violation of the Constitution of the United States and a crime against free institutions, and we especially object to government by injunction as a new and highly dangerous form of oppression by which federal judges, in contempt of the laws of the States and rights of citizens, become at once legislators, judges, and executioners; and we approve the bill passed at the last session of the United States Senate, and now pending in the House of Representatives, relative to contempts in federal courts and providing for trials by jury in certain cases of contempt.

No discrimination should be indulged in by the government of the United States in favor of any of its debtors. We approve of the refusal of the Fifty-third Congress to pass the Pacific Railroad funding bill, and denounce the effort of the present Republican Congress to enact a similar measure.

Recognizing the just claims of deserving Union soldiers, we heartily indorse the rule of the present Commissioner of Pensions, that no name shall be arbitrarily dropped from the pension roll; and the fact of enlistment and service should be deemed conclusive evidence against disease and disability before enlistment.

We favor the admission of the Territories of New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma into the Union as States, and we favor the early admission of all the Territories having the necessary population and resources to entitle them to statehood, and, while they remain Territories, we hold that the officials appointed to administer the government of any Territory, together with the District of Columbia and Alaska, should be bonâ fide residents of the Territory or District in which the duties are to be performed. The Democratic party believes in home rule, and that all public lands of the United States should be appropriated to the establishment of free homes for American citizens.

We recommend that the Territory of Alaska be granted a delegate in Congress, and that the general land and timber laws of the United States be extended to said Territory.

The Monroe doctrine, as originally declared and as interpreted by succeeding Presidents, is a permanent part of the foreign policy of the United States, and must at all times be maintained.

We extend our sympathy to the people of Cuba in their heroic struggle for liberty and independence.

We are opposed to life tenure in the public service, except as provided in the Constitution. We favor appointments based upon merit, fixed terms of office, and such an administration of the civil service laws as will afford equal opportunities to all citizens of ascertained fitness.

We declare it to be the unwritten law of this republic, established by custom and usage of a hundred years, and sanctioned by the examples of the greatest and wisest of those who founded and have maintained our government, that no man should be eligible for a third term of the presidential office.

The federal government should care for and improve the Mississippi River and other great waterways of the republic, so as to secure for the interior States easy and cheap transportation to tidewater. When any waterway of the republic is of sufficient importance to demand aid of the government, such aid should be extended upon a definite plan of continuous work until permanent improvement is secured.

Confiding in the justice of our cause and the necessity of its success at the polls, we submit the foregoing declaration of principles and purposes to the considerate judgment of the American people. We invite the support of all citizens who approve them, and who desire to have them made effective, through legislation, for the relief of the people and the restoration of the country's prosperity.

A minority of the Committee on Resolutions, consisting of the members from sixteen States, submitted a dissenting report,

expressing their inability to give their assent to “ many declarations" of the platform. "Some are ill-considered and ambiguously phrased, while others are extreme and revolutionary of the well-recognized principles of the party." They offered two amendments, the first a substitute for the financial plank, as follows:

:

We declare our belief that the experiment on the part of the United States alone of free silver coinage and a change in the existing standard of value, independently of the action of other great nations, would not only imperil our finances, but would retard, or entirely prevent, the establishment of international bimetallism, to which the efforts of the government should be steadily directed.

It would place this country at once upon a silver basis, impair contracts, disturb business, diminish the purchasing power of the wages of labor, and inflict irreparable evils upon our nation's commerce and industry.

Until international coöperation among leading nations for the coinage of silver can be secured, we favor the rigid maintenance of the existing gold standard as essential to the preservation of our national credit, the redemption of our public pledges, and the keeping inviolate of our country's honor.

We insist that all our paper currency shall be kept at a parity with gold. The Democratic party is the party of hard money, and is opposed to legal tender paper money as a part of our permanent financial system, and we therefore favor the gradual retirement and cancellation of all United States notes and treasury notes, under such legislative provisions as will prevent undue contraction.

We demand that the national credit shall be resolutely maintained at all times and under all circumstances.

The other resolution was offered as an addition to the plat form:

We commend the honesty, economy, courage, and fidelity of the present Democratic administration.

A most earnest debate ensued upon the Free Silver policy, the most dramatic and interesting event of which was an impassioned speech by Mr. William J. Bryan, of Nebraska. This gentleman excited the Silver men to the highest pitch of enthusiasm by his oratory, and at once leaped into promias a presidential candidate. Indeed, it was believed that, if a vote had been taken on that day, he would have been Dominated almost by acclamation. The financial plank offered

nence

by the minority was rejected by ayes 303, noes 626; and the resolution commendatory of President Cleveland's administration was defeated by ayes 357, noes 564. In all the votes thus far reported, the minority consisted of the members from New England, except a few from Maine and Massachusetts, the coast States as far south as Maryland, and the delegates from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota. Senator Hill had offered, in addition to the amendments proposed by the minority of the committee, two other amendments. The first proposed to insert at the end of the clause opposing "the demonetization of any kind of legal tender money by private contract" the following proviso:

But it should be carefully provided by law at the same time that any change in the monetary standard should not apply to existing contracts.

The other amendment was to add at the end of the financial plank the following pledge:

Our advocacy of the independent free coinage of silver being based on the belief that such coinage will effect and maintain a parity between gold and silver at the ratio of sixteen to one, we declare as a pledge of our sincerity that, if such free coinage shall fail to effect such parity within one year from its enactment by law, such coinage shall thereupon be suspended.

Both of these amendments were rejected without a division, and the platform as a whole, unamended, was then adopted by yeas 628, nays 301.

The overwhelming victory of the Silver wing of the party made it certain that the defeated minority would be unable to prevent a nomination under the two-thirds rule always governing Democratic conventions. The delegates who had contended so earnestly against the adoption of the free coinage plank were for the most part not men to yield their convictions because they had been outvoted. They did not withdraw from the convention, but on every convenient occasion they reiterated their determination not to accept the platform adopted, and not to take part in the nomination of candidates. On the first vote for a candidate for President, 178 delegates refused to be recorded, including the entire delegations of three States. William J. Bryan, of Nebraska, was nominated for President on the fifth vote. The successive trials resulted as follows: :

The fifth vote, it will be seen, left Mr. Bryan twelve votes short of a nomination. After the roll-call was completed and before the result was announced, 78 delegates who had supported other candidates transferred their votes to Mr. Bryan and gave him the nomination. Arthur Sewall, of Maine, was nominated for Vice-President. Five trials were necessary to effect this nomination. They resulted as follows: :

It long had been evident that this canvass was to witness an unexampled shifting of the line between parties. In those parts of the country where the silver idea was almost universally dominant, there had been an instant bolt of Republicans