GOLD STANDARD.

We renew our allegiance to the principle of the gold standard and declare our confidence in the wisdom of the legislation of the Fiftysixth Congress, by which the parity of all our money and the stability of our currency on a gold basis have been secured.

We recognize that interest rates are a potent factor in production and business activity, and for the purpose of further equalizing and of further lowering the rates of interest we favor such monetary legislation as will enable the varying needs of the season and of all sections to be promptly met in order that trade may be evenly sustained, labor steadily employed, and commerce enlarged.

The volume of money in circulation was never so great per capita as it is to-day. We declare our steadfast opposition to the free and unlimited coinage of silver. No measure to that end could be considered which was without the support of the leading commercial countries of the world. However firmly Republican legislation may seem to have secured the country against the peril of base and discredited currency, the election of a Democratic President could not fail to impair the country's credit and to bring once more into question the intention of the American people to maintain upon the gold standard the parity of their money circulation. The Democratic party must be convinced that the American people will never tolerate the Chicago platform.

AGAINST TRUSTS.

We recognize the necessity and propriety of the honest co-operation of capital to meet new business conditions, and especially to extend our rapidly increasing foreign trade, but we condemn all conspiracies and combinations intended to restrict business, to create monopolies, to limit production, or to control prices, and favor such legislation as will effectually restrain and prevent all such abuses, protect and promote competition, and secure the rights of producers, laborers, and all who are engaged in industry and commerce.

PROTECTION.

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 the competition has been stimulated and production cheapened. Opportunity to 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, always distinguishing our working people in their better conditions of life from those of any competing country.

Enjoying the blessings of American common school, secure in the right of self-government, 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.

FOR LABOR.

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.

MERCHANT MARINE.

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 defense 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.

PENSIONS.

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 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.

CIVIL SERVICE.

We commend the policy of the Republican party in maintaining the efficiency of the civil service. 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.

We favor the extension of the rural free delivery service whereever 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.

WAR TAXES.

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.

ISTHMIAN CANAL.

We favor the construction, ownership, control and protection of an isthmian canal by the government of the United States. New markets are necessary for the increasing surplus of our farm products. Every effort should be made to open and obtain new markets, especially in the Orient, and the 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 reorganizad 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.

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.

FOREIGN POLICY.

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.

We commend the part taken by our government in the peace conference at the Hague.

BOER WAR.

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 Republic.

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, honorably alike to both contending parties, to determine the strife between them.

PHILIPPINES.

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 Western 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-goverment consistent with their welfare and our duties shall be secured to them by law.

PLEDGE TO CUBA.

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

Letter of Acceptance of President William McKinley to the

Notification Committee.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., Sept. 8, 1900. Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, Chairman Notification Committee:

MY DEAR SIR-The nomination of the Republican convention of June 19, 1900, for the office of president of the United States, which, as the official representative of the convention, you have conveyed to me, is accepted. I have carefully examined the platform adopted and give to it my hearty approval. Upon the great issue of the last national election it is clear.

It upholds the gold standard and indorses the legislation of the present congress by which that standard has been effectively strengthened. The stability of our national currency is therefore secure so long as those who adhere to this platform are kept in control of the government.

In the first battle, that of 1896, the friends of the gold standard and of sound currency were triumphant and the country is enjoying the fruits of that victory. Our antagonists, however, are not satisfied. They compel us to a second battle upon the same lines on which the first was fought and won. While regretting the reopening of this question, which can only disturb the present satisfactory finan cial condition of the government, and visit uncertainty upon our great business enterprises, we accept the issue and again invite the sound money forces to join in winning another and we hope a permanent triumph for an honest financial system which will continue inviolable the public faith.

As in 1896, the three silver parties are united, under the same leader who, immediately after the election of that year, in an address to the bimetallists, said:

"The friends of bimetallism have not been vanquished; they have simply been overcome. They believe that the gold standard is a conspiracy of the money changers against the welfare of the human race, and they will continue the warfare against it.'

The policy thus proclaimed has been accepted and confirmed by these parties. The Silver Democratic platform of 1900 continues the warfare against the so-called gold conspiracy when it expressly says: "We reiterate the demand of that (the Chicago) platform of 1896 for an American financial system made by the American people for themselves, which shall restore and maintain a bimetallic price level, and as part of such system the immediate restoration of the free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation."