The chair put the question required by the rule, and the nomina

tion of Mr. Hobart was made unanimous.

The roll of states and territories was then called under the rule, for the selection of members of the committees to severally notify Governor McKinley and Mr. Hobart of their nomination. Governor Bushnell of Ohio then submitted a resolution, which was adopted, appointing Senator Thurston, permanent chairman of the convention, chairman of the committee chosen to notify William McKinley of his nomination for President, and temporary chairman Fairbanks, the chairman of the committee chosen to notify Garret A. Hobart of his nomination for Vice-President. Resolutions thanking the officers, secretaries, etc., of the convention for the able and faithful manner in which they had performed their respective duties, and the citizens of St. Louis for the fulfillment of every promise made relating to the convention, were submitted and adopted, and the convention, at 7.53 p. m., adjourned sine die.

The Seventeenth Democratic National Convention met at Chicago, Illinois, on July 7, and on July 10 nominated William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska for President, and on July 11 nominated Arthur Sewall of Maine for Vice-President. One hundred and sixty-two delegates refused to vote on the final (fifth) ballot for a nominee for President, that number refusing to vote on any preceding ballot.

The National Convention of the Silver party met in St. Louis on July 22, and on July 24 nominated Messrs. Bryan and Sewall for President and Vice-President respectively, defeating a proposition to endorse their nominations as made by the Democratic convention. The People's (Populist) party also met in convention at St. Louis on July 22, and on July 24 nominated Mr. Bryan for President, and Thomas E. Watson of Georgia for Vice-President, the latter being first nominated, a motion to nominate said candidate first, prevailing by yeas 738, nays 637.

The Prohibition party met in convention at Pittsburg on May 27, and nominated Joshua B. Levering of Maryland for President, and Hole Johnson of Illinois for Vice-President. There was a bolt of free silver delegates by reason of the defeat of a free silver coinage 16 to 1 plank.

The National Democratic Convention, composed of eight hundred and ninety delegates from forty-one states, who repudiated the platform and nominees of the Democratic National Convention at Chicago, met in Indianapolis on September 2, 1896, and on the following day nominated Senator John M. Palmer of Illinois for President, and Simon B. Buckner of Kentucky for Vice-President.

NOTIFICATION OF GOVERNOR MCKINLEY.

The Committee on Notification of the nominee for President met at the home of Governor McKinley, in Canton, Ohio, on June 29, 1896, where Senator John M. Thurston, of Nebraska, chairman of the committee, by appointment of the convention, addressed Governor McKinley as follows:

SENATOR THURSTON TO GOVERNOR MCKINLEY.

GOVERNOR MCKINLEY: We are here to perform the pleasant duty assigned us by the Republican National Convention, recently assembled in St. Louis,-that of formally notifying you of your nomination as the candidate of the Republican party for President of the United States.

We respectfully request your acceptance of this nomination and your approval of the declaration of principles adopted by the convention.

We assure you that you are the unanimous choice of a united party, and your candidacy will be immediately accepted by the country as an absolute guarantee of Republican success.

Your nomination has been made in obedience to a popular demand, whose universality and spontaneity attest the affection and confidence of the plain people of the United States. By common consent you are their champion. Their mighty uprising in your behalf emphasizes the sincerity of their conversion to the cardinal principles of protection and reciprocity as best exemplified in that splendid congressional act which justly bears your name. Under it this Nation advanced to the very culmination of a prosperity far surpassing that of all other peoples and all other times; a prosperity shared in by all sections, all interests, and all classes, by capital and labor; by producer and consumer; a prosperity so happily in harmony with the genius of popular government that its choicest blessings were most widely distributed among the lowliest toilers and the humblest homes.

In 1892, your countrymen, unmindful of your solemn warnings, returned that party to power which reiterated its everlasting opposition to a protective tariff and demanded the repeal of the McKinley act. They sowed the wind. They reaped the whirlwind. The sufferings and losses and disasters to the American people from four years of Democratic tariff are vastly greater than those which came to them from four years of civil war.

Out of it all one great good remains. Those who scorned your counsels speedily witnessed the fulfillment of your prophesies, and even as the scourged and repentant Israelites abjured their stupid idols and resumed unquestioning allegiance to Moses and to Moses' God, so now your countrymen, ashamed of their errors, turn to you and to those glorious principles for which you stand, in the full belief that your candidacy and the Republican platform mean that the end of the wilderness has come and the promised land of American Prosperity is again to them an assured inheritance. But your nomination means more than the endorsement of a protective tariff, of reciprocity, of sound money, and of honest finance, for all of which you have so steadfastly stood. It means an endorsement of your heroic youth, your faithful years of arduous public service; your sterling patriotism, your stalwart Americanism; your Christian character, and the purity, fidelity, and simplicity of your private life. In all these things you are the typical American; for all these things you are the chosen leader of the people. God give you strength so to bear the honors and meet the duties of that great office for which you are now nominated and to which you will be elected, that your administration will enhance the dignity and power and glory of this Republic, and secure the safety, welfare and happiness of its liberty-loving people.

GOVERNOR MCKINLEY'S REPLY.

Senator THURSTON, and Gentlemen of the Notification Committee of the Republican National Convention:

To be selected as their Presidential candidate by a great party convention, representing so vast a number of the people of the United States, is a most distinguished

honor, for which I would not conceal my high appreciation, although deeply sensible of the great responsibilities of the trust, and my inability to bear them without the generous and constant support of my fellow-countrymen. Great as is the honor conferred, equally arduous and important is the duty imposed, and in accepting the one I assume the other, relying upon the patriotic devotion of the people to the best interests of our beloved country, and the sustaining care and aid of Him, without whose support all we do is empty and vain. Should the people ratify the choice of the great convention for which you speak, my only aim will be to promote the public good, which in America is always the good of the greatest number, the honor of our country, and the welfare of the people.

The questions to be settled in the National contest this year are as serious and important as any of the great governmental problems that have confronted us in the past quarter of a century. They command our sober judgment, and a settlement free from partisan prejudice and passion, beneficial to ourselves and befitting the honor and grandeur of the Republic. They touch every interest of our common country. Our industrial supremacy, our productive capacity, our business and commercial prosperity, our labor and its rewards, our National credit and currency, our proud financial honor, and our splendid free citizenship-the birthright of every American-are all involved in the pending campaign, and thus every home in the land is directly and intimately connected with their proper settlement. Great are the issues involved in the coming election, and eager and earnest the people for their right determination. Our domestic trade must be won back, and our idle working people employed in gainful occupations at American wages. Our home market must be restored to its proud rank of first in the world, and our foreign trade, so precipitately cut off by adverse National legislation, reopened on fair and equitable terms for our surplus agricultural and manufacturing products. Protection and reciprocity, twin measures of a true American policy, should again command the earnest encouragement of the Government at Washington. Public confidence must be resumed, and the skill, the energy, and the capital of our country find ample employment at home, sustained, encouraged and defended against the unequal competition and serious disadvantages with which they are now contending.

The Government of the United States must raise enough money to meet both its current expenses and increasing needs. Its revenues should be so raised as to protect the material interests of our people, with the lightest possible drain upon their resources, and maintain that high standard of civilization which has distinguished our country for more than a century of its existence. The income of the Government, I repeat, should equal its necessary and proper expenditures. A failure to pursue this policy has compelled the Government to borrow money, in a time of peace, to sustain its credit and pay its daily expenses. This policy should be reversed, and that, too, as speedily as possible. It must be apparent to all, regardless of party ties or affiliations, that it is our paramount duty to provide adequate revenue for the expenditures of the Government, economically and prudently administered. This the Republican party has heretofore done, and this I confidently believe it will do in the future when the party is again entrusted with power in the executive and legislative branches of our Government. The National credit, which has thus far fortunately resisted every assault upon it, must and will be upheld and strengthened. If sufficient revenues are provided for the support of the Government, there will be no necessity for borrowing money and increasing the public debt. The complaint of the people is not against the Administration for borrowing money and issuing bonds to preserve the credit of the country, but against the ruinous policy which has made this necessary. It is but an incident, and a necessary one, to the policy which has been inaugurated. The inevitable effect of such a policy is seen in the deficiency of the United States treasury, except as it is replenished by loans, and in the distress of the people who are suffering because of the scant demand for either their labor or the products of their labor. Here is the fundamental trouble, the remedy for which is Republican opportunity and duty. During all the years of Republican control following resumption, there was a steady reduction of the public debt while the gold reserve was sacredly maintained, and our currency and credit preserved without depreciation, taint, or suspicion. If we would restore this policy that brought us unexampled prosperity for more than thirty years under the most trying condition ever known in this country, the policy by which we made and bought more goods at home and sold more abroad, the trade balance would be quickly turned in our favor, and gold would come to us and not go from us in the settlement of all such balances in the future. The party that supplied by legislation the vast revenues for the conduct of our greatest war, that promptly restored the credit of the country at its close, that from its abundant revenues paid off a large share of the debt incurred in this war, and that resumed specie payments and placed our paper currency upon a sound and enduring basis, can be safely trusted to preserve both our credit and currency, with honor,

stability, and inviolability. The American people hold the financial honor of our Government as sacred as our flag, and can be relied upon to guard it with the same sleepless vigilance. They hold its preservation above party fealty, and have often demonstrated that party ties avail nothing when the spotless credit of our country is threatened. The money of the United States, and every kind or form of it, whether of paper, silver or gold, must be as good as the best in the world. It must not only be current at its full face value at home, but it must be counted at par in any and every commercial center of the globe. The sagacious and far-seeing policy of the great men who founded our Government, the teachings and acts of the wisest financiers at every stage in our history, the steadfast faith and splendid achievements of the great party to which we belong, and the genius and integrity of our people have always demanded this, and will ever maintain it. The dollar paid to the farmer, the wage earner, and the pensioner must continue forever equal in purchasing and debtpaying power to the dollar paid to any Government creditor.

The contest this year will not be waged upon lines of theory and speculation, but in the light of severe practical experience and new and dearly acquired knowledge. The great body of our citizens know what they want, and that they intend to have. They know for what the Republican party stands and what its return to power means to them. They realize that the Republican party believes that our work should be done at home and not abroad, and everywhere proclaim their devotion to the principles of a protective tariff, which, while supplying adequate revenues for the Government, will restore American production, and serve the best interests of American labor and development. Our appeal, therefore, is not to a false philosophy of vain theorists, but to the masses of the American people, the plain, practical people, whom Lincoln loved and trusted, and whom the Republican party has always faithfully striven to

serve.

The platform adopted by the Republican National Convention has received my careful consideration and has my unqualified approval. It is a matter of gratification to me, as I am sure it must be to you and Republicans everywhere, and to all our people, that the expressions of its declaration of principles are so direct, clear, and emphatic. They are too plain and positive to leave any chance for doubt or question as to their purport and meaning. But you will not expect me to discuss its provisions at length, or in any detail, at this time. It will, however, be my duty and pleasure at some future day to make to you, and through you to the great party you represent, a more formal acceptance of the nomination tendered me.

No one could be more profoundly grateful than I for the manifestations of public confidence of which you have so eloquently spoken. It shall be my aim to attest this appreciation by an unsparing devotion to what I esteem the best interests of the people, and in this work I ask the counsel and support of you, gentlemen, and of every other friend of the country. The generous expressions with which you, sir, convey the official notice of my nomination are highly appreciated, and as fully reciprocated, and I thank you and your associates of the Notification Committee, and the great party and convention at whose instance you come, for the high and exceptional distinction bestowed upon me.

At the close of Governor McKinley's remarks, Mr. Henry H. Smith, of Michigan, Assistant Secretary of the St. Louis Convention, and secretary of the committee, presented to Governor McKinley, on behalf of the convention, a gavel presented to it by Mr. W. H. Bartels, of Carthage, Illinois, made from a log taken from the cabin occupied by Abraham Lincoln in 1832, at New Salem, Illinois, for the nominee of the convention for President.

At the conclusion of Mr. Smith's remarks, in which a brief history of the various historic gavels presented to the nominees of all the Republican national conventions was given, Governor McKinley responded briefly and appropriately.