The Weekly Intelligencer

WILLIAM J. BRYAN NOMINATED.
The Greatest Convention Ever Held in the United States Passes Into History.
PLATFORM DECLARES FOR 16 TO 1
Bryan Will be Elected President in November by a Phenomenal Majority
Was Nominated on the Fifth Ballot-
His Nomination Made Unanimous-
McLean, of Ohio, will Probably Get Second Place.
On last Tuesday, July 7th, 1896, the doors to the largest convention hall ever erected in the world, were thrown open and the building was immediately filled to over-flowing by democrats, who were about to witness the greatest democratic convention ever held since the war. The main hall was decorated in an artistic and effective manner. The most noticeable feature of the decorations was the immense pictures of the seven democratic presidents-Jefferson, Jackson. Van Buren, Polk, Tyler, Buchanan and Cleveland. Just above these was a mammoth representation of the American eagle with the shield of the United States in its talons.
Chairman Harrity called the convention to order at 12:55 p. m. The convention was opened with prayer by Rev. Edward M. Stires. After quite a contest Hon. John W. Daniel, of Virginia, was chosen temporary chairman over David B. Hill, of New York.
MR. DANIEL'S SPEECH.
"Mr. Chairman of the National Democratic Convention:-In receiving from your hands this gavel as the temporary presiding officer of this convention, I beg leave to express a sentiment which I am sure is unanimous, that no national convention was ever presided over with more ability or with more fairness than by yourself. (Cheers and cries of "Harrity. Harrity. I can express no better wish for myself than that I may be able; in some feeble way, to model my conduct by your model, and to practice by your example. (Cheers.)
"The high position, gentlemen, to which you have chosen me involves a great personal honor and a keen responsibility. For the honor, I thank you. The responsibility I would be wholly inadequate to bear, did I depend upon myself, but your gracious aid will make it easy and its burden light. That aid I confidently invoke from you for the sake of the great cause under whose banner we have fought so many battles, and which now demands of us such staunch devotion; and such loyal service.
SORRY TO OPPOSE HILL.
"I regret that my name should have been brought in, even in the most courteous and serious complication, with that of my distinguished friend, the great senator from New York. (Applause.) But the very fact that I have permitted it to be done refutes the suggestion that has been improvidently made on this floor, that either I or those whom I have the honor to represent would ever heap indignities upon that brave and illustrious head. (Great applause.) No candidate, no dispassionate judgment, gentlemen, can ever misinterpret your meaning. The senator from New York himself knows. as I know. and as you know, that there is no personality in the preferment which has been given to me. He must know, and the whole country that watches these proceedings must know, that it is solely due to the principle that this great majority of democrats stand for, and that they know I stand with them (applause), and that it is given in the spirit of the instructions received by these representatives of the people, from the people, whom all democrats will ever bow to as the purest and original source of all power. The birth of the democratic party was coeval with the birth of the sovereignty of the people. It can never die until the declaration of American independence is forgotten, and that sovereignty is crushed out. (Great applause.)
"I am happy, gentlemen, to know that as the majority in this convention is not personal, neither in any sense is it sectional. It blends the palmettos and the pines in Maine and South Carolina. It begins with the sunrise in Maryland and spreads into a sunburst in Louisiana and Texas. It stretches in one unbroken column across the American continent, from the Atlantic shores of the Old Dominion and Georgia, and it sheds its silvery beams over the golden gates of California. (Applause.) It sends forth its pioneers from Plymouth rock, and waves over the golden wheat fields of Dakota. It has its strongholds in Alabama and Mississippi, and its outposts in Minnesota. Florida and Oregon. (Applause.) It sticks like a tarheel (applause) down in the old North state, and it writes 16 to 1 on the saddlebags of the Arkansas traveler. (Loud applause.) It pours down its rivulets from the mountains of West Virginia, and it makes a great lake in New Mexico. Arizona, Wyoming. Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Montana and Colorado. It stands guard around the national capitol in the District of Columbia (cheers), and it camps on the frontiers of Oklahoma. It sweeps like a prairie fire over Iowa and Kansas, and puts up a red light on the confines of Nebraska, It marshals its massive battalions in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. Last, but far from least, when I see this grand array and think of the British gold standard that was recently unfurled over the ruins of republican promises at St. Louis, I think, too, of the battle of New Orleans, of which it was said:
There stood 'John Bull, in martial pomp, but there was old Kentucky. (Applause.)
Brethren of the East, there is no South, there is no North, there is no East or West in this uprising of the people for American emancipation from the conspiracy of European kings, led on by Great Britain, which seeks to destroy one-half of the money of the world. and to make American manufacturers. merchants. farmers and mechanics mere hewers of wood and drawers of water.
A TIP FOR THE GOLD MEN.
"There is one thing golden, which, permit me, in the same good humor which has characterized your conduct. to commend to you here. It is the golden rule. to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Forget not the greed of devils, and that an absolute acquiescence in the will of the majority is the vital principle of the republic. Democrats as you have been, democrats as I trust you will ever be. acquiesce gracefully in the will of this great majority of your fellow-democrats, and only ask to go with them, as they have often gone with you. (Applause.)
Do not forget, gentlemen, that for thirty years we have supported the men you have named for president-Seymour. Greeley, Tilden, Hancock, and twice Grover Cleveland.' Do not forget that we have submitted cheerfully to your compromise platforms, and to your repeated pledges of bimetallism, and have patiently borne repeated disappointments as to their fulfillment. Do not forget at the last national convention of the democratic party in 1892, you proclaimed yourselves to be in favor of the use of both gold and silver as a standard money of the country; for the coinage of both gold and silver without discriminating against either metal: and that the only question left open was the ratio between the metals. Do not forget-and I refer to the fact in no inferior sense-that just four years ago in a democratic convention in this city, the New York delegation stood here solidly and immovably for a candidate committed to the free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the ratio of 16 to 1.
And if we are still for it, let it not be forgotten that we owe it in some measure to their teachings. (Applause.)
THE DEBT TO THE EAST.
"That we owe you much, gentlemen of the East, is readily acknowledged, and we are grateful. We owe you much. gentlemen of the convention, and for what we owe you of the East is the force bill and the McKinley bill and the Sherman law, the triple infamy of republican legislation. The first was aimed not more at the South than at the great cities of the East. and chief among them, the great democratic city of New York, with its magnificent patronage. That bill got its death blow in the senate. but there was not a single democrat in New York or New England to vote against it. If you gentlemen have helped to save the South, it has also helped to save you in the East; but whether the South should be saved or not, those great American republican senators from the West-Teller, Walcott, and your Jones and your Stanford. of California-sank their partisan feeling on the altar of their patriotism and came forward to the rescue of the American institutions.
No man. gentlemen. in this high noon of our country's fraternity, can revive force bills now in this reconciled and reunited republic. Our opponents themselves have abandoned them. There is none that can stand between the union of hearts and the union of hands that U. S. Grant, in his dying vision, saw was coming on angels wings to all the sons of our common country. When Chicago dressed Southern graves in flowers. she buried sectionalism under a mountain of fragrance. When Southern soldiers on yesterday cheered the wounded hero of the North. in Richmond. the South answered back: Let us have peace; peace, union and liberty, now and forever.
INIQUITY OF THE GOLD STANDARD.
"As the majority of democrats is not sectional, neither does it stand for any privileged or class legislation. The active business men of this country, its manufacturers. merchants, farmers, sons of toil! in counting room, factory, field and mine, know that the contraction of the currency sweeps away with the silent and resistless force of gravitation the annual profits of their enterprise and investments. They know, too, that the gold standard means contraction and the organization of disaster. What hope is there for the country and what hope is there for democracy unless the views of the majority here shall be adopted? Do not the people know that it was not silver legislation, but legislation dictated by the advocates of the gold standard that has caused. and now continues, the financial depression? Do they not know that when their demands upon democracy were complied with in 1893, and the Sherman law repealed without a substitute. that the very state of the East that demanded it turned against the democracy who granted it and swept away their majorities in a torrent of ballots?
"Had the silver men had their way then. instead of the gold monometallists. what storms of abuse would be today be emptied upon their heads; but the people, applying the power of memory and analysis alike to discover the causes of their arrested prosperity, need not go far to find them. They do not forget, when democracy came to power in 1893, it inherited from its republican predecessor the tax system and the currency system, of which the McKinley and the Sherman laws were the culminating atrocities. It came to power amidst a panic which fitly followed upon their enactment-with strikes, lockouts. riots and civic commotions. while the scenes of peaceful industry in Pennsylvania had become military camps.
Beside manifold oppressive features, the McKinley law had thrown away $50,000,000 of revenue derived from sugar under the special plea of a free breakfast table, and had substituted bounties to sugar planters, thus decreasing revenue and increasing expenditures, thus burning the candle at both ends, and making the people pay at last for the alleged free breakfast.
"From the joint operation of the McKinley law and Sherman laws, an adverse balance of trade was forced against us in 1893, a surplus of $100,000,000 in the treasury was converted into a deficit of $70,000,000 in 1894, and engraved bonds prepared by a republican secretary to borrow money to support the government were the ill omens of the preorganized ruin that awaited the incoming democracy. More significant still, the very authors of the ill-starred Sherman law makeshift were already at confessional upon the stool of penitence, and were begging democrats to help them to put out the conflagration of disaster that they themselves had kindled.
So far as revenue to support the government is concerned, the democratic party, with but a slender majority in the senate. was not long in providing it, and had not the supreme court of the United States reversed its settled doctrine of 100 years, the income tax incorporated in the tariff bill would long since have abundantly supplied it.
"Respecting finance, the republicans, populists and democrats, while differing upon almost all other subjects, had united in 1892 in declaring for the restoration of our American system of bimetallism. By republican and democratic efforts alike, the Sherman law was swept from the statute books, the eagerness to rid the country of that republican incubus being so great that no prudent effort was made to provide a substitute. In the very act of the Sherman law repeal, it was declared to be the policy of the United States of America to continue the use of both gold and silver as standard money, and to coin them into dollars of equal intrinsic and exchangeable value. The republican party has now renounced the creed of its platform, and of our national pledges, and presented to the country the issue of higher taxes, more bonds and less money. It has proclaimed at last, throwing away the disguises. the British gold standard. We can only expect to succeed, my countrymen, a specimen of panic and a long prolonged period of depression. Do not ask us then to join them in any of their propositions. Least of all ask us to join them upon the money question and fight a sham battle over a settled tariff, for the money question is the paramount issue before the American people, and it involves true Americanism more than any economic issue that ever was presented to a president at a presidential election.
THE EXISTING STANDARD.
"The existing gold standard-whence comes the idea that we are upon it? The last enactment of congress on the subject, in repealing the Sherman law, pledged the whole country to the continuance of the double standard. We are not upon any gold standard. but we have a disordered and miscellaneous currency of nine varieties, three metals and six of paper, the product for the most part of republican legislation, rendered worse by the treasury practice begun by republican secretaries,-and unfortunately copied by their democratic successor. (Applause.)
Then consider these facts, gentlemen: The federal, state and municipal taxes in this country are assessed and paid by the standard of the whole mass of money in circulation. No authority has ever been conferred by congress for the issue of any bonds payable in gold, but distinctly refused. The specie resumption of 1875 gave the surplus revenue in the treasury, not gold only, as the money of redemption. Provision made by the Bland-Allison act of 1876 added to our circulation some $350,000,000 of standard silver money, or paper based upon it, and all that mass of silver money is sustained at a parity with gold by nothing whatever on earth but the silver in it, and the legal tender functions imparted to it by law. (Applause) We have no outstanding obligations in the United States except the small sum of $14,000,000 of gold certificates which are specifically payable in gold. All of our specie obligations are payable in coin, which means silver or gold at the government option, or in silver specifically and only. There is more silver and paper based upon silver in circulation today than there is of gold or paper based on gold, and that the gold dollar is not the unit of value is demonstrated by the fact that no gold dollar pieces can now, under our laws, be minted.
DISASTER WOULD FOLLOW
"If we should go upon the gold standard, we must change the existing bimetallic standard of payment of all public debts, taxes and appropriations, saving alone those specifically payable in gold As we have twenty billions of public and private debt, it would take more than three times all the gold in this country to pay even one year's interest upon it. We should be compelled hereafter to contract the currency by paying off $500,000,000 of greenbacks and Sherman notes in gold, which would nearly exhaust the entire American stock, in and out of the treasury, and the same policy would require that the $31,000,000 of silver certificates should be paid in gold also, as foreshadowed by the present draft upon the country's stock of gold. This means an increase of the public debt by $500,000,000. with the prospect of $344,000,000 more. The disastrous consequences of such a folly are appallingly contemplated, and the only alternative suggested is the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 (applause) and the complete restoration of our hereditary and constitutional system of American money.
"I pray you, no more makeshifts and straddles. Vex not the country with your prophecies of smooth things to come from the British-republican propaganda. (Applause.) The fact that the European nations are going to the standard, renders it all the more impractical that we should do so, for the unlimited stock of gold in the world would have longer division and a smaller share for each nation.
"Previous predictions have been punctually refuted when prosperity was prophesied to come upon the unconditional repeal of the Sherman law. Instead of protecting the treasury reserve, as it was prophesied it would do, an unprecedented raid was promptly made on it. and the $262,000,000 of borrowed gold has been insufficient to guarantee its security. Instead of causing foreign coin to flow to us. it has stimulated the flow of gold to Europe, and greenbacks and the Sherman notes. which are just as much payable in silver as in gold, have been used to dip the gold out of the treasury of the United States and to store it in the strong boxes of the lords of Europe.
"Instead of reviving business. this folly has further depressed it. Instead of increasing wages, this policy has further decreased them. Instead of multiplying opportunities for employment, this policy has multiplied idlers. Instead of increasing the prices of our produce, this policy has lowered them, as is estimated, about 15 per-cent in three years.
Instead of restoring confidence. this policy has banished confidence. Instead of bringing relief, it has brought years of misery, and for this reason it has contracted the currency of the United States $4 a head for every man, woman and child since November 1, 1893: and with this vast aggregate contraction the price of land and of manufactured goods. and of all kinds of agricultural and mechanical produce has fallen.
The public revenues have fallen, wages of labor have fallen, and everything on the face of the earth has fallen but taxes and debts, which have grown in burden, while on the other hand the means of their liquidation has been diminished. In the meantime, gentlemen, commercial failures have progressed with devastating effect north, south, east and west in this nation. The dividends on bank stocks have shrunken. Three-fourths of the railway mileage of the United States is now in the hands of receivers, and the country has received a shock from which it will take years to recover. Yet, in this distressed and contracted condition the new fledged monometallists ask us to declare for a gold standard and to wait for relief upon some ghostly dream of an international agreement.
THE EUROPEAN CONSPIRACY.
"But the people now do well know that the conspiracy of European monarchs, led by Great Britain, has purposes of aggrandizement to subserve in the war upon American silver money, and stand in the way of such agreement. With their credit they seek to enhance the purchasing power of thousands and millions which is owing to them all over the world, and which you owe to them. They draw upon the United States of America for their food supplies and raw material, wheat, corn, oil, cotton, iron, lead and other like staples, and they seek to get it for the least money. Besides this, Great Britain has large gold mines in South Africa and South America, and closing the silver mines has greatly enhanced their products and their values. Recent British aggression in Venezuela and in the settlements of South America was moved by the desire to possess more of these gold mines, and by monopolizing the metal, as far as possible, to assert British commercial supremacy over the world.
No nation calls itself free and independent that is not great enough to establish and maintain a financial system of its own. (Great applause.) To pretend that this, the foremost, richest and most powerful nation of the world cannot coin its own money without suing for an international agreement at the courts of European autocrats who have none but primary interests to subserve, has for many years been held out at every presidential election. They have made use of such an agreement, and have foiled it afterward.
We have never in all our history had an international agreement upon a money system. and none of the founders of this republic ever dreamed that such an agreement was essential. We have had three international conferences in order to obtain it, and to wait longer upon them is to ignore the interests of our own people and degrade our national dignity, and to advertise to all mankind our impotence and our folly.
ONLY POSSIBLE CONCESSION.
"The concession that comes from the gold standard men of all Europe for the restoration of the double standard is the only solution of the financial difficulties that we can find in the outlook before us. The declaration of the British premier and the French minister and the Russian government, which have recently been expressed, shows that if it succeeds at all, it will succeed against the sinister power of autocracy, which has been used against it,
An international agreement for the restoration of the metals to an equality would be a bond of mankind which would enable us to regulate the value of money and bring the two metals upon a parity. Alexander Hamilton, the great secretary of the treasury under Washington, understood this question. He framed the first financial act of this country, which was passed in 1792, fixing the unity of our currency upon both metals, for a double reason: first, that to exclude one would reduce it to a mere merchandise; and the other, that it would involve the difference between a scanty and a full circulation. Thomas Jefferson knew this when he indorsed the work of Hamilton, and George Washington knew this when he approved it. Daniel Webster knew this when he declared that silver and gold are legal standards, and that neither congress nor any state has the right to establish any other standard or to displace this one. General Grant knew this when he looked to silver as a resource of payment, and found to his astonishment that a republican congress had demonetized it. and that he himself had unwittingly signed the bill. The whole United States now know this. and they know also that they who would be free themselves must strike the blow. Cheers.
UNITED STATES INDEPENDENT.
"The majority of this convention I have the honor here to represent maintain that this great American nation. with a natural base of fixed empire, the greatest ever established by man, with more territory and more productive energy than Great Britain. France and Germany combined, without dependence upon European nations for anything they produce, and with European nations dependent upon much that we produce, is fully capable of restoring the constitutional money system of gold and silver at equality with each other. (Applause) And as our fathers in 1776 declared our national independence of all the world, so today has the great democratic party,' founded by Thomas Jefferson, the author of that declaration. appeared here in Chicago to declare the financial independence of the United States of all other nations, and to invoke all true Americans to assert by their suffrages at the polls that our country may be placed where she by right belongs, as the freest and foremost; as the most prosperous and happiest nation that ever blessed the life of mankind upon this globe.'
When Mr. Daniel had concluded his speech, the convention adjourned to meet at 10 o'clock Wednesday morning, when it was promptly called to order by the temporary chairman.
The committee on permanent organization reported the name of Stephen M. White, of California, for permanent chairman. Senator White, on taking the chair, made a brief but forcible speech.
The sessions of Wednesday and Wednesday night were taken up with oratory and with the contests in Michigan and Nebraska. The silver men were seated in both cases.
On Thursday, after considerable oratory, the platform as agreed upon by the committee was adopted by a vote of 628 to 301, one delegate not voting.
THE PLATFORM.
We, the democrats of the United States, in national convention assembled, do reaffirm our allegiance to those great essential principles of justice and liberty upon which our institutions are founded, and which the democratic party has advocated from Jefferson's time to our own-freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience, the preservation of personal rights, the equality of all citizens before the law, and the careful observance of constitutional limitations.
During all these years the democratic party has resisted the tendency of selfish interests to the centralization of governmental power, and has steadfastly maintained the integrity of the dual scheme of government established by the founders of this republic of republics. Under its guidance and teachings the great principle of local self-government has found its best expression in the maintenance of the rights of the states and its assertion that it is necessary to confine the general government to the exercise of the powers granted by the constitution of the United States.
MONEY PLANK FIRST.
Recognizing that the money question is paramount to all others at this time, we invite attention to the fact that the federal constitution names silver and gold together as the money metals of the United States, and that the first coinage law passed by congress under the constitution made the silver dollar the monetary unit and admitted gold to free coinage at a ratio based upon the silver unit.
We declare that the act of 1873. demonetizing silver, without the knowledge or approval of the American people, has resulted in the appreciation of gold and a corresponding fall in the prices of commodities produced by the people; a heavy increase in the burden of taxation and of the money-lending class, at home and abroad;
prostration of industry and impoverishment of the people.
We are unalterably opposed to the monometallism which has locked fast the prosperity of an industrial people in the paralysis of hard times. Gold monometallism is a British policy, and its adoption has brought other nations into financial servitude to London. It is not only un-American, but anti-American, and it can be fastened upon the United States only by the stifling of that indomitable spirit and love of liberty which proclaimed our political independence in 1776, and won it in the war of the revolution.
We demand the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation We demand that the standard silver dollar shall be a full legal tender, equally with gold, for all debts, public and private, and we favor such legislation as will prevent for the future the demonetization of any kind of legal tender money by private contract.
We are opposed to the policy and practice of surrendering to the holders of the obligations of the United States the option reserved by law to the government of redeeming such obligations in either silver or gold coin.
We are opposed to the issuing of interest-bearing bonds of the United States in times of peace, and condemn the trafficking with banking syndicates, which in exchange for bonds and at an enormous profit to themselves, supply the federal treasury with gold to maintain the policy of gold monometallism.
Congress alone has the power to coin and issue money, and President Jackson declared that this power could not be delegated to corporations or individuals. We therefore demand that the power to issue notes to circulate as money be taken from the national banks, and that all paper money shall be issued directly by the treasury department, to be redeemable in coin and receivable for all debts, public and private.
We hold that tariff duties should only be levied for purposes of revenue, such duties to be so adjusted as to operate equally throughout the country and not discriminate between any class or section, and that taxation should be limited by the needs of the government, honestly and economically administered. We denounce as disturbing to business the republican threat to restore the McKinley law, which has been twice condemned by the people in national elections, and which, enacted under the false plea of protection to home industry, proved a prolific breeder of trusts and monopolies, enriched the few at the expense of the many, restricted trade and deprived the producers of the great American staples of access to their natural markets.
Until the money question is settled we are opposed to any agitation for further changes in our tariff laws, except such as are necessary to make the deficit in revenue caused by the adverse decision of the supreme court on the income tax.
But for this decision of the supreme court there would be no deficit in the revenue under the law passed by a democratic congress. In strict pursuance of the uniform decisions of that court for nearly 100 years, that court having in that decision sustained constitutional objections to its enactment which had previously been overruled by the ablest judges who have ever sat on that bench. We declare that it is the duty of congress to use all the constitutional power which remains after that decision, or which may come from its reversal by the court as it may hereafter be constituted. so that the burdens of taxation may equally and impartially lead to the end that wealth may bear its due proportion of the expenses of the government.
We hold that the most efficient way of protecting American labor is to prevent the importation of foreign pauper labor to compete with it in the home market, and that the value of the home market to our American farmers and artisans is greatly 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 manufactures.
The absorption of wealth by the few. the consolidation of our leading rail way 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.
REPUBLICAN EXTRAVAGANCE DENOUNCED,
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 laborer that pays them is unemployed and the products of the people's toil are depressed in price till they can no longer repay the cost of production. We demand a return to that simplicity and economy which best 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 state 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, 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 names 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 and Arizona 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 bona fide residents of the territory or district in which their duties are to be performed.
FREE HOMES AND HOME RULE.
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.
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. We favor appointments based upon merits, 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 one hundred years and sanctioned by the examples of the greatest and wisest of those who founded it and have maintained our government that no man shall 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 tide water. 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.
Confident 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.
The platform was then read.
The platform having been adopted, the next business of importance was the nomination of candidates for the presidency.
Senator Vest placed in nomination Richard P. Bland, of Missouri, 'and was ably seconded by David Overmeyer, of Kansas.
Wm. J. Bryan, of Nebraska, was placed in nomination by H. T. Lewis, of Georgia.
Governor Matthews, of Indiana, was presented by Senator Turpie.
Boies, of Iowa, was placed in nomination by Frederick White, of the same state.
Senator Blackburn, of Kentucky, was presented for nomination by John S. Rhea.
John R. McLean, of Ohio, was placed in nomination by A. W. Patrick.
VEST NOMINATES BLAND.
The following is Senator Vest's nominating speech:
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the convention:-Revolutions do not begin with the rich and prosperous. They represent the protest of those who are suffering from present conditions, and whose demands for relief are denounced by the beneficiaries of unjust and oppressive legislation.
When a profound sense of wrong, evolved from years of distress, fastens upon the public mind in a free country, and the people are determined to have redress, a leader is always found who is a platform in himself, and to whom they instinctively turn as the logical exponent of their hopes.
The people are not iconoclasts, nor false to their convictions. They followed Jefferson when he assailed the centralizing and monarchical doctrines of the old federalists. and was denounced as a communist and leveler by the wealth and culture of New England and New York.
They followed Jackson when he took the United States bank by the throat and was proclaimed a tyrant and ruffian by the usurers and money kings.
They followed Lincoln when he attacked the slave power, and declared that this country could not exist "half slave and half free."
The great movement for bimetallism- the free and unlimited coinage of gold and silver at the ratio of 16 to 1-and the restoration of silver to its constitutional status, is
"No sapling chance sown by the fountain, Bloaming at Beltane, in winter to fade."
It has come to stay.
A PROTEST AGAINST WRONG.
It is a protest against the wrong and outrage of 1873, when, without debate, and with the knowledge of only a few men in congress, the silver dollar was stricken from the coinage and the despot of gold made supreme as to all values.
It is a declaration by the freeman of America that the United States must withdraw from the conspiracy which was formed to destroy one-half the metallic money of the world, in order to establish the slavery of greed and usury, more degrading than the tyranny of armed force.
It is the stern demand from unrequited toil, bankrupt enterprises and ruined homes, for a change in the money system which for years has brought disaster and desolation.
In this crisis of our country and party we must take no step backward in platform nor candidate. We want no uncertain nor doubtful leader, Na
"Laggard in name, or dastard in war."
No latter day silver saint, but a grizzled and scarred veteran, who has borne the heat and burden of the day, and who,
breast is marked from edge of sword and point of lance on a hundred fields.
Twenty years ago the battle of silver was begun in the halls of congress by a modest and unpretending, brave man, not an iridescent nor meteoric statesman, but of the people and from the people, who has never faltered for an instant in the great struggle. Others doubted and wavered, some yielded to blandishment and patronage and are now holding office under the gold power; others misrepresented their constituents and have been provided for in the national infirmary of the present administration. but Richard Parks Bland stands now where he stood then, the living, breathing embodiment of the silver cause,
He struck with steel point the golden shield of the money monopolists, as did Ivanhoe that of the proud Templar in the lists at Ashby, and has neither asked nor given quarter.
HIS RECORD IN CONGRESS.
Nor is he a narrow, one-ideaed man. For twenty-two years in congress he fought in the front ranks for democratic principles and politics, as taught by Jefferson. He stood by the side of Randall and risked health and life to defeat the first force bill. He opposed ably and earnestly that crowning tariff infamy, the McKinley act, and again was among the foremost opponents of the last force bill, which passed the house, but was defeated in the senate. He introduced the first free coinage measure in congress, and was the author of the seigniorage bill, which passed both houses and was vetoed by President Cleveland.
If this be an obscure record, where can be found the career of any public servant which deserves the plaudits of his countrymen?
The democrats of Missouri have passed through the fiery furnace of republican proscription seven times tested, and whose state flag has always been placed beneath the great oriflamme of the national democracy, and make no apology nor excuse when offering such a candidate for the presidency.
If you ask, "Whence comes our candidate?" we answer. "Not from the usurers' den, nor temple of Mammon, where the clink of gold drowns the voice of patriotism, but from the farm, the workshop. the mine-from the hearts and homes of the people."
To reject him is to put a brand upon rugged honesty and undaunted courage, and to chill the hearts and hopes of those who during all these years have waited for this hour of triumph. To nominate him is to make our party again that of the people, and to insure success.
"Give us silver Dick, and silver quick, And we will make McKinley sick. In the ides of next November."
The convention then adjourned until Friday morning.
On Friday morning the balloting began, Bland leading all first three ballots with Bryan second. On the fourth ballot the convention broke to Bryan, and on the fifth ballot Bryan was nominated. Convention adjourned until 8 p. m.
State Of Ohio, City Of Toledo, ss.
Lucas County.
Frank J. Cheney makes oath that he is the senior partner of the firm of F. J. Cheney & Co., doing business in the city of Toledo, county and state aforesaid and that said firm will pay the sum of One Hundred Dollars for each and every case of Catarrh that cannot be cured by the use of Hall's Catarrh Cure.
[SEAL]
A. W. GLEASON.
Notary Public.
Hall's Catarrh Cure is taken internally and acts directly upon the blood and mucous surfaces of the system. Send for testimonials, free.
F. J. CHENEY & CO., Toledo, O.
Sold by Druggists, 75c.
The platform was then read.