convinced that the American people will never tolerate the Chicago platform.

"We recognize the necessity and propriety of the honest coöperation 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 effectively 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.

"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 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, and always distinguishing our working-people in their better conditions of life from those of any competing country. Enjoying the blessings of the 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 to finally 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.

"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.

"Our present dependence upon foreign shipping for nine-tenths of our foreign carrying trade 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 effi

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

ciency 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.

"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 just 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.

"We commend the policy of the Republican party in the efficiency of the civil service. The administration has acted wisely in its efforts 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 wherever 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.

"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.

"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 efforts 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 reorganized 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 coöperation in all works of education and industry.

"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 individual control the most important island of the Samoan group and the best harbor in the southern Pacific, every American interest has been safeguarded.

HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

"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. 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, honorable alike to both contending parties, to terminate the strife between them.

"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 West 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-government consistent with their welfare and our duties shall be secured to them by law.

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

Democratic Party

Convention held in Kansas City, July 4-6, 1900. Temporary chairman, Charles S. Thomas, of Colorado; permanent chairman, James D. Richardson, of Ten

nessee.

William J. Bryan, of Nebraska, and Adlai E. Stevenson, of Illinois, were nominated for President and Vice-President. Both nominations were unani

mous.

Platform:

"We, the representatives of the Democratic party of the United States, assembled in national convention on the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, do reaffirm our faith in that immortal proclamation of the inalienable rights of man, and our allegiance to the Constitution framed in harmony therewith by the fathers of the republic. We hold with the United States Supreme Court that the Declaration of Independence is the spirit of our government, of which the Constitution is the form and letter. We declare again that all governments instituted among men derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; that any government not based upon the consent of the governed is a tyranny; and that to impose upon any people a government of force is to substitute the methods of imperialism for those of a republic. We hold that the Constitution follows the flag, and denounce the doctrine that an Executive or Congress deriving their existence and their powers from the Constitution can exercise lawful authority beyond it, or in violation of it. We assert that no nation can long endure half republic and half empire, and we warn the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home.

"Believing in these fundamental principles, we denounce the Porto Rico law, enacted by a Republican Congress against the protest and opposition of the Democratic minority, as a bold and open violation of the nation's organic law and a flagrant breach of the national good faith. It imposes upon the people of Porto Rico a government with