volume 29, page 84.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (May). Extension of civil service rules by President Cleveland.

See (in this volume) CIVIL SERVICE REFORM: A. D. 1893-1896.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (June-November). The Presidential election. The silver question at issue. Party Platforms and Nominations.

A national conference held at Washington, in March, 1895, may be looked upon as the beginning of a widely and powerfully organized movement to force the demand for a free and unlimited coinage of silver, on equal terms, as legal tender money, with gold, into the front of the issues of the presidential canvass of 1896. The agitation then projected was carried on with extraordinary ardor and skill and had astonishing success. It was helped by the general depression of business in the country, and especially by the long continued ruling of low prices for the produce of the farms,—for all of which effects the gold standard of values was held to be the one relentless cause. In both political parties the free silver propaganda was pushed with startling effect, and there seemed to be doubt, for a time, whether the controlling politicians in either would take an opposing stand. Southern influences proved decisive of the result in the Democratic party; eastern influences in that of the Republicans. The ranks of the former were swept rapidly into the movement for free silver, and the party chiefs of the latter were driven to a conflict with it, not wholly by convictions or will of their own. During the spring and early summer of 1896, the Democratic Party in State after State became committed on the question, by declarations for the unlimited free coinage of silver, at the ratio of 16 to 1; until there was tolerable certainty, some weeks before the meeting of the national convention, that its nominee for President must be one who represented that demand. How positively the Republican Party would champion the gold monetary standard was somewhat less assured, though its stand on that side had been taken in a general way.

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Republican Platform and Nominations.

The Republican national convention was held at St. Louis, on the 16th, 17th and 18th of June. The "platform" reported by the committee on resolutions was adopted without amendment on the last named date. Its declarations were as follows:

"The Republicans of the United States, assembled by their representatives in National Convention, appealing for the popular and historical justification of their claims to the matchless achievements of the thirty years of Republican rule, earnestly and confidently address themselves to the awakened intelligence, experience, and conscience of their countrymen in the following declaration of facts and principles:

"For the first time since the civil war the American people have witnessed the calamitous consequences of full and unrestricted Democratic control of the Government. It has been a record of unparalleled incapacity, dishonor, and disaster. In administrative management it has ruthlessly sacrificed indispensable revenue, entailed an unceasing deficit, eked out ordinary current expenses with borrowed money, piled up the public debt by $262,000,000 in time of peace, forced an adverse balance of trade, kept a perpetual menace hanging over the redemption fund, pawned American credit to alien syndicates, and reversed all the measures and results of successful Republican rule.

"In the broad effect of its policy it has precipitated panic, blighted industry and trade with prolonged depression, closed factories, reduced work and wages, halted enterprise, and crippled American production while stimulating foreign production for the American market. Every consideration of public safety and individual interest demands that the Government shall be rescued from the hands of those who have shown themselves incapable to conduct it without disaster at home and dishonor abroad, and shall be restored to the party which for thirty years administered it with unequalled success and prosperity, and in this connection we heartily endorse the wisdom, patriotism, and the success of the administration of President Harrison.

"We renew and emphasize our allegiance to the policy of protection as the bulwark of American industrial independence and the foundation of American development and prosperity. This true American policy taxes foreign products and encourages home industry; it puts the burden of revenue on foreign goods; it secures the American market for the American producer; it upholds the American standard of wages for the American workingman; it puts the factory by the side of the farm, and makes the American farmer less dependent on foreign demand and price; it diffuses general thrift, and founds the strength of all on the strength of each. In its reasonable application it is just, fair, and impartial; equally opposed to foreign control and domestic monopoly, to sectional discrimination, and individual favoritism.

"We denounce the present Democratic tariff as sectional, injurious to the public credit, and destructive to business enterprise. "We demand such an equitable tariff on foreign imports which come into competition with American products as will not only furnish adequate revenue for the necessary expenses of the Government, but will protect American labor from degradation to the wage level of other lands. We are not pledged to any particular schedules. The question of rates is a practical question, to be governed by the conditions of the time and of production; the ruling and uncompromising principle is the protection and development of American labor and industry. The country demands a right settlement, and then it wants rest.

"We believe the repeal of the reciprocity arrangements negotiated by the last Republican administration was a national calamity, and we demand their renewal and extension on such terms as will equalize our trade with other nations, remove the restrictions which now obstruct the sale of American products in the ports of other countries, and secure enlarged markets for the products of our farms, forests, and factories.

See, in volume 5, TARIFF LEGISLATION (UNITED STATES): A. D. 1890, and 1894.

"Protection and reciprocity are twin measures of Republican policy and go hand in hand. Democratic rule has recklessly struck down both, and both must be re-established. Protection for what we produce; free admission for the necessaries of life which we do not produce; reciprocity agreements of mutual interests which again open markets for us in return for our open markets to others. Protection builds up domestic industry and trade and secures our own market for ourselves; reciprocity builds up foreign trade and finds an outlet for our surplus. We condemn the present administration for not keeping faith with the sugar producers of this country. The Republican party favors such protection as will lead to the production on American soil of all the sugar which the American people use, and for which they pay other countries more than $100,000,000 annually. To all our products—to those of the mine and the fields as well as to those of the shop and the factory—to hemp, to wool, the product of the great industry of sheep husbandry, as well as to the finished woollens of the mill—we promise the most ample protection.

"We favor restoring the early American policy of discriminating duties for the upbuilding of our merchant marine and the protection of our shipping in the foreign carrying trade, so that American ships—the product of American labor, employed in American shipyards, sailing under the Stars and Stripes, and manned, officered, and owned by Americans—may regain the carrying of our foreign commerce.

"The Republican party is unreservedly for sound money. It caused the enactment of the law providing for the resumption of specie payments in 1879; since then every dollar has been as good as gold. We are unalterably opposed to every measure calculated to debase our currency or impair the credit of our country. We are, therefore, opposed to the free coinage of silver except by international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world, which we pledge ourselves to promote, and until such agreement can be obtained the existing gold standard must be preserved. All our silver and paper currency must be maintained at parity with gold, and we favor all measures designed to maintain inviolably the obligations of the United States and all our money, whether coin or paper, at the present standard, the standard of the most enlightened nations of the earth.

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"The veterans of the Union Army deserve and should receive fair treatment and generous recognition. Whenever practicable, they should be given the preference in the matter of employment, and they are entitled to the enactment of such laws as are best calculated to secure the fulfillment of the pledges made to them in the dark days of the country's peril. We denounce the practice in the Pension Bureau, so recklessly and unjustly carried on by the present administration, of reducing pensions and arbitrarily dropping names from the rolls as deserving the severest condemnation of the American people.

"Our foreign policy should be at all times firm, vigorous, and dignified, and all our interests in the Western Hemisphere carefully watched and guarded. The Hawaiian Islands should be controlled by the United States, and no foreign power should be permitted to interfere with them; the Nicaraguan Canal should be built, owned, and operated by the United States; and by the purchase of the Danish Islands we should secure a proper and much needed naval station in the West Indies.

"The massacres in Armenia have aroused the deep sympathy and just indignation of the American people, and we believe that the United States should exercise all the influence it can properly exert to bring these atrocities to an end. In Turkey American residents have been exposed to the gravest dangers and American property destroyed. There and everywhere American citizens and American property must be absolutely protected at all hazards and at any cost.

"We reassert the Monroe doctrine in its full extent, and we reaffirm the right of the United States to give the doctrine effect by responding to the appeal of any American State for friendly intervention in case of European encroachment. We have not interfered with and shall not interfere with the existing possessions of any European power in this hemisphere, but those possessions must not on any pretext be extended. We hopefully look forward to the eventual withdrawal of European powers from this hemisphere and to the ultimate union of all the English-speaking parts of the continent by the free consent of its inhabitants.

"From the hour of achieving their own independence the people of the United States have regarded with sympathy the struggles of other American people to free themselves from European domination. We watch with deep and abiding interest the heroic battle of the Cuban patriots against cruelty and oppression, and our best hopes go out for the full success of their determined contest for liberty. The Government of Spain having lost control of Cuba, and being unable to protect the property or lives of resident American citizens, or to comply with its treaty obligations, we believe that the Government of the United States should actively use its influence and good offices to restore peace and give independence to the island.

"The peace and security of the Republic and the maintenance of its rightful influence among the nations of the earth demand a naval power commensurate with its position and responsibility. We therefore favor the continued enlargement of the navy and a complete system of harbor and seacoast defenses.

"For the protection of the quality of our American citizenship and of the wages of our workingmen against the fatal competition of low-priced labor, we demand that the immigration laws be thoroughly enforced and so extended as to exclude from entrance to the United States those who can neither read nor write.

"The civil-service law was placed on the statute book by the Republican party, which has always sustained it, and we renew our repeated declarations that it shall be thoroughly and honestly enforced and extended wherever practicable.

"We demand that every citizen of the United States shall be allowed to cast one free and unrestricted ballot, and that such ballot shall be counted and returned as cast.

"We proclaim our unqualified condemnation of the uncivilized and barbarous practice, well known as lynching or killing of human beings suspected or charged with crime, without process of law. We favor the creation of a National board of arbitration to settle and adjust differences which may arise between employers and employed engaged in interstate commerce.

"We believe in an immediate return to the free-homestead policy of the Republican party, and urge the passage by Congress of a satisfactory free-homestead measure such as has already passed the House and is now pending in the Senate.

"We favor the admission of the remaining Territories at the earliest practicable date, having due regard to the interests of the people of the Territories and of the United States. All the Federal officers appointed for the Territories should be selected from bona fide residents thereof, and the right of self-government should be accorded as far as practicable.

"We believe the citizens of Alaska should have representation in the Congress of the United States, to the end that needful legislation may be intelligently enacted.

"We sympathize with all wise and legitimate efforts to lessen and prevent the evils of intemperance and promote morality.

"The Republican party is mindful of the rights and interests of women. Protection of American industries includes equal opportunities, equal pay for equal work, and protection to the home. We favor the admission of women to wider spheres of usefulness, and welcome their co-operation in rescuing the country from Democratic and Populist mismanagement and misrule.

"Such are the principles and policies of the Republican party. By these principles we will abide and these policies we will put into execution. We ask for them the considerate judgment of the American people. Confident alike in the history of our great party and in the justice of our cause, we present our platform and our candidates in the full assurance that the election will bring victory to the Republican party and prosperity to the people of the United States."

Before the adoption of this platform, a motion to amend its currency "plank," by substituting a declaration in favor of "the use of both gold and silver as equal standard money," was laid on the table by a vote of 818½ to 105½. A protest from delegates representing Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Montana and South Dakota was then read, and twenty-two withdrew from the convention, as a sign of secession from the party.

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Immediately following the adoption of the platform, the Honorable William McKinley, ex-Governor of Ohio, and of fame in his connection with the tariff act of 1890, was nominated on the first ballot for President of the United States, by 661½ votes against 240½ divided among several opposing candidates, and the nomination was then made unanimous. For Vice President, the Honorable Garret A. Hobart, of New Jersey, was named, and similarly by the first voting.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 1896. Democratic Platform and Nominations.

The Democratic national convention was held in Chicago, July 7-11. The delegates who came to it from the southern States, and from most of the States west of Ohio, were arrayed with a close approach to solid ranks for free silver; while those from New England and the Middle States opposed them in a phalanx almost equally firm. The "Gold Democrats" or "Sound Money Democrats," as the latter were called, ably led by ex-Governor Hill, of New York, fought hard to the end, but without avail. The financial resolution they strove to place in the platform was the following:

"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 co-operation 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. "

This resolution was rejected by 626 votes against 303. Another resolution from the same source, commending "the honesty, economy, courage and fidelity" of the "democratic national administration" of President Cleveland, was voted down by 564 to 357. Resolutions to protect existing contracts against a change of monetary standard, and to provide for a suspension of silver free coinage, at the ratio of 16 to 1, after trial for one year, if it failed to maintain parity between silver and gold, were similarly voted down. The declarations then adopted, for the "platform" of the party, were as follows:

"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 faithful 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 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 in its assertion of the necessity of confining the General Government to the exercise of the powers granted by the Constitution of the United States.

"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-dollar 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 all debts, public and private; the enrichment of the money-lending class at home and abroad; prostration of industry and impoverishment of the people.

"We are unalterably opposed to gold 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 on the United States only by the stifling of that 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 sixteen to one, 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 coin or gold coin.

"We are opposed to the issuing of interest-bearing bonds of the United States in time 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.

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"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, be redeemable in coin, and receivable for all debts, public and private.

"We hold that the tariff duties should be levied for purposes of revenue, such duties to be so adjusted as to operate equally throughout the country and not discriminate between 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.

"There would be no deficit in the revenue but for the annulment by the Supreme Court of a law passed by a Democratic Congress in strict pursuance of the uniform decisions of that court for nearly 100 years, that court having sustained constitutional objections to its enactment which had 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 by its reversal by the court, as it may hereafter be constituted, so that the burdens of taxation may be equally and impartially laid, to the end that wealth may bear its due proportion of the expenses of the Government.

"We hold that the most efficient way to protect 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 manufacture.

"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 best befit 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, relative to contempts in Federal courts, and providing for trials by jury in certain cases of contempt.

"No discrimination should be indulged 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 endorse the rule of the present Commissioner of Pensions that no names shall be arbitrarily dropped from the pension roll, and the fact of an enlistment and service should be deemed conclusive evidence against disease or disability before enlistment.

"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 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 100 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 absorption of wealth by the few, the consolidation of our leading railroad systems, and 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 Inter-state Commerce Commission, and such restrictions and guarantees in the control of railroads as will protect the people from robbery and oppression.

"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 giving 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. 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 Federal Government should care for and improve the Mississippi River and other great waterways of the Republic so as to secure for the interior people 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.

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"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."

In the course of the debate upon the silver question, a speech of impassioned eloquence was made by William J. Bryan, of Nebraska, who had represented his district in Congress for two terms, 1891-1894, and who was rising to prominence among the leaders of the free-silver Democracy of the west. The speech excited an enthusiasm and an admiration which led to the nomination of Mr. Bryan for the presidency. That unexpected choice was reached after four ballots, in each of which the votes for the Nebraska orator rose steadily in number. At the fifth ballot they had passed the requisite two-thirds, and his nomination was declared to be unanimous, though protests were made. The entire delegation from New York and many delegates from New England and New Jersey cast no votes, refusing to take any part in the nomination of a candidate on the platform laid down. The chosen candidate for Vice President was Arthur Sewall, of Maine.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 1896. The National Silver Party.

The considerable body of Republicans who desired an unlimited free coinage of silver, and were prepared to quit their party on that issue, had made efforts to persuade the Democratic convention at Chicago to accept their leader, Senator Teller, of Colorado, for its presidential candidate. Failing in that, they assembled a convention of delegates at St. Louis, July 22-24, and, under the name of the "National Silver Party," took the alternative method of uniting the free-silver Republican vote with that of the free-silver Democracy, by accepting the Democratic nominations as their own. William J. Bryan and Arthur Sewall were duly nominated for President and Vice President, and a "platform" set forth as follows:

"The National Silver Party in Convention assembled hereby adopts the following declaration of principles:

"First. The paramount issue at this time in the United States is indisputably the money question. It is between the gold standard, gold bonds, and bank currency on the one side and the bimetallic standard, no bonds, and Government currency on the other.

"On this issue we declare ourselves to be in favor of a distinctively American financial system. We are unalterably opposed to the single gold standard, and demand the immediate return to the constitutional standard of gold and silver, by the restoration by this Government, independently of any foreign power, of the unrestricted coinage of both gold and silver into standard money at the ratio of sixteen to one, and upon terms of exact equality, as they existed prior to 1873; the silver coin to be a full legal tender equally with gold for all debts and dues, private and public, and we favor such legislation as will prevent for the future the demonetization of any kind of legal-tender money by private contract.

"We hold that the power to control and regulate a paper currency is inseparable from the power to coin money, and hence that all currency intended to circulate as money should be issued, and its volume controlled by the General Government only, and should be legal tender.

"We are unalterably opposed to the issue by the United States of interest-bearing bonds in time of peace, and we denounce as a blunder worse than a crime the present Treasury policy, concurred in by a Republican House, of plunging the country in debt by hundreds of millions in the vain attempt to maintain the gold standard by borrowing gold, and we demand the payment of all coin obligations of the United States as provided by existing laws, in either gold or silver coin, at the option of the Government and not at the option of the creditor.

"The demonetization of silver in 1873 enormously increased the demand for gold, enhancing its purchasing power and lowering all prices measured by that standard; and since that unjust and indefensible act the prices of American products have fallen upon an average nearly fifty per cent., carrying down with them proportionately the money value of all other forms of property. Such fall of prices has destroyed the profits of legitimate industry, injuring the producer for the benefit of the non-producer, increasing the burden of the debtor, swelling the gains of the creditor, paralyzing the productive energies of the American people, relegating to idleness vast numbers of willing workers, sending the shadows of despair into the home of the honest toiler, filling the land with tramps and paupers, and building up colossal fortunes at the money centres.

"In the effort to maintain the gold standard the country has, within the last two years, in a time of profound peace and plenty, been loaded down with $262,000,000 of additional interest-bearing debt, under such circumstances as to allow a syndicate of native and foreign bankers to realize a net profit of millions on a single deal.

"It stands confessed that the gold standard can only be upheld by so depleting our paper currency as to force the prices of our product below the European and even below the Asiatic level to enable us to sell in foreign markets, thus aggravating the very evils our people so bitterly complain of, degrading American labor, and striking at the foundations of our civilization itself.

"The advocates of the gold standard persistently claim that the cause of our distress is over-production; that we have produced so much that it has made us poor—which implies that the true remedy is to close the factory, abandon the farm, and throw a multitude of people out of employment, a doctrine that leaves us unnerved and disheartened, and absolutely without hope for the future.

"We affirm it to be unquestioned that there can be no such economic paradox as over-production, and at the same time tens of thousands of our fellow-citizens remaining half-clothed and half-fed, and who are piteously clamoring for the common necessities of life.

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"Second. That over and above all other questions of policy we are in favor of restoring to the people of the United States the time-honored money of the Constitution—gold and silver, not one, but both—the money of Washington and Hamilton and Jefferson and Monroe and Jackson and Lincoln, to the end that the American people may receive honest pay for an honest product; that the American debtor may pay his just obligations in an honest standard, and not in a standard that has depreciated 100 per cent. above all the great staples of our country, and to the end further that the standard countries may be deprived of the unjust advantage they now enjoy in the difference in exchange between gold and silver—an advantage which tariff legislation alone cannot overcome.

"We therefore confidently appeal to the people of the United States to leave in abeyance for the moment all other questions, however important and even momentous they may appear, to sunder, if need be, all former party ties and affiliations, and unite in one supreme effort to free themselves and their children from the domination of the money power—a power more destructive than any which has ever been fastened upon the civilized men of any race or in any age, and upon the consummation of our desires and efforts we invoke the gracious favor of Divine Providence.

"Inasmuch as the patriotic majority of the Chicago convention embodied in the financial plank of its platform the principles enunciated in the platform of the American Bimetallic party, promulgated at Washington, D. C., January 22, 1896, and herein reiterated, which is not only the paramount but the only real issue in the pending campaign, therefore, recognizing that their nominees embody these patriotic principles, we recommend that this convention nominate William J. Bryan, of Nebraska, for President, and Arthur Sewall, of Maine, for Vice President."

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 1896. People's or Populist Party Platform and Nominations.

The People's Party, more commonly called the Populist Party, held its national convention at St. Louis on the 22d-25th of July, simultaneously with that of the National Silver Party, and with strong influences urging it to act on the same line. One section of the party strove to bring about a complete endorsement of the Democratic nominations made at Chicago. Another section, styled the "Middle-of-the-Road" Populists, opposed any coalition with other parties; while a third wished to nominate Bryan, with a Populist candidate for Vice President, looking to an arrangement with the Democratic organization for a fusion of electoral tickets in various States. The idea of the latter prevailed, and William J. Bryan was nominated for President, with Thomas E. Watson, of Georgia, for Vice President. The People's Party had little disagreement with the Chicago declarations of the Democratic Party, and none at all on financial questions, concerning which its doctrines were set forth in the following platform:

"The People's Party, assembled in National Convention, reaffirms its allegiance to the principles declared by the founders of the Republic, and also to the fundamental principles of just government as enunciated in the platform of the party in 1892.

"We recognize that through the connivance of the present and preceding administrations the country has reached a crisis in its National life, as predicted in our declaration of four years ago, and that prompt and patriotic action is the supreme duty of the hour.

"We realize that while we have political independence, our financial and industrial independence is yet to be attained by restoring to our country the constitutional control and exercise of the functions necessary to a people's government, which functions have been basely surrendered by our public servants to corporations and monopolies. The influence of European money-changers has been more potent in shaping legislation than the voice of the American people. Executive power and patronage have been used to corrupt our legislatures and defeat the will of the people, and plutocracy has been enthroned upon the ruins of democracy. To restore the government intended by the fathers, and for the welfare and prosperity of this and future generations, we demand the establishment of an economic and financial system which shall make us masters of our own affairs and independent of European control, by the adoption of the following declaration of principles:

"We demand a National money, safe and sound, issued by the general government only, without the intervention of banks of issue, to be a full legal tender for an debts, public and private, and a just, equitable, and efficient means of distribution direct to the people and through the lawful disbursements of the Government.

"We demand the free and unrestricted coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one, without waiting for the consent of foreign nations.

"We demand that the volume of circulating medium be speedily increased to an amount sufficient to meet the demands of the business population of this country and to restore the just level of prices of labor and production.

"We denounce the sale of bonds and the increase of the public interest-bearing bond debt made by the present administration as unnecessary and without authority of law, and we demand that no more bonds be issued except by specific act of Congress.

"We demand such legislation as will prevent the demonetization of the lawful money of the United States by private contract.

"We demand that the Government, in payment of its obligations, shall use its option as to the kind of lawful money in which they are to be paid, and we denounce the present and preceding administrations for surrendering this option to the holders of government obligations.

"We demand a graduated income tax, to the end that aggregated wealth shall bear its just proportion of taxation, and we denounce the recent decision of the Supreme Court relative to the income-tax law as a misinterpretation of the Constitution and an invasion of the rightful powers of Congress over the subject of taxation.

"We demand that postal savings banks be established by the Government for the safe deposit of the savings of the people and to facilitate exchange.

"Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the Government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people and on non-partisan basis, to the end that all may be accorded the same treatment in transportation, and that the tyranny and political power now exercised by the great railroad corporations, which result in the impairment if not the destruction of the political rights and personal liberties of the citizens, may be destroyed. Such ownership is to be accomplished gradually, in a manner consistent with sound public policy.

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"The interest of the United States in the public highways built with public moneys and the proceeds of extensive grants of land to the Pacific railroads should never be alienated, mortgaged, or sold, but guarded and protected for the general welfare as provided by the laws organizing such railroads. The foreclosure of existing liens of the United States on these roads should at once follow default in the payment of the debt of the companies, and at the foreclosure sales of said roads the Government should purchase the same if it becomes necessary to protect its interests therein, or if they can be purchased at a reasonable price; and the Government should operate said railroads as public highways for the benefit of the whole and not in the interest of the few, under suitable provisions for protection of life and property, giving to all transportation interests and privileges and equal rates for fares and freight.

"We denounce the present infamous schemes for refunding those debts and demand that the laws now applicable thereto be executed and administered according to their true intent and spirit.

"The telegraph, like the post-office system, being a necessity for the transmission of news, should be owned and operated by the Government in the interest of the people.

"The true policy demands that the National and State legislation shall be such as will ultimately enable every prudent and industrious citizen to secure a home, and therefore the land should not be monopolized for speculative purposes.

"All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs should by lawful means be reclaimed by the Government and held for actual settlers only, and private land monopoly, as well as alien ownership, should be prohibited.

"We condemn the frauds by which the land grant to the Pacific Railroad Companies have, through the connivance of the Interior Department, robbed multitudes of bona fide settlers of their homes and miners of their claims, and we demand legislation by Congress which will enforce the exemption of mineral land from such grants after as well as before patent.

"We demand that bona fide settlers on all public lands be granted free homes, as provided in the National homestead law, and that no exception be made in the case of Indian reservations when opened for settlement, and that all lands not now patented come under this demand.

"We favor a system of direct legislation through the initiative and referendum under proper constitutional safeguards.

"We demand the election of President, Vice-President, and United States Senators by a direct vote of the people.

"We tender to the patriotic people of Cuba our deepest sympathy in their heroic struggle for political freedom and independence, and we believe the time has come when the United States, the great Republic of the world, should recognize that Cuba is and of right ought to be a free and independent State.

"We favor home rule in the Territories and the District of Columbia and the early admission of the Territories as States.

"All public salaries should be made to correspond to the price of labor and its products.

"In times of great industrial depression idle labor should be employed on public works as far as practicable.

"The arbitrary course of the courts in assuming to imprison citizens for indirect contempt and ruling by injunction should be prevented by proper legislation.

"We favor just pensions for our disabled Union soldiers.

"Believing that the elective franchise and untrammelled ballot are essential to a government of, for, and by the people, the People's Party condemn the wholesale system of disfranchisement adopted in some States as unrepublican and undemocratic, and we declare it to be the duty of the several State legislatures to take such action as will secure a full, free, and fair ballot and an honest count.

"While the foregoing propositions constitute the platform upon which our party stands, and for the vindication of which its organization will be maintained, we recognize that the great and pressing issue of the pending campaign, upon which the present Presidential election will turn, is the financial question, and upon this great and specific issue between the parties we cordially invite the aid and co-operation of all organizations and citizens agreeing with us upon this vital question."

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 1896. National Democratic Platform and Nominations.

An extensive revolt in the Democratic Party against the declarations and the action of the party convention at Chicago had been quickly made manifest, and steps were soon taken towards giving it an organized form. These led to the assembling of a convention of delegates at Indianapolis, on the 2d and 3d of September, which, in the name of the "National Democratic Party," repudiated the platform and the candidates put forward at Chicago, and branded them as false to the historic party name which they assumed. General John M. Palmer, of Illinois, was put in nomination for President, and General Simon Bolivar Buckner, of Kentucky, for Vice President, of the United States, and a declaration of Democratic principles adopted, the fundamental passages of which are quoted in the following:

"This convention has assembled to uphold the principles upon which depend the honor and welfare of the American people, in order that democrats throughout the Union may unite their patriotic efforts to avert disaster from their country and ruin from their party.

"The democratic party is pledged to equal and exact justice to all men of every creed and condition; to the largest freedom of the individual consistent with good government; to the preservation of the federal government in its constitutional vigor, and to the support of the states in all their just rights; to economy in the public expenditures; to the maintenance of the public faith and sound money; and it is opposed to paternalism and all class legislation. The declarations of the Chicago convention attack individual freedom, the right of private contract, the independence of the judiciary, and the authority of the president to enforce federal laws. They advocate a reckless attempt to increase the price of silver by legislation, to the debasement of our monetary standard; and threaten unlimited issues of paper money by the government. {571} They abandon for republican allies the democratic cause of tariff reform, to court favor of protectionists to their fiscal heresy. In view of these and other grave departures from democratic principles, we cannot support the candidates of that convention, nor be bound by its acts. The democratic party has survived defeats, but could not survive a victory won in behalf of the doctrine and policy proclaimed in its name at Chicago.

"The conditions, however, which made possible such utterances from a national convention, are the direct result of class legislation by the republican party. It still proclaims, as it has for years, the power and duty of government to raise and maintain prices by law, and it proposes no remedy for existing evils except oppressive and unjust taxation. … The demand of the republican party for an increase in tariff taxation has its pretext in the deficiency of the revenue, which has its causes in the stagnation of trade and reduced consumption, due entirely to the loss of confidence that has followed the populist threat of free coinage and depreciation of our money, and the republican practice of extravagant appropriations beyond the needs of good government. We arraign and condemn the populistic conventions of Chicago and St. Louis for their cooperation with the republican party in creating these conditions, which are pleaded in justification of a heavy increase of the burdens of the people by a further resort to protection. We therefore denounce protection and its ally, free coinage of silver, as schemes for the personal profit of a few at the expense of the masses; and oppose the two parties which stand for these schemes as hostile to the people of the republic, whose food and shelter, comfort and prosperity are attacked by higher taxes and depreciated money. In fine, we reaffirm the historic democratic doctrine of tariff for revenue only. …

"The experience of mankind has shown that, by reason of their natural qualities, gold is the necessary money of the large affairs of commerce and business, while silver is conveniently adapted to minor transactions, and the most beneficial use of both together can be insured only by the adoption of the former as a standard of monetary measure, and the maintenance of silver at a parity with gold by its limited coinage under suitable safeguards of law. Thus the largest possible employment of both metals is gained with a value universally accepted throughout the world, which constitutes the only practical bimetallic currency, assuring the most stable standard, and especially the best and safest money for all who earn their livelihood by labor or the produce of husbandry. They cannot suffer when paid in the best money known to man, but are the peculiar and most defenceless victims of a debased and fluctuating currency, which offers continual profits to the money changer at their cost.

"Realizing these truths demonstrated by long and public inconvenience and loss, the democratic party, in the interests of the masses and of equal justice to all, practically established by the legislation of 1834 and 1853 the gold standard of monetary measurement, and likewise entirely divorced the government from banking and currency issues. To this long-established democratic policy we adhere, and insist upon the maintenance of the gold standard, and of the parity therewith of every dollar issued by the government, and are firmly opposed to the free and unlimited coinage of silver and to the compulsory purchase of silver bullion. But we denounce also the further maintenance of the present costly patchwork system of national paper currency as a constant source of injury and peril. We assert the necessity of such intelligent currency reform as will confine the government to its legitimate functions, completely separated from the banking business, and afford to all sections of our country uniform, safe, and elastic bank currency under governmental supervision, measured in volume by the needs of business.

"The fidelity, patriotism, and courage with which President Cleveland has fulfilled his great public trust, the high character of his administration, its wisdom and energy in the maintenance of civil order and the enforcement of the laws, its equal regard for the rights of every class and every section, its firm and dignified conduct of foreign affairs, and its sturdy persistence in upholding the credit and honor of the nation are fully recognized by the democratic party, and will secure to him a place in history beside the fathers of the republic. We also commend the administration for the great progress made in the reform of the public service, and we indorse its effort to extend the merit system still further. We demand that no backward step be taken, but that the reform be supported and advanced until the un-democratic spoils system of appointments be eradicated."

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 1896. Prohibition Platform and Nominations.

The Prohibition Party had been the first to open the presidential campaign with candidates placed in the field. Its national convention was held at Pittsburg, on the 27th and 28th of May, and its nominees for President and Vice President were Joshua Levering, of Maryland, and Hale Johnson, of Illinois. But a split in the convention occurred on attempts made to graft free-silver and kindred doctrines on the one-issue platform which the majority of the party desired. Except in a single particular, the latter prevailed. The platform adopted was as follows:

"The Prohibition Party, in national convention assembled, declares its firm conviction that the manufacture, exportation, importation, and sale of alcoholic beverages has produced such social, commercial, industrial, and political wrongs, and is now so threatening the perpetuity of all our social and political institutions, that the suppression of the same by a national party organized therefor is the greatest object to be accomplished by the voters of our country, and is of such importance that it, of right, ought to control the political actions of all our patriotic citizens until such suppression is accomplished. The urgency of this course demands the union without further delay of all citizens who desire the prohibition of the liquor traffic. Therefore be it

"Resolved, That we favor the legal prohibition by state and national legislation of the manufacture, importation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. That we declare our purpose to organize and unite all the friends of prohibition into one party; and in order to accomplish this end we deem it of right to leave every prohibitionist the freedom of his own convictions upon all other political questions, and trust our representatives to take such action upon other political questions as the changes occasioned by prohibition and the welfare of the whole people shall demand."

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Resolved, "The right of suffrage ought not to be abridged on account of sex."

Those delegates who were dissatisfied with this platform withdrew from the convention, assembled in another hall, assumed the name of "The National Party," adopted the following declarations, and nominated Charles E. Bentley, of Nebraska, and J. II. Southgate, of North Carolina, for the two highest offices in the national government:

"The National Party, recognizing God as the author of all just power in government, presents the following declaration of principles, which it pledges itself to enact into effective legislation when given the power to do so:

"The suppression of the manufacture and sale, importation, exportation, and transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes. We utterly reject all plans for regulating or compromising with this traffic, whether such plans be called local option, taxation, license, or public control. The sale of liquors for medicinal and other legitimate uses should be conducted by the State, without profit, and with such regulations as will prevent fraud or evasion.

"No citizen should be denied the right to vote on account of sex.

"All money should be issued by the General Government only, and without the intervention of any private citizen, corporation, or banking institution. It should be based upon the wealth, stability, and integrity of the nation. It should be a full legal tender for all debts, public and private, and should be of sufficient volume to meet the demands of the legitimate business interests of the country. For the purpose of honestly liquidating our outstanding coin obligations, we favor the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold, at the ratio of sixteen to one, without consulting any other nation.

"Land is the common heritage of the people and should be preserved from monopoly and speculation. All unearned grants of land, subject to forfeiture, should be reclaimed by the Government and no portion of the public domain should hereafter be granted except to actual settlers, continuous use being essential to tenure.

"Railroads, telegraphs, and other natural monopolies should be owned and operated by the Government, giving to the people the benefit of service at actual cost.

"The National Constitution should be so amended as to allow the national revenues to be raised by equitable adjustment of taxation on the properties and incomes of the people, and import duties should be levied as a means of securing equitable commercial relations with other nations.

"The contract convict-labor system, through which speculators are enriched at the expense of the State, should be abolished.

"All citizens should be protected by law in their right to one day of rest in seven, without oppressing any who conscientiously observe any other than the first day of the week.

"American public schools, taught in the English language, should be maintained, and no public funds should be appropriated for sectarian institutions.

"The President, Vice-President, and United States Senators should be elected by direct vote of the people.

"Ex-soldiers and sailors of the United States army and navy, their widows, and minor children, should receive liberal pensions, graded on disability and term of service, not merely as a debt of gratitude, but for service rendered in the preservation of the Union.

"Our immigration laws should be so revised as to exclude paupers and criminals. None but citizens of the United States should be allowed to vote in any State, and naturalized citizens should not vote until one year after naturalization papers have been issued.

"The initiative and referendum and proportional representation should be adopted.

"Having herein presented our principles and purposes, we invite the co-operation and support of all citizens who are with us substantially agreed."

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 1896. Socialist-Labor Party Nominations.

Still another party which placed candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency in nomination was the Socialist-Labor organization, which held a convention in New York, July 4-10, and named for the two high offices, Charles H. Matchett, of New York, and Mathew Maguire, of New Jersey. Its platform embodied the essential doctrines of socialism, as commonly understood, and was as follows:

"The Socialist Labor Party of the United States, in convention assembled, reasserts the inalienable rights of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

"With the founders of the American Republic we hold that the purpose of government is to secure every citizen in the enjoyment of this right; but in the right of our conditions we hold, furthermore, that no such right can be exercised under a system of economic inequality, essentially destructive of life, of liberty, and of happiness.

"With the founders of this Republic we hold that the true theory of politics is that the machinery of government must be owned and controlled by the whole people; but in the light of our industrial development we hold, furthermore, that the true theory of economics is that the machinery of production must likewise belong to the people in common.

"To the obvious fact that our despotic system of economics is the direct opposite of our democratic system of politics, can plainly be traced the existence of a privileged class, the corruption of Government by that class, the alienation of public property, public franchises, and public functions to that class, and the abject dependence of the mightiest of nations upon that class.

"Again, through the perversion of democracy to the ends of plutocracy, labor is robbed of its wealth which it alone produces, is denied the means of self-employment, and by compulsory idleness in wage slavery, is even deprived of the necessaries of life.

"Human power and natural forces are thus wasted, that the plutocracy may rule. Ignorance and misery, with all their concomitant evils, are perpetuated, that the people may be kept in bondage. Science and invention are diverted from their humane purpose to the enslavement of women and children.

"Against such a system the Socialist Labor party once more enters its protest. Once more it reiterates its fundamental declaration that private property in the natural sources of production and in the instruments of labor is the obvious cause of all economic servitude and political dependence.

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"The time is fast coming when, in the natural course of social evolution, this system, through the destructive action of its failures and crises on one hand, and the constructive tendencies of its trusts and other capitalistic combinations on the other hand, shall have worked out its own downfall.

"We therefore call upon the wage-workers of the United States, and upon all honest citizens, to organize under the banner of the Socialist Labor party into a class-conscious body, aware of its rights and determined to conquer them by taking possession of the public powers, so that, held together by an indomitable spirit of solidarity under the most trying conditions of the present class struggle, we may put a summary end to that barbarous struggle by the abolition of classes, the restoration of the land and of all the means of production, transportation, and distribution to the people as a collective body, and the substitution of the co-operative commonwealth for the present state of planless production, industrial war, and social disorder, a commonwealth in which every worker shall have the free exercise and full benefit of his faculties, multiplied by all modern factors of civilization.

"With a view to immediate improvement in the condition of labor we present the following demands:

"1. Reduction of the hours of labor in proportion to the progress of production.

"2. The United States shall obtain possession of the railroads, canals, telegraphs, telephones, and all other means of public transportation and communication; the employés to operate the same co-operatively under control of the Federal Government and to elect their own superior officers, but no employé shall be discharged for political reasons.

"3. The municipalities shall obtain possession of the local railroads, ferries, waterworks, gas-works, electric plants, and all industries requiring municipal franchises; the employés to operate the same co-operatively under control of the municipal administration and to elect their own superior officers, but no employé shall be discharged for political reasons.

"4. The public lands declared inalienable. Revocation of all land grants to corporations or individuals the conditions of which have not been complied with.

"5. The United States to have the exclusive right to issue money.

"6. Congressional legislation providing for the scientific management of forests and waterways, and prohibiting the waste of the natural resources of the country.

"7. Inventions to be free to all: the inventors to be remunerated by the nation.

"8. Progressive income tax and tax on inheritances; the smaller incomes to be exempt.

"9. School education of all children under fourteen years of age to be compulsory, gratuitous, and accessible to all by public assistance in meals, clothing, books, etc., where necessary.

"10. Repeal of all pauper, tramp, conspiracy, and sumptuary laws. Unabridged right of combination.

"11. Prohibition of the employment of children of school age and of female labor in occupations detrimental to health or morality. Abolition of the convict-labor contract system.

"12. Employment of the unemployed by the public authorities (county, State, or nation).

"13. All wages to be paid in lawful money of the United States. Equalization of women's wages to those of men where equal service is performed.

"14. Laws for the protection of life and limb in all occupations, and an efficient employers' liability law.

"15. The people to have the right to propose laws and to vote upon all measures of importance according to the referendum principle.

"16. Abolition of the veto power of the Executive (National, State, or municipal), wherever it exists.

"17. Abolition of the United States Senate and all upper legislative chambers.

"18. Municipal self-government.

"19. Direct vote and secret ballots in all elections. Universal and equal right of suffrage without regard to color, creed, or sex. Election days to be legal holidays. The principle of proportional representation to be introduced.

"20. All public officers to be subject to recall by their respective constituencies.

"21. Uniform civil and criminal law throughout the United States. Administration of justice free of charge. Abolition of capital punishment."

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 1896. The Canvass and Election.

The canvass which occupied the months between party nominations and the election was the most remarkable, in many respects, that the country had ever gone through. On both sides of the silver question intense convictions were burning and intense anxieties being felt. To the defenders of the gold standard of value—the monetary standard of the world at large—an unlimited free coinage of silver legal tender money, at the ratio of 16 to 1, meant both dishonor and ruin—national bankruptcy, the wreck of industry, and chaos in the commercial world. To many of those who strove with desperate eagerness to bring it about it meant, on the contrary, a millennial social state, in which abundance would prevail, the goods of the world be divided more fairly, and labor have a juster reward. So the issue fronted each as one personal, vital, almost as of life and death. Their conflict bore no likeness to those commonly in politics, where consequences seem remote, vague, general to the body politic,—not, instantly overhanging the head of the individual citizen, as in this case they did. Not even the patriotic and moral excitements of the canvass of 1860 produced so intense a feeling of personal interest in the election—so painful an anxiety in waiting for its result. And never in any former political contest had the questions involved been debated so earnestly, studied so widely and intently, set forth by every artifice of exposition and illustration with so much ingenious pains. The "campaign literature" distributed by each party was beyond computation in quantity and beyond classification in its kinds. The speeches of the canvass were innumerable. Mr. Bryan contributed some hundreds, in tours which he made through the country, and Mr. McKinley, at his home, in Canton, Ohio, received visiting delegations from all parts of the country and addressed them at more or less length.

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With all the excitement of anxiety and the heated conflict of beliefs there was little violence of any kind, from first to last. The critical election day (November 3) passed with no serious incidents of disorder. The verdict of the people, pronounced for the preservation of the monetary standard which the world at large has established in general use, was accepted with the equanimity to which self-governing citizens are trained. Nearly fourteen millions of votes were cast, of which the Republican presidential electors received 7,104,244; electors representing the various parties which had nominated Mr. Bryan received, in all, 6,506,835; those on the National Democratic ticket received 134,652; those on the Prohibition tickets, 144,606; those on the Socialist-Labor ticket, 36,416. In the Electoral College, there were 271 votes for McKinley, and 176 for Bryan. The States giving their electoral votes for McKinley were California (excepting 1 vote, cast for Bryan), Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky (except 1), Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin. The States which chose electors for Bryan were Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wyoming, besides the single votes won in California and Kentucky. For Vice President, Hobart received 271 electoral votes—the same as McKinley; but Sewall received 27 less than Bryan, that number being cast for the Populist candidate, Watson. This was consequent on fusion arrangements between Democrats and Populists in 28 States.

In some States, the majority given against silver free coinage was overwhelming, as for example, in New York, 268,000 plurality for McKinley, besides 19,000 votes cast for the "Gold Democratic" candidate; New Jersey, 87,000 Republican plurality and 6,000 votes for General Palmer; Pennsylvania, 295,000 and 11,000; Massachusetts, 173,000 and 11,000. On the other hand, Texas gave Bryan a plurality of 202,000, and Colorado 135,000.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (November). Agreement with Great Britain for the settlement of the Venezuela dispute.

See (in this volume) VENEZUELA: A. D. 1896-1899.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896 (December). President Cleveland on affairs in Cuba.

See (in this volume) CUBA: A. D. 1896-1897.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896-1897. Immigration Bill vetoed by President Cleveland.

On the 17th of December, 1896, a bill to amend the immigration laws, which had passed the House of Representatives during the previous session of Congress, passed the Senate, with amendments which the House refused to accept. By conferences between the two branches of Congress an agreement was finally reached, in which the House concurred on the 9th of February and the Senate on the 17th. But the President disapproved the measure, and returned it to Congress on the 2d of March, with his objections set forth in the following Message:

"I herewith return without approval House bill No. 7864, entitled 'An act to amend the immigration laws of the United States.'

"By the first section of this bill it is proposed to amend section 1 of the act of March 3, 1891, relating to immigration by adding to the classes of aliens thereby excluded from admission to the United States the following: 'All persons physically capable and over 16 years of age who can not read and write the English language or some other language; but a person not so able to read and write who is over 50 years of age and is the parent or grandparent of a qualified immigrant over 21 years of age and capable of supporting such parent or grandparent may accompany such immigrant, or such a parent or grandparent may be sent for and come to join the family of a child or grandchild over 21 years of age similarly qualified and capable, and a wife or minor child not so able to read and write may accompany or be sent for and come and join the husband or parent similarly qualified and capable.'

"A radical departure from our national policy relating to immigration is here presented. Heretofore we have welcomed all who came to us from other lands except those whose moral or physical condition or history threatened danger to our national welfare and safety. Relying upon the zealous watchfulness of our people to prevent injury to our political and social fabric, we have encouraged those coming from foreign countries to cast their lot with us and join in the development of our vast domain, securing in return a share in the blessings of American citizenship. A century's stupendous growth, largely due to the assimilation and thrift of millions of sturdy and patriotic adopted citizens, attests the success of this generous and free-handed policy which, while guarding the people's interests, exacts from our immigrants only physical and moral soundness and a willingness and ability to work. A contemplation of the grand results of this policy can not fail to arouse a sentiment in its defense, for however it might have been regarded as an original proposition and viewed as an experiment its accomplishments are such that if it is to be uprooted at this late day its disadvantages should be plainly apparent and the substitute adopted should be just and adequate, free from uncertainties, and guarded against difficult or oppressive administration.

"It is not claimed, I believe, that the time has come for the further restriction of immigration on the ground that an excess of population overcrowds our land. It is said, however, that the quality of recent immigration is undesirable. The time is quite within recent memory when the same thing was said of immigrants who, with their descendants, are now numbered among our best citizens. It is said that too many immigrants settle in our cities, thus dangerously increasing their idle and vicious population. This is certainly a disadvantage. It can not be shown, however, that it affects all our cities, nor that it is permanent; nor does it appear that this condition where it exists demands as its remedy the reversal of our present immigration policy. The claim is also made that the influx of foreign laborers deprives of the opportunity to work those who are better entitled than they to the privilege of earning their livelihood by daily toil. An unfortunate condition is certainly presented when any who are willing to labor are unemployed, but so far as this condition now exists among our people it must be conceded to be a result of phenomenal business depression and the stagnation of all enterprises in which labor is a factor. {575} With the advent of settled and wholesome financial and economic governmental policies and consequent encouragement to the activity of capital the misfortunes of unemployed labor should, to a great extent at least, be remedied. If it continues, its natural consequences must be to check the further immigration to our cities of foreign laborers and to deplete the ranks of those already there. In the meantime those most willing and best entitled ought to be able to secure the advantages of such work as there is to do.

"It is proposed by the bill under consideration to meet the alleged difficulties of the situation by establishing an educational test by which the right of a foreigner to make his home with us shall be determined. Its general scheme is to prohibit from admission to our country all immigrants 'physically capable and over 16 years of age who can not read and write the English language or some other language,' and it is provided that this test shall be applied by requiring immigrants seeking admission to read and afterwards to write not less than twenty nor more than twenty-five words of the Constitution of the United States in some language, and that any immigrant failing in this shall not be admitted, but shall be returned to the country from whence he came at the expense of the steamship or railroad company which brought him.

"The best reason that could be given for this radical restriction of immigration is the necessity of protecting our population against degeneration and saving our national peace and quiet from imported turbulence and disorder. I can not believe that we would be protected against these evils by limiting immigration to those who can read and write in any language twenty-five words of our Constitution. In my opinion, it is infinitely more safe to admit a hundred thousand immigrants who, though unable to read and write, seek among us only a home and opportunity to work than to admit one of those unruly agitators and enemies of governmental control who can not only read and write, but delights in arousing by inflammatory speech the illiterate and peacefully inclined to discontent and tumult. Violence and disorder do not originate with illiterate laborers. They are, rather, the victims of the educated agitator. The ability to read and write, as required in this bill, in and of itself affords, in my opinion, a misleading test of contented industry and supplies unsatisfactory evidence of desirable citizenship or a proper apprehension of the benefits of our institutions. If any particular element of our illiterate immigration is to be feared for other causes than illiteracy, these causes should be dealt with directly, instead of making illiteracy the pretext for exclusion, to the detriment of other illiterate immigrants against whom the real cause of complaint cannot be alleged.

"The provisions intended to rid that part of the proposed legislation already referred to from obvious hardship appear to me to be indefinite and inadequate. A parent, grandparent, wife, or minor child of a qualified immigrant, though unable to read and write, may accompany the immigrant or be sent for to join his family, provided the immigrant is capable of supporting such relative. These exceptions to the general rule of exclusion contained in the bill were made to prevent the separation of families, and yet neither brothers nor sisters are provided for. In order that relatives who are provided for may be reunited, those still in foreign lands must be sent for to join the immigrant here. What formality is necessary to constitute this prerequisite, and how are the facts of relationship and that the relative is sent for to be established? Are the illiterate relatives of immigrants who have come here under prior laws entitled to the advantage of these exceptions? A husband who can read and write and who determines to abandon his illiterate wife abroad will find here under this law an absolutely safe retreat. The illiterate relatives mentioned must not only be sent for, but such immigrant must be capable of supporting them when they arrive. This requirement proceeds upon the assumption that the foreign relatives coming here are in every case, by reason of poverty, liable to become a public charge unless the immigrant is capable of their support. The contrary is very often true. And yet if unable to read and write, though quite able and willing to support themselves and their relatives here besides, they could not be admitted under the provisions of this bill if the immigrant was impoverished, though the aid of his fortunate but illiterate relative might be the means of saving him from pauperism.

"The fourth section of this bill provides—'That it shall be unlawful for any male alien who has not in good faith made his declaration before the proper court of his intention to become a citizen of the United States to be employed on any public works of the United States or to come regularly or habitually into the United States by land or water for the purpose of engaging in any mechanical trade or manual labor for wages or salary, returning from time to time to a foreign country.' The fifth section provides—'That it shall be unlawful for any person, partnership, company, or corporation knowingly to employ any alien coming into the United States in violation of the next preceding section of this act.'

"The prohibition against the employment of aliens upon any public works of the United States is in line with other legislation of a like character. It is quite a different thing, however, to declare it a crime for an alien to come regularly and habitually into the United States for the purpose of obtaining work from private parties, if such alien returns from time to time to a foreign country, and to constitute any employment of such alien a criminal offense. When we consider these provisions of the bill in connection with our long northern frontier and the boundaries of our States and Territories, often but an imaginary line separating them from the British dominions, and recall the friendly intercourse between the people who are neighbors on either side, the provisions of this bill affecting them must be regarded as illiberal, narrow, and un-American. The residents of these States and Territories have separate and especial interests which in many cases make an interchange of labor between their people and their alien neighbors most important, frequently with the advantage largely in favor of our citizens. This suggests the inexpediency of Federal interference with these conditions when not necessary to the correction of a substantial evil, affecting the general welfare. Such unfriendly legislation as is proposed could hardly fail to provoke retaliatory measures, to the injury of many of our citizens who now find employment on adjoining foreign soil. {576} The uncertainty of construction to which the language of these provisions is subject is a serious objection to a statute which describes a crime. An important element in the offense sought to be created by these sections is the coming 'regularly or habitually into the United States.' These words are impossible of definite and certain construction. The same may be said of the equally important words 'returning from time to time to a foreign country.'

"A careful examination of this bill has convinced me that for the reasons given and others not specifically stated its provisions are unnecessarily harsh and oppressive, and its defects in construction would cause vexation and its operation would result in harm to our citizens. GROVER CLEVELAND."

In the House of Representatives, the Bill was passed again, over the veto, by the requisite vote of two-thirds; in the Senate it was referred to the Committee on Immigration, and no further action was taken upon it. Therefore, it did not become a law.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1896-1898. Agitation for monetary reforms. The Indianapolis Commission. Secretary Gage's plan. The Senatorial block in the way.

On November 18, 1896, the Governors of the Indianapolis Board of Trade invited the Boards of Trade of Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Cleveland. Columbus, Toledo, Kansas City, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Des Moines, Minneapolis, Grand Rapids, Peoria, and Omaha to a conference on the first of December following, to consider the advisability of calling a larger convention from commercial organizations throughout the country for the purpose of discussing the wisdom of selecting a non-partisan commission to formulate a sound currency system. This preliminary conference issued a call for a non-partisan monetary convention of business men, chosen from boards of trade, chambers of commerce, and commercial clubs, to meet in Indianapolis, on January 12, 1897. At the convention there were assembled, with credentials, 299 delegates, representing business organizations and cities in nearly every State in the Union. The result of its deliberations was expressed in resolutions which opened as follows:

"This convention declares that it has become absolutely necessary that a consistent, straightforward, and deliberately planned monetary system shall be inaugurated, the fundamental basis of which should be: First, that the present gold standard should be maintained. Second, that steps should be taken to insure the ultimate retirement of all classes of United States notes by a gradual and steady process, and so as to avoid the injurious contraction of the currency, or disturbance of the business interests of the country, and that until such retirements provision should be made for a separation of the revenue and note-issue departments of the Treasury. Third, that a banking system be provided, which should furnish credit facilities to every portion of the country and a safe and elastic circulation, and especially with a view of securing such a distribution of the loanable capital of the country as will tend to equalize the rates of interest in all parts thereof."

Recognizing the necessity of committing the formulation of such a plan to a body of men trained and experienced in these matters, a commission was proposed. In case no commission should be authorized by Congress in the spring of 1897, the Executive Committee of the Convention was authorized to select a commission of eleven members, "to make thorough investigation of the monetary affairs and needs of this country, in all relations and aspects, and to make appropriate suggestions as to any evils found to exist, and the remedies therefor."

Congress did not authorize the appointment of a monetary commission; and the Executive Committee of the Convention selected a commission of eleven members, which began its sittings in Washington, September 22, 1897. … The Commission was composed as follows: George F. Edmunds, Vermont, chairman; George E. Leighton, Missouri, vice-chairman; T. G. Bush, Alabama; W. B. Dean, Minnesota; Charles S. Fairchild, New York; Stuyvesant Fish, New York; J. W. Fries, North Carolina; Louis A. Garnett, California; J. Laurence Laughlin, Illinois; C. Stuart Patterson, Pennsylvania; Robert S. Taylor, Indiana; and L. Carron Root and H. Parker Willis, secretaries. Early in January, 1898, the report of the Monetary Commission was made public, and a second convention of delegates from the boards of trade and other commercial organizations of leading cities in the country was called together at Indianapolis, January 20-26, to consider its recommendations. The measures proposed by the Commission were approved by the convention, and were submitted to Congress by a committee appointed to urge their enactment in law. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Gage, had already, in his first annual report and in the draft of a bill which he laid before the House committee on banking and currency, made recommendations which accorded in principle with those of the Commission, differing somewhat in details. Both plans, with some proposals from other sources, were now taken in hand by the House committee on banking and currency, and a bill was prepared, which the committee reported to the House on the 15th of June. But the other branch of Congress, the Senate, had already declared itself in a way which forbade any hope of success. By a vote of 47 to 32, that body had resolved, on the 28th of January, that "all the bonds of the United States issued, or authorized to be issued, under the said acts of Congress herein before recited, are payable, principal and interest, at the option of the government of the United States, in silver dollars, of the coinage of the United States, containing 412½ grains each of standard silver: and that to restore to its coinage such silver coins as a legal tender in payment of said bonds, principal and interest, is not in violation of the public faith, nor in derogation of the rights of the public creditor." The House, by 182 to 132, had rejected this resolution; but the Senate action had demonstrated the evident uselessness of attempting legislation in the interest of a monetary reform. Accordingly the House bill, after being reported and made public, for discussion outside, was withdrawn by the committee, and the subject rested in Congress, while agitation in the country went on.

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897. The Industrial Revolution.

"In 1865 the problem presented was this: The United States could certainly excel any European nation in economic competition, and possibly the whole Continent combined, if it could utilize its resources. So much was admitted; the doubt touched the capacity of the people to organize a system of transportation and industry adequate to attain that end. Failure meant certain bankruptcy. Unappalled by the magnitude of the speculation, the American people took the risk. What that risk was may be imagined when the fact is grasped that in 1865, with 35,000 miles of road already built, this people entered on the construction of 160,000 miles more, at an outlay, probably, in excess of $10,000,000,000. Such figures convey no impression to the mind, any more than a statement of the distance of a star. It may aid the imagination, perhaps, to say that Mr. Giffen estimated the cost to France of the war of 1870, including the indemnity and Alsace and Lorraine, at less than $3,500,000,000, or about one-third of this portentous mortgage on the future.

"As late as 1870 America remained relatively poor, for America, so far as her export trade went, relied on agriculture alone. To build her roads she had to borrow, and she expected to pay dear; but she did not calculate on having to pay twice the capital she borrowed, estimating that capital in the only merchandise she had to sell. Yet this is very nearly what occurred. Agricultural prices fell so rapidly that between 1890 and 1897, when the sharpest pressure prevailed, it took something like twice the weight of wheat or cotton to repay a dollar borrowed in 1873, that would have sufficed to satisfy the creditor when the debt was contracted. Merchandise enough could not be shipped to meet the emergency, and balances had to be paid in coin. The agony this people endured may be measured by the sacrifice they made. At the moment of severest contraction, in the single year 1893. the United States parted with upwards of $87,000,000 of gold, when to lose gold was like draining a living body of its blood. …

"What America owed abroad can never be computed; it is enough that it reached an enormous sum, to refund which, even under favorable circumstances, would have taken years of effort; actually forced payment brought the nation to the brink of a convulsion. Perhaps no people ever faced such an emergency and paid, without recourse to war. America triumphed through her inventive and administrative genius. Brought to a white heat under compression, the industrial system of the Union suddenly fused into a homogeneous mass. One day, without warning, the gigantic mechanism operated, and two hemispheres vibrated with the shock. In March, 1897, the vast consolidation of mines, foundries, railroads, and steamship companies, centralized at Pittsburg, began producing steel rails at $18 the ton, and at a bound America bestrode the world. She had won her great wager with fate. … The end seems only a question of time. Europe is doomed not only to buy her raw material abroad, but to pay the cost of transport. And Europe knew this instinctively in March, 1897, and nerved herself for resistance. Her best hope, next to a victorious war, lay in imitating America, and in organizing a system of transportation which would open up the East.

"Carnegie achieved the new industrial revolution in March, 1897. Within a twelvemonth the rival nations had emptied themselves upon the shore of the Yellow Sea. In November Germany seized Kiao-chau, a month later the Russians occupied Port Arthur, and the following April the English appropriated Wei-hai-wei; but the fact to remember is that just 400 miles inland, due west of Kiao-chau, lies Tszechau, the centre, according to Richthofen, of the richest coal and iron deposits in existence. There with the rude methods used by the Chinese, coal actually sells at 13 cents the ton. Thus it has come to pass that the problem now being attacked by all the statesmen, soldiers, scientific men, and engineers of the two eastern continents is whether Russia, Germany, France, England, and Japan, combined or separately, can ever bring these resources on the market in competition with the United States."

_B. Adams, The New Industrial Revolution (Atlantic Monthly, February, 1901)._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (January-May). Arbitration Treaty with Great Britain rejected by the Senate.

See, (in this volume), VENEZUELA: A. D. 1896-1899.

The correspondence which took place between the governments of the United States and Great Britain, on the subject of an arbitration of the Venezuela Boundary dispute, having led to the revival of a project for the negotiation of a general treaty of arbitration, which the late American Secretary of State, Mr. Gresham, had broached to the British government in the spring of 1895, the terms of such an arrangement were carefully and fully discussed between Secretary Olney and Lord Salisbury, during the year 1896, and an agreement was reached which took form in a solemn compact for the settlement by arbitration of all matters in difference between the two countries, signed at Washington on the 11th of January, 1897. The treaty thus framed was as follows:

"ARTICLE I. The High Contracting Parties agree to submit to Arbitration in accordance with the provisions and subject to the limitations of this Treaty all questions in difference between them which they may fail to adjust by diplomatic negotiation.

"ARTICLE II. All pecuniary claims or groups of pecuniary claims which do not in the aggregate exceed £100,000 in amount, and which do not involve the determination of territorial claims, shall be dealt with and decided by an Arbitral Tribunal constituted as provided in the next following Article. In this Article and in Article IV the words 'groups of pecuniary claims' mean pecuniary claims by one or more persons arising out of the same transactions or involving the same issues of law and fact.'

"ARTICLE III. Each of the High Contracting Parties shall nominate one arbitrator who shall be a jurist of repute and the two arbitrators so nominated shall within two months of the date of their nomination select an umpire. In case they shall fail to do so within the limit of time above mentioned, the umpire shall be appointed by agreement between the Members for the time being of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Members for the time being of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Great Britain, each nominating body acting by a majority. In case they shall fail to agree upon an umpire within three months of the date of an application made to them in that behalf by the High Contracting Parties or either of them, the umpire shall be selected in the manner provided for in Article X. The person so selected shall be the President of the Tribunal and the award of the majority of the Members thereof shall be final.

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"ARTICLE IV. All pecuniary claims or groups of pecuniary claims which shall exceed £100,000 in amount and all other matters in difference, in respect of which either of the High Contracting Parties shall have rights against the other under Treaty or otherwise, provided that such matters in difference do not involve the determination of territorial claims, shall be dealt with and decided by an Arbitral Tribunal, constituted as provided in the next following Article.

"ARTICLE V. Any subject of Arbitration described in Article IV shall be submitted to the Tribunal provided for by Article III, the award of which Tribunal, if unanimous, shall be final. If not unanimous either of the High Contracting Parties may within six months from the date of the award demand a review thereof. In such case the matter in controversy shall be submitted to an Arbitral Tribunal consisting of five jurists of repute, no one of whom shall have been a member of the Tribunal whose award is to be reviewed and who shall be selected as follows, viz:—two by each of the High Contracting Parties, and one, to act as umpire, by the four thus nominated and to be chosen within three months after the date of their nomination. In case they shall fail to choose an umpire within the limit of time above-mentioned, the umpire shall be appointed by agreement between the Nominating Bodies designated in Article III acting in the manner therein provided. In case they shall fail to agree upon an umpire within three months of the date of an application made to them in that behalf by the High Contracting Parties or either of them, the umpire shall be selected in the manner provided for in Article X. The person so selected shall be the President of the Tribunal and the award of the majority of the Members thereof shall be final.

"ARTICLE VI. Any controversy which shall involve the determination of territorial claims shall be submitted to a Tribunal composed of six members, three of whom (subject to the provisions of Article VIII) shall be Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States or Justices of the Circuit Courts to be nominated by the President of the United States, and the other three of whom (subject to the provisions of Article VIII) shall be Judges of the British Supreme Court of Judicature or Members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to be nominated by Her Britannic Majesty, whose award by a majority of not less than five to one shall be final. In case of an award made by less than the prescribed majority, the award shall also be final unless either Power shall, within three months after the award has been reported, protest that the same is erroneous, in which case the award shall be of no validity. In the event of an award made by less than the prescribed majority and protested as above provided, or if the members of the Arbitral Tribunal shall be equally divided, there shall be no recourse to hostile measures of any description until the mediation of one or more friendly Powers has been invited by one or both of the High Contracting Parties.

"ARTICLE VII. Objections to the jurisdiction of an Arbitral Tribunal constituted under this Treaty shall not be taken except as provided in this Article. If before the close of the hearing upon a claim submitted to an Arbitral Tribunal constituted under Article III or Article V either of the High Contracting Parties shall move such Tribunal to decide, and thereupon it shall decide that the determination of such claim necessarily involves the decision of a disputed question of principle of grave general importance affecting the national rights of such party as distinguished from the private rights whereof it is merely the international representative, the jurisdiction of such Arbitral Tribunal over such claim shall cease and the same shall be dealt with by arbitration under Article VI.

"ARTICLE VIII. In cases where the question involved is one which concerns a particular State or Territory of the United States, it shall be open to the President of the United States to appoint a judicial officer of such State or Territory to be one of the Arbitrators under Article III or Article V or Article VI. In like manner in cases where the question involved is one which concerns a British Colony or possession, it shall be open to Her Britannic Majesty to appoint a judicial officer of such Colony or possession to be one of the Arbitrators under Article III or Article V or Article VI.

"ARTICLE IX. Territorial claims in this Treaty shall include all claims to territory and all claims involving questions of servitudes, rights of navigation and of access, fisheries and all rights and interests necessary to the control and enjoyment of the territory claimed by either of the High Contracting Parties.

"ARTICLE X. If in any case the nominating bodies designated in Articles III and V shall fail to agree upon an Umpire in accordance with the provisions of the said Articles, the Umpire shall be appointed by His Majesty the King of Sweden and Norway. Either of the High Contracting Parties, however, may at any time give notice to the other that, by reason of material changes in conditions as existing at the date of this Treaty, it is of opinion that a substitute for His Majesty should be chosen either for all cases to arise under the Treaty or for a particular specified case already arisen, and thereupon the High Contracting Parties shall at once proceed to agree upon such substitute to act either in all cases to arise under the Treaty or in the particular case specified as may be indicated by said notice; provided, however, that such notice shall have no effect upon an Arbitration already begun by the constitution of an Arbitral Tribunal under Article III. The High Contracting Parties shall also at once proceed to nominate a substitute for His Majesty in the event that His Majesty shall at any time notify them of his desire to be relieved from the functions graciously accepted by him under this Treaty either for all cases to arise thereunder or for any particular specified case already arisen.

"ARTICLE XI. In case of the death, absence or incapacity to serve of any Arbitrator or Umpire, or in the event of any Arbitrator or Umpire omitting or declining or ceasing to act as such, another Arbitrator or Umpire shall be forthwith appointed in his place and stead in the manner provided for with regard to the original appointment.

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"ARTICLE XII. Each Government shall pay its own agent and provide for the proper remuneration of the counsel employed by it and of the Arbitrators appointed by it and for the expense of preparing and submitting its case to the Arbitral Tribunal. All other expenses connected with any Arbitration shall be defrayed by the two Governments in equal moieties. Provided, however, that, if in any case the essential matter of difference submitted to arbitration is the right of one of the High Contracting Parties to receive disavowals of or apologies for acts or defaults of the other not resulting in substantial pecuniary injury, the Arbitral Tribunal finally disposing of the said matter shall direct whether any of the expenses of the successful party shall be borne by the unsuccessful party, and if so to what extent.

"ARTICLE XIII. The time and place of meeting of an Arbitral Tribunal and all arrangements for the hearing and all questions of procedure shall be decided by the Tribunal itself. Each Arbitral Tribunal shall keep a correct record of its proceedings and may appoint and employ all necessary officers and agents. The decision of the Tribunal shall, if possible, be made within three months from the close of the arguments on both sides. It shall be made in writing and dated and shall be signed by the Arbitrators who may assent to it. The decision shall be in duplicate, one copy whereof shall be delivered to each of the High Contracting Parties through their respective agents.

"ARTICLE XIV. This Treaty shall remain in force for five years from the date at which it shall come into operation, and further until the expiration of twelve months after either of the High Contracting Parties shall have given notice to the other of its wish to terminate the same.

"ARTICLE XV. The present Treaty shall be duly ratified by the President of the United States of America, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate thereof, and by Her Britannic Majesty; and the mutual exchange of ratifications shall take place in Washington or in London within six months of the date hereof or earlier if possible."

_United States, 54th Congress, 2d Session, Senate Document Number 63._

Public feeling in both countries gave joyful welcome to this nobly conceived treaty when it was announced. All that was best in English sentiment and American sentiment had been shuddering at the thought of possible war between the kindred peoples, and thanked God for what promised some certitude that no dispute would be pushed to that barbarous appeal. Only the mean thought and temper of either country was provoked to opposition; but, unhappily, the meaner temper and the narrower and more ignorant opinion on one side of the sea had been getting so strong a representation in the United States Senate as to prove capable of much mischief there, on this and other matters of most serious public concern. When the great covenant of peace went to that body for approval, there were senators who found it offensive to them because it came from the hands of President Cleveland and Secretary Olney; and there were other senators whose dignity was hurt by the eager impatience with which the public voice cried out for their ratifying vote; and still others there were who looked with official jealousy at the project of an arbitral tribunal which might sometimes take something from senatorial functions in foreign affairs. And the combination of pitiful motives had strength enough to baffle the high hopes and defeat the will of the American people.

Of the public feeling thus outraged, the following is one expression of the time, among many which it would be possible to quote:

Many people "are represented by influential papers like the St. Paul 'Pioneer Press' and the Minneapolis 'Journal,' the latter declaring that it is humiliating to think that, widely as the treaty is favored throughout the country, a few ill-natured men in the Senate have the power to delay ratification. In the Central West the feeling is generally strong for arbitration, if we may judge from the Chicago 'Times-Herald,' the St. Louis 'Republic,' the Indianapolis 'Journal,' and the Cleveland 'Leader.' In the South there are such cheering reports as this from the Memphis 'Scimetar'; 'If the treaty now under consideration in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations should fail of ratification, public opinion in this country would demand that the incoming Administration provide another embodying the same vital principle.' In the East the sentiment in favor of immediate ratification of the original draft has been almost universal, the only two journals of note differing from this being the New York 'Sun' and the Washington 'Post.' The trend of opinion is shown in the adoption by the Massachusetts House of Representatives of an endorsement by a vote of 141 to 11. An important meeting took place last week in Washington in favor of ratification. The speakers were ex-Secretary of State Foster, Mr. G. G. Hubbard, Professor B. L. Whitman, ex-Senator J. B. Henderson, ex-Governor Stanard, and Justice Brewer, of the Supreme Court. The last named said; 'I do not believe in saying to the gentlemen charged with the duty of considering carefully that treaty, that "you must vote for it." There is something in my own nature which, when anybody says to me "you must," causes something to run up my spinal column which says "I won't." It is the Senate's duty to consider that treaty carefully, and when I say that, I say it is no trespass upon their rights for American citizens to express their views of that treaty. What are the errors and losses incidental to arbitration compared to the horrors of war? What are a few million dollars of wrongful damages in comparison to the sacrifice of thousands of human lives?'"

_The Outlook, February 6, 1897._

"This treaty was greeted with widespread favor in the press, but was antagonized at once in the Senate by the jingo element and by the personal adversaries of the administration. The committee on foreign relations reported the draft favorably, but with certain amendments, on February 1. The ensuing debate soon revealed that a vote on ratification could not be obtained before March 4, and the whole matter was dropped. At the opening of the new Congress the Senate Committee again considered the treaty and reported it, with amendments, on March 18. During two weeks' discussion the Senate adopted the committee's amendments and also others, with the result that the draft was radically transformed. {580} Instead of the general reference of all disputes to the tribunals, it was provided that any difference 'which, in the judgment of either power, materially affects its honor or its domestic or foreign policy,' should be submitted to arbitration only by special agreement; that no question should be submitted save with the consent of the Senate in its treaty-making capacity; and that no claim of a British subject against a state or territory of the United States should be submitted under any circumstances. The first of these changes was due mainly to the objection that without it the Monroe Doctrine might be subjected to arbitration; the second to the sensitiveness of senators as to their constitutional functions in foreign relations; and the third to a desire to protect states against claims on their defaulted bonds. Other changes modified materially the method of appointing the arbitrators for the United States, and struck out entirely the designation of the King of Sweden as umpire. Even with these amendments, the opposition to the treaty was not overcome; and the final vote on ratification, taken May 5, resulted in its rejection, the vote standing 43 to 26, less than two-thirds in the affirmative. Thirty Republicans and 13 Democrats voted for the treaty; 8 Republicans, 12 Democrats and 6 Populists against it."

_Political Science Quarterly, June, 1897._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (March). Inauguration of President McKinley. Leading topics of the inaugural address. The President's Cabinet.

The inauguration of President McKinley was performed with the customary ceremonies on the 4th of March. In his inaugural address, the new President laid somewhat less emphasis than might have been expected on the need of measures for reforming the monetary system of the country, but strongly urged that instant steps be taken to increase the revenues of the government by a return to higher tariff charges. "With adequate revenue secured," he argued, "but not until then, we can enter upon such changes in our fiscal laws as will, while insuring safety and volume to our money, no longer impose upon the government the necessity of maintaining so large a gold reserve, with its attendant and inevitable temptations to speculation. Most of our financial laws are the outgrowth of experience and trial, and should not be amended without investigation and demonstration of the wisdom of the proposed changes. We must be both 'sure we are right' and 'make haste slowly.' …

"The question of international bimetallism will have early and earnest attention. It will be my constant endeavor to secure it by cooperation with the other great commercial powers of the world. Until that condition is realized, when the parity between our gold and silver money springs from and is supported by the relative value of the two metals, the value of the silver already coined, and of that which may hereafter be coined, must be kept constantly at par with gold by every resource at our command. The credit of the government, the integrity of its currency, and the inviolability of its obligations must be preserved. This was the commanding verdict of the people, and it will not be unheeded.

"Economy is demanded in every branch of the government at all times, but especially in periods like the present of depression in business and distress among the people. The severest economy must be observed in all public expenditures, and extravagance stopped wherever it is found, and prevented wherever in the future it may be developed. If the revenues are to remain as now, the only relief that can come must be from decreased expenditures. But the present must not become the permanent condition of the government. It has been our uniform practice to retire, not increase, our outstanding obligations; and this policy must again be resumed and vigorously enforced. Our revenues should always be large enough to meet with ease and promptness not only our current needs and the principal and interest of the public debt, but to make proper and liberal provision for that most deserving body of public creditors, the soldiers and sailors and the widows and orphans who are the pensioners of the United States. …

"A deficiency is inevitable so long as the expenditures of the government exceed its receipts. It can only be met by loans or an increased revenue. While a large annual surplus of revenue may invite waste and extravagance, inadequate revenue creates distrust and undermines public and private credit. Neither should be encouraged. Between more loans and more revenue there ought to be but one opinion. We should have more revenue, and that without delay, hindrance, or postponement. A surplus in the treasury created by loans is not a permanent or safe reliance. It will suffice while it lasts, but it cannot last long while the outlays of the government are greater than its receipts, as has been the case during the last two years. … The best way for the government to maintain its credit is to pay as it goes—not by resorting to loans, but by keeping out of debt—through an adequate income secured by a system of taxation, external, or internal, or both. It is the settled policy of the government, pursued from the beginning and practiced by all parties and administrations, to raise the bulk of our revenue from taxes upon foreign productions entering the United States for sale and consumption, and avoiding, for the most part, every form of direct taxation except in time of war.

"The country is clearly opposed to any needless additions to the subjects of internal taxation, and is committed by its latest popular utterance to the system of tariff taxation. There can be no misunderstanding either about the principle upon which this tariff taxation shall be levied. Nothing has ever been made plainer at a general election than that the controlling principle in the raising of revenue from duties on imports is zealous care for American interests and American labor. The people have declared that such legislation should be had as will give ample protection and encouragement to the industries and the development of our country. … The paramount duty of congress is to stop deficiencies by the restoration of that protective legislation which has always been the firmest prop of the treasury. The passage of such a law or laws would strengthen the credit of the government both at home and abroad, and go far toward stopping the drain upon the gold reserve held for the redemption of our currency, which has been heavy and well-nigh constant for several years. In the revision of the tariff, especial attention should be given to the re-enactment and extension of the reciprocity principle of the law of 1890, under which so great a stimulus was given to our foreign trade in new and advantageous markets for our surplus agricultural and manufactured products."

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Without effect, the incoming President urged the ratification of the treaty of arbitration with Great Britain, negotiated by his predecessor and still pending in the Senate. In concluding his address he announced his intention to convene Congress in extra session, saying: "The condition of the public treasury demands the immediate consideration of congress. It alone has the power to provide revenue for the government. Not to convene it under such circumstances, I can view in no other sense than the neglect of a plain duty."

On the day following his inauguration, the President sent to the Senate the following nominations for his Cabinet, which were confirmed:

Secretary of State, John Sherman of Ohio; Secretary of the Treasury, Lyman J. Gage of Illinois; Secretary of War, Russel A. Alger of Michigan; Attorney-General, Joseph McKenna of California; Postmaster-General, James A. Gary of Maryland; Secretary of the Navy, John D. Long of Massachusetts; Secretary of the Interior, Cornelius N. Bliss of New York; Secretary of Agriculture, James Wilson of Iowa.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (March-July). Passage of the Dingley Tariff Act.

Carrying out an intention announced in his Inaugural Address, President McKinley called Congress together in extra session on the 15th of March, asking for immediate action to increase the revenue of the government by increased duties, "so levied upon foreign products as to preserve the home market, so far as possible, to our own producers." In his Inaugural Address the President had expressed the understanding of his party as to the chief meaning of the late election, by saying that "the country is … committed by its latest popular utterance to the system of tariff taxation. … The people have declared that such legislation should be had as will give ample protection and encouragement to the industries and development of our country. … The paramount duty of Congress is to stop deficiencies by the restoration of that protective legislation which has always been the firmest prop of the treasury." To the majority in both Houses of Congress these views were entirely acceptable, and they were acted upon at once. The Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives in the previous Congress had already prepared a comprehensive new tariff bill, which it passed on to its successor. This ready-made bill was reported to the House on the first day of the session, by Mr. Dingley, chairman of the newly appointed committee, as he had been of the one before it. Debate on the measure began a week later, and was controlled by a fixed programme, which required it to be ended on the 31st of March. The bill was then passed, by a vote of 205 against 121. Of the action of the Senate upon it, and of the main features of the bill as it was finally shaped and became law, the following is a succinct account:

"The bill, referred at once to the Senate Committee on Finance, was reported after a month, on May 8, with important amendments. There was an attempt to impose some purely revenue duties, and, as to the protective duties, the tendency was towards lower rates than in the House bill, though on certain articles, such as wools of low grade, hides, and others (of which more will be said presently), the drift was the other way. The Senate, however, paid much less respect than the House to the recommendations of the committee in charge. In the course of two months, from May 4 to July 7, it went over the tariff bill item by item, amending without restraint, often in a perfunctory manner, and not infrequently with the outcome settled by the accident of attendance on the particular day; on the whole, with a tendency to retain the higher rates of the House bill. As passed finally by the Senate on July 7, the bill, though it contained some 872 amendments, followed the plan of the House Committee rather than that of the Senate Committee. As usual, it went to a Conference Committee. In the various compromises and adjustments in the Senate and in the Conference Committee there was little sign of the deliberate plan and method which the House had shown, and the details of the act were settled in no less haphazard fashion than has been the case with other tariff measures. As patched up by the Conference Committee, the bill was promptly passed by both branches of Congress, and became law on July 24. In what manner these political conditions affected the character of the act will appear from a consideration of the more important specific changes.

"First and foremost was the reimposition of the duties on wool. As the repeal of these duties had been the one important change made by the act of 1894, so their restoration was the salient feature in the act of 1897. … Clothing wool was subjected once more to a duty of 11 cents a pound, combing wool to one of 12 cents. On carpet wool there were new graded duties, heavier than any ever before levied. If its value was 12 cents a pound or less the duty was 4 cents; if over 12 cents, the duty was 7 cents. … The duties on carpet wool, as has already been noted, were made higher than ever before. In the House the rates of the act of 1890 had been retained; but in the Senate new and higher rates were inserted. … They were demanded by the Senators from some States in the Far West, especially from Idaho and Montana. … They [the Senators in question] needed to be placated and they succeeded in getting higher duties on the cheap carpet wools, on the plea of encouragement for the comparatively coarse clothing wool of their ranches. … The same complications that led to the high duty on carpet wool brought about a duty on hides. This rawest of raw materials had been on the free list for just a quarter of a century, since 1872, when the duty of the war days had been repealed. … But here, again, the Senators from the ranching States were able to dictate terms. … In the Senate a duty of 20 per cent. was tacked on. The rate was reduced to 15 per cent. in the Conference Committee, and so remains in the act. The restored duties on wool necessarily brought in their train the old system of high compensating duties on woollens. … In the main, the result was a restoration of the rates of the act of 1890. There was some upward movement almost all along the line; and the ad valorem duty alone, on the classes of fabrics which are most largely imported, crept up to 55 per cent. …

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"On cotton goods the general tendency was to impose duties lower than those of 1890. This was indicated by the drag-net rate, on manufactures of cotton not otherwise provided for, which had been 50 per cent. in 1890, and was 45 per cent. in 1897. On two large classes of textile goods new and distinctly higher duties were imposed,—on silks and linens. … The mode of gradation was to levy the duties according to the amount of pure silk contained in the goods. The duties were fixed by the pound, being lowest all goods containing a small proportion of pure silk, and rising as that proportion became larger; with the proviso that in no case should the duty be less than 50 per cent. … Thus, the duty on certain kinds of silks was $1.30 cents per pound, if they contained 45 per cent in weight of silk; but advanced suddenly to $2.25, if they contained more than 45 per cent. … On linens another step of the same kind was taken, specific duties being substituted here also for ad-valorem. … Linens were graded somewhat as cottons had been graded since 1861, according to the fineness of the goods as indicated by the number of threads to the square inch. If the number of threads was 60 or less per square inch, the duty was 1¾ cents a square yard; if the threads were between 60 and 120, the duty was 2¾ cents; and so on,—plus 30 per cent. ad-valorem duty in all cases. But finer linen goods, unless otherwise specially provided for, were treated leniently. If the weight was small (less than 4½ ounces per yard), the duty was but 35 per cent. On the other hand, linen laces, or articles trimmed with lace or embroidery, were dutiable at 60 percent.,—an advance at 10 per cent. over the rate of 1890. … It was inevitable, under the political conditions of the session, that in this schedule something should again be attempted for the farmer; and, accordingly, we find a substantial duty on flax. The rate of the act of 1890 was restored,—3 cents a pound on prepared flax, in place of the rate of 1½ cents imposed by the act of 1894. …

"On chinaware the rates of 1890 were restored. The duty on the finer qualities which are chiefly imported had been lowered to 35 per cent. in 1894, and was now once more put at 60 per cent. On glassware, also, the general ad-valorem rate, which had been reduced to 35 per cent. in 1894, was again fixed at 45 per cent., as in 1890. Similarly the specific duties on the cheaper grades of window-glass and plate-glass, which had been lowered in 1894, were raised to the figures of 1890. … The metal schedules in the act of 1897 showed in the main a striking contrast with the textile schedules. Important advances of duty were made on many textiles, and in some cases rates went considerably higher even than those of 1890. But on most metals, and especially on iron and steel, duties were left very much as they had been in 1894. … On steel rails there was even a slight reduction from the rate of 1894—$6.72 per ton instead of $7.84. On coal there was a compromise rate. The duty had been 75 cents a ton in 1890, and 40 cents in 1894; it was now fixed at 67 cents. On the other hand, as to certain manufactures of iron and steel farther advanced beyond the crude stage, there was a return to rates very similar to those of 1890. Thus, on pocket cutlery, razors, guns, we find once more the system of combined ad-valorem and specific duties, graded according to the value of the article. … Copper remained on the free list, where it had been put in 1894. … For good or ill the copper duty had worked out all its effects years before. On the other hand, the duties on lead and on lead ore went up to the point at which they stood in 1890. Here we have once more the signs of concession to the silver Republicans of the far West. … The duty on tin plate, a bone of contention under the act of 1890, was disposed of, with little debate, by the imposition of a comparatively moderate duty. …

"A part of the act which aroused much public attention and which had an important bearing on its financial yield was the sugar schedule—the duties on sugar, raw and refined. … The act of 1890 had admitted raw sugar free, while that of 1894 had imposed a duty of 40 per cent. ad valorem. … The price of raw sugar had maintained its downward tendency; and the duty of 40 per cent. had been equivalent in 1896 to less than one cent a pound. In the act of 1897 the duty was made specific, and was practically doubled. Beginning with a rate of one cent a pound on sugar tested to contain 75 per cent., it advanced by stages until on sugar testing 95 per cent. (the usual content of commercial raw sugar) it reached 1.65 cents per pound. The higher rate thus imposed was certain to yield a considerable increase of revenue. Much was said also of the protection now afforded to the beet sugar industry of the West. That industry, however, was still of small dimensions and uncertain future. … On refined sugar, the duty was made 1.95 cents per pound, which, as compared with raw sugar testing 100 per cent., left a protection for the domestic refiner,—i. e., for the Sugar 'Trust,'—of 1/8 of one cent a pound. Some intricate calculation would be necessary to make out whether this 'differential' for the refining interest was more or less than in the act of 1894; but, having regard to the effect of the substitution of specific for ad-valorem duties, the Trust was no more favored by the act of 1897 than by its predecessor, and even somewhat less favored. The changes which this part of the tariff act underwent in the two Houses are not without significance." In the bill passed by the House. "the so-called differential, or protection to the refiners, was one-eighth of a cent per pound. In the Senate there was an attempt at serious amendment. The influence of the Sugar Trust in the Senate had long been great. How secured, whether through party contributions, entangling alliances, or coarse bribery, the public could not know; but certainly great, as the course of legislation in that body demonstrated." The Senate attempted to make an entire change in the scheme of sugar duties, which would give the Trust a fifth of a cent per pound of protective differential, instead of an eighth; but the House resisted, with more success than in 1894, and the senatorial friends of the Sugar Trust had to give way.

See, also (in this volume), TRUSTS: UNITED STATES; and SUGAR BOUNTIES.

"The tariff act of 1894 had repealed the provisions as to reciprocity in the act of 1890, and had rendered nugatory such parts of the treaties made under the earlier act as were inconsistent with the provisions of its successor. The act of 1897 now revived the policy of reciprocity, and in some ways even endeavored to enlarge the scope of the reciprocity provisions"

See below: A. D. 1899-1901.

_F. W. Taussig, Tariff History of the United States, 4th edition, chapter 7 (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons)._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (April-October). Negotiations for an international bi-metallic agreement.

See (in this volume) MONETARY QUESTIONS: A. D 1897 (APRIL-OCTOBER).

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (June). Appointment of the Nicaragua Canal Commission.

See (in this volume) CANAL, INTEROCEANIC: A. D. 1889-1899.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (November). Refusal to negotiate with the insurgent republic of the Philippine Islands.

On the 3d of November, 1897, Mr. Rounseville Wildman, the U. S. Consul at Hongkong, addressed the following to the State Department: "Since my arrival in Hongkong I have been called upon several times by Mr. F. Agoncilla, foreign agent and high commissioner, etc., of the new republic of the Philippines. Mr. Agoncilla holds a commission, signed by the president, members of cabinet, and general in chief of the republic of Philippines, empowering him absolutely with power to conclude treaties with foreign governments. Mr. Agoncilla offers on behalf of his government alliance offensive and defensive with the United States when the United States declares war on Spain, which, in Mr. Agoncilla's judgment, will be very soon. In the meantime he wishes the United States to send to some port in the Philippines 20,000 stand of arms and 200,000 rounds of ammunition for the use of his government, to be paid for on the recognition of his government by the United States. He pledges as security two provinces and the custom-house at Manila. He is not particular about the price—is willing the United States should make 25 per cent or 30 per cent profit. He is a very earnest and attentive diplomat and a great admirer of the United States. On his last visit he surprised me with the information that he had written his government that he had hopes of inducing the United States to supply the much-needed guns, etc. In case Señor Agoncilla's dispatch should fall into the hands of an unfriendly power and find its way into the newspapers, I have thought it wise to apprise the State Department of the nature of the high commissioner's proposals. Señor Agoncilla informs me by late mail that he will proceed at once to Washington to conclude the proposed treaty, if I advise. I shall not advise said step until so instructed by the State Department."

To this communication, the Third Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Cridler, returned the following reply, December 15, 1897:

"I have to acknowledge the receipt of your dispatch Number 19 of November 3, 1897, in which you announce the arrival at your post of Mr. F. Agoncilla, whom you describe as foreign agent and high commissioner of the new republic of the Philippines, and who holds full power to negotiate and conclude treaties with foreign powers. Mr. Agoncilla offers an alliance 'offensive and defensive with the United States when the United States declares war on Spain, which, in Mr. Agoncilla's judgment, will be very soon,' and suggests that 20,000 stand of arms and 200,000 rounds of ammunition be supplied to his government by that of the United States. You may briefly advise Mr. Agoncilla, in case he should call upon you, that the Government of the United States does not negotiate such treaties and that it is not possible to forward the desired arms and ammunition. You should not encourage any advances on the part of Mr. Agoncilla, and should courteously decline to communicate with the Department further regarding his alleged mission."

_Treaty of Peace and Accompanying Papers (55th Congress, 3d Session, Senate Document Number 62, part 1, pages 333,334)._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (November). Treaty with Russia and Japan to suspend pelagic sealing.

See (in this volume) BERING SEA QUESTIONS.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (December). President McKinley on Cuban affairs.

See (in this volume) CUBA: A. D. 1896-1897.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897 (December). Stringent measures against pelagic sealing.

See (in this volume) BERING SEA QUESTIONS.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897-1898 (December-March). Reports from Cuba of the suffering condition of the "reconcentrados."

See (in this volume) CUBA: A. D. 1897-1898 (DECEMBER-MARCH).

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897-1899. Agreements with the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole tribes of Indians. Work of the Dawes Commission.

See (in this volume) INDIANS, AMERICAN: A. D. 1893-1899.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1897-1900. Treaty for the annexation of Hawaii. Its failure of ratification. Passage of joint resolution to annex, and of an Act for the government of the islands.

See (in this volume) HAWAII.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (February-March). American sympathy with the Cubans and indignation against Spain. Destruction of the United States battle-ship "Maine" in Havana harbor. Investigation and findings of the American and Spanish courts of inquiry.

Public feeling in the United States, excited by a terrible state of suffering in Cuba, resulting from Spanish methods of dealing with insurrection in that island, had been gathering intensity for months past, and threatening a rupture of peaceful relations between the United States and Spain.

See (in this volume), CUBA: A. D. 1896-1897 and 1897-1898)

A sudden crisis in the situation was produced, on the morning of the 15th of February, 1898, by news that the United States battle-ship "Maine," while paying a visit of courtesy to the harbor of Havana, had been totally destroyed, on the previous evening, by an explosion which killed most of her crew. In a subsequent message on the subject to Congress, President McKinley recited the circumstances of the catastrophe, and the proceedings adopted to ascertain its cause, with the conclusions reached, in the following words: "For some time prior to the visit of the 'Maine' to Havana Harbor our consular representatives pointed out the advantages to flow from the visit of national ships to the Cuban waters, in accustoming the people to the presence of our flag as the symbol of good will and of our ships in the fulfillment of the mission of protection to American interests, even though no immediate need therefor might exist. Accordingly on the 24th of January last, after conference with the Spanish minister; in which the renewal of visits of our war vessels to Spanish waters was discussed and accepted, the peninsular authorities at Madrid and Havana were advised of the purpose of this Government to resume friendly naval visits at Cuban ports, and that in that view the 'Maine' would forthwith call at the port of Havana. This announcement was received by the Spanish Government with appreciation of the friendly character of the visit of the 'Maine,' and with notification of intention to return the courtesy by sending Spanish ships to the principal ports of the United States. Meanwhile the 'Maine' entered the port of Havana on the 25th of January, her arrival being marked with no special incident besides the exchange of customary salutes and ceremonial visits.

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"The 'Maine' continued in the harbor of Havana during the three weeks following her arrival. No appreciable excitement attended her stay; on the contrary, a feeling of relief and confidence followed the resumption of the long-interrupted friendly intercourse. So noticeable was this immediate effect of her visit that the consul-general strongly urged that the presence of our ships in Cuban waters should be kept up by retaining the 'Maine' at Havana, or, in the event of her recall, by sending another vessel there to take her place. At forty minutes past 9 in the evening of the 15th of February the 'Maine' was destroyed by an explosion, by which the entire forward part of the ship was utterly wrecked. In this catastrophe 2 officers and 264 of her crew perished, those who were not killed outright by her explosion being penned between decks by the tangle of wreckage and drowned by the immediate sinking of the hull. Prompt assistance was rendered by the neighboring vessels anchored in the harbor, aid being especially given by the boats of the Spanish cruiser 'Alfonso XII' and the Ward Line steamer 'City of Washington,' which lay not far distant. The wounded were generously cared for by the authorities of Havana, the hospitals being freely opened to them, while the earliest recovered bodies of the dead were interred by the municipality in a public cemetery in the city. Tributes of grief and sympathy were offered from all official quarters of the island.

"The appalling calamity fell upon the people of our country with crushing force, and for a brief time an intense excitement prevailed, which in a community less just and self-controlled than ours might have led to hasty acts of blind resentment. This spirit, however, soon gave way to the calmer processes of reason and to the resolve to investigate the facts and await material proof before forming a judgment as to the cause, the responsibility, and, if the facts warranted, the remedy due. This course necessarily recommended itself from the outset to the Executive, for only in the light of a dispassionately ascertained certainty could it determine the nature and measure of its full duty in the matter. The usual procedure was followed, as in all cases of casualty or disaster to national vessels of any maritime State. A naval court of inquiry was at once organized, composed of officers well qualified by rank and practical experience to discharge the onerous duty imposed upon them. Aided by a strong force of wreckers and divers, the court proceeded to make a thorough investigation on the spot, employing every available means for the impartial and exact determination of the causes of the explosion. Its operations have been conducted with the utmost deliberation and judgment, and while independently pursued no attainable source of information was neglected, and the fullest opportunity was allowed for a simultaneous investigation by the Spanish authorities. The finding of the court of inquiry was reached, after twenty-three days of continuous labor, on the 21st of March, instant, and, having been approved on the 22d by the commander in chief of the United States naval force on the North Atlantic Station, was transmitted to the Executive. It is herewith laid before the Congress, together with the voluminous testimony taken before the court. Its purport is, in brief, as follows:

"When the 'Maine' arrived at Havana she was conducted by the regular Government pilot to buoy Number 4, to which she was moored in from 5½ to 6 fathoms of water. The state of discipline on board and the condition of her magazines, boilers, coal bunkers, and storage compartments are passed in review, with the conclusion that excellent order prevailed and that no indication of any cause for an internal explosion existed in any quarter. At 8 o'clock in the evening of February 15 everything had been reported secure, and all was quiet. At forty minutes past 9 o'clock the vessel was suddenly destroyed. There were two distinct explosions, with a brief interval between them. The first lifted the forward part of the ship very perceptibly. The second, which was more open, prolonged, and of greater volume, is attributed by the court to the partial explosion of two or more of the forward magazines. The evidence of the divers establishes that the after part of the ship was practically intact and sank in that condition a very few moments after the explosion. The forward part was completely demolished. Upon the evidence of a concurrent external cause the finding of the court is as follows:

"'At frame 17 the outer shell of the ship, from a point of 11½ feet from the middle line of the ship and 6 feet above the keel when in its normal position, has been forced up so as to be now about 4 feet above the surface of the water, therefore about 34 feet above where it would be had the ship sunk uninjured. The outside bottom plating is bent into a reversed V shape (˄), the after wing of which, about 15 feet broad and 32 feet in length (from frame 17 to frame 25), is doubled back upon itself against the continuation of the same plating, extending forward. At frame 18 the vertical keel is broken in two and the flat keel bent into an angle similar to the angle formed by the outside bottom plates. This break is now about 6 feet below the surface of the water and about 30 feet above its normal position. In the opinion of the court this effect could have been produced only by the explosion of a mine situated under the bottom of the ship at about frame 18 and somewhat on the port side of the ship.'

"The conclusions of the court are: That the loss of the 'Maine' was not in any respect due to fault or negligence on the part of any of the officers or members of her crew; That the ship was destroyed by the explosion of a submarine mine, which caused the partial explosion of two or more of her forward magazines; and That no evidence has been obtainable fixing the responsibility for the destruction of the 'Maine' upon any person or persons.

"I have directed that the finding of the court of inquiry and the views of this Government thereon be communicated to the Government of Her Majesty the Queen Regent, and I do not permit myself to doubt that the sense of justice of the Spanish nation will dictate a course of action suggested by honor and the friendly relations of the two Governments. It will be the duty of the Executive to advise the Congress of the result, and in the meantime deliberate consideration is invoked."

_Congressional Record, March 28, 1898._

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A Spanish naval board of inquiry, convened by the maritime authority at Havana, and investigating the matter with haste, arrived at a conclusion quite opposite to that stated above, reporting on the 22d of March that "an explosion of the first order, in the forward magazine of the American ironclad 'Maine,' caused the destruction of that part of the ship and its total submersion in the same place in this bay at which it was anchored. … That the important facts connected with the explosion in its external appearances at every moment of its duration having been described by witnesses, and the absence of all circumstances which necessarily accompany the explosion of a torpedo having been proved by these witnesses and experts, it can only be honestly asserted that the catastrophe was due to internal causes. … That the character of the proceedings undertaken and respect for the law which establishes the absolute extra-territoriality of a foreign war vessel have prevented the determination, even by conjecture, of the said internal origin of the disaster, to which also the impossibility of establishing the necessary communication either with the crew of the wrecked vessel or the officials of their Government commissioned to investigate the causes of the said event, or with those subsequently intrusted with the issue, has contributed. … That the interior and exterior examination of the bottom of the 'Maine,' whenever it is possible, unless the bottom of the ship and that of the place in the bay where it is sunk are altered by the work which is being carried on for the total or partial recovery of the vessel, will prove the correctness of all that is said in this report; but this must not be understood to mean that the accuracy of these present conclusions requires such proof."

_U. S. Senate Report Number 885, 55th Congress, 2d Session, page 635._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (February-December). In the Chinese "battle of concessions."

See (in this volume) CHINA: A. D. 1898 (FEBRUARY-DECEMBER).

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (March). Account by Senator Proctor of the condition of the "reconcentrados" in Cuba.

See (in this volume) CUBA: A. D. 1897-1898 (DECEMBER-MARCH).

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (March-April). Continued discussion of Cuban affairs with Spain. Unsatisfactory results. Message of the President asking Congress for authority to terminate hostilities in Cuba.

On the 11th of April, President McKinley addressed another special message to Congress, setting forth the unsatisfactory results with which Cuban affairs had been further discussed with the government of Spain, and formally asking to be authorized and empowered to take measures for securing a "full and final termination of hostilities" in the oppressed island. He said:

"Obedient to that precept of the Constitution which commands the President to give from time to time to the Congress information of the state of the Union and to recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient, it becomes my duty now to address your body with regard to the grave crisis that has arisen in the relations of the United States to Spain by reason of the warfare that for more than three years has raged in the neighboring island of Cuba. I do so because of the intimate connection of the Cuban question with the state of our own Union, and the grave relation the course which it is now incumbent upon the nation to adopt must needs bear to the traditional policy of our Government, if it is to accord with the precepts laid down by the founders of the Republic and religiously observed by succeeding Administrations to the present day.

"The present revolution is but the successor of other similar insurrections which have occurred in Cuba against the dominion of Spain, extending over a period of nearly half a century, each of which, during its progress, has subjected the United States to great effort and expense in enforcing its neutrality laws, caused enormous losses to American trade and commerce, caused irritation, annoyance, and disturbance among our citizens, and, by the exercise of cruel, barbarous, and uncivilized practices of warfare, shocked the sensibilities and offended the humane sympathies of our people. Since the present revolution began, in February, 1895, this country has seen the fertile domain at our threshold ravaged by fire and sword in the course of a struggle unequaled in the history of the island and rarely paralleled as to the numbers of the combatants and the bitterness of the contest by any revolution of modern times where a dependent people striving to be free have been opposed by the power of the sovereign state. Our people have beheld a once prosperous community reduced to comparative want, its lucrative commerce virtually paralyzed, its exceptional productiveness diminished, its fields laid waste, its mills in ruins, and its people perishing by tens of thousands from hunger and destitution. We have found ourselves constrained, in the observance of that strict neutrality which our laws enjoin and which the law of nations commands, to police our own waters and to watch our own seaports in prevention of any unlawful act in aid of the Cubans. Our trade has suffered; the capital invested by our citizens in Cuba has been largely lost, and the temper and forbearance of our people have been so sorely tried as to beget a perilous unrest among our own citizens which has inevitably found its expression from time to time in the National Legislature, so that issues wholly external to our own body politic engross attention and stand in the way of that close devotion to domestic advancement that becomes a self-contained commonwealth whose primal maxim has been the avoidance of all foreign entanglements. All this must needs awaken, and has, indeed, aroused the utmost concern on the part of this Government, as well during my predecessor's term as in my own.

"In April, 1896, the evils from which our country suffered through the Cuban war became so onerous that my predecessor made an effort to bring about a peace through the mediation of this Government in any way that might tend to an honorable adjustment of the contest between Spain and her revolted colony, on the basis of some effective scheme of self-government for Cuba under the flag and sovereignty of Spain. It failed through the refusal of the Spanish Government then in power to consider any form of mediation or, indeed, any plan of settlement which did not begin with the actual submission of the insurgents to the mother country, and then only on such terms as Spain herself might see fit to grant. The war continued unabated. The resistance of the insurgents was in no wise diminished. The efforts of Spain were increased, both by the dispatch of fresh levies to Cuba and by the addition to the horrors of the strife of a new and inhuman phase happily unprecedented in the modern history of civilized Christian peoples. {586} The policy of devastation and concentration, inaugurated by the captain-general's bando of October 21, 1896, in the province of Pinar del Rio, was thence extended to embrace all of the island to which the power of the Spanish arms was able to reach by occupation or by military operations. The peasantry, including all dwelling in the open agricultural interior, were driven into the garrison towns or isolated places held by the troops. The raising and movement of provisions of all kinds were interdicted. The fields were laid waste, dwellings unroofed and fired, mills destroyed, and, in short, everything that could desolate the land and render it unfit for human habitation or support was commanded by one or the other of the contending parties and executed by all the powers at their disposal.

"By the time the present Administration took office, a year ago, reconcentration—so called—had been made effective over the better part of the four central and western provinces—Santa Clara, Matanzas, Habana, and Pinar del Rio. The agricultural population to the estimated number of 300,000 or more was herded within the towns and their immediate vicinage, deprived of the means of support, rendered destitute of shelter, left poorly clad, and exposed to the most unsanitary conditions. As the scarcity of food increased with the devastation of the depopulated areas of production, destitution and want became misery and starvation. Month by month the death rate increased in an alarming ratio. By March, 1897, according to conservative estimates from official Spanish sources, the mortality among the reconcentrados, from starvation and the diseases thereto incident, exceeded 50 per centum of their total number. No practical relief was accorded to the destitute. The overburdened towns, already suffering from the general dearth, could give no aid. So-called 'zones of cultivation' established within the immediate areas of effective military control about the cities and fortified camps proved illusory as a remedy for the suffering. The unfortunates, being for the most part women and children, with aged and helpless men, enfeebled by disease and hunger, could not have tilled the soil without tools, seed, or shelter for their own support or for the supply of the cities. Reconcentration, adopted avowedly as a war measure in order to cut off the resources of the insurgents, worked its predestined result. As I said in my message of last December, it was not civilized warfare; it was extermination. The only peace it could beget was that of the wilderness and the grave.

"Meanwhile the military situation in the island had undergone a noticeable change. The extraordinary activity that characterized the second year of the war, when the insurgents invaded even the thitherto unharmed fields of Pinar del Rio and carried havoc and destruction up to the walls of the city of Habana itself, had relapsed into a dogged struggle in the central and eastern provinces. The Spanish arms regained a measure of control in Pinar del Rio and parts of Habana, but, under the existing conditions of the rural country, without immediate improvement of their productive situation. Even thus partially restricted, the revolutionists held their own, and their conquest and submission, put forward by Spain as the essential and sole basis of peace, seemed as far distant as at the outset. In this state of affairs my Administration found itself confronted with the grave problem of its duty. My message of last December reviewed the situation, and narrated the steps taken with a view to relieving its acuteness and opening the way to some form of honorable settlement. The assassination of the prime minister, Canovas, led to a change of government in Spain. The former administration, pledged to subjugation without concession, gave place to that of a more liberal party, committed long in advance to a policy of reform involving the wider principle of home rule for Cuba and Porto Rico.

"The overtures of this Government, made through its new envoy, General Woodford, and looking to an immediate and effective amelioration of the condition of the island, although not accepted to the extent of admitted mediation in any shape, were met by assurances that home rule, in an advanced phase, would be forthwith offered to Cuba, without waiting for the war to end, and that more humane methods should thenceforth prevail in the conduct of hostilities. Coincidentally with these declarations, the new Government of Spain continued and completed the policy already begun by its predecessor, of testifying friendly regard for this nation by releasing American citizens held under one charge or another connected with the insurrection, so that by the end of November not a single person entitled in any way to our national protection remained in a Spanish prison.

"While these negotiations were in progress the increasing destitution of the unfortunate reconcentrados and the alarming mortality among them claimed earnest attention. The success which had attended the limited measure of relief extended to the suffering American citizens among them by the judicious expenditure through the consular agencies of the money appropriated expressly for their succor by the joint resolution approved May 24, 1897, prompted the humane extension of a similar scheme of aid to the great body of sufferers. A suggestion to this end was acquiesced in by the Spanish authorities. On the 24th of December last I caused to be issued an appeal to the American people, inviting contributions in money or in kind for the succor of the starving sufferers in Cuba, following this on the 8th of January by a similar public announcement of the formation of a central Cuban relief committee, with headquarters in New York City, composed of three members, representing the American National Red Cross and the religious and business elements of the community. The efforts of that committee have been untiring and have accomplished much. Arrangements for free transportation to Cuba have greatly aided the charitable work. The president of the American Red Cross and representatives of other contributory organizations have generously visited Cuba and cooperated with the consul-general and the local authorities to make effective distribution of the relief collected through the efforts of the central committee. Nearly $200,000 in money and supplies has already reached the sufferers, and more is forthcoming. The supplies are admitted duty free, and transportation to the interior has been arranged, so that the relief, at first necessarily confined to Habana and the larger cities, is now extended through most, if not all, of the towns where suffering exists. {587} Thousands of lives have already been saved. The necessity for a change in the condition of the reconcentrados is recognized by the Spanish Government. Within a few days past the orders of General Weyler have been revoked; the reconcentrados, it is said, are to be permitted to return to their homes, and aided to resume the self-supporting pursuits of peace. Public works have been ordered to give them employment, and a sum of $600,000 has been appropriated for their relief.

"The war in Cuba is of such a nature that short of subjugation or extermination a final military victory for either side seems impracticable. The alternative lies in the physical exhaustion of the one or the other party, or perhaps of both—a condition which in effect ended the ten years' war by the truce of Zanjon. The prospect of such a protraction and conclusion of the present strife is a contingency hardly to be contemplated with equanimity by the civilized world, and least of all by the United States, affected and injured as we are, deeply and intimately, by its very existence. Realizing this, it appeared to be my duty, in a spirit of true friendliness, no less to Spain than to the Cubans who have so much to lose by the prolongation of the struggle, to seek to bring about an immediate termination of the war. To this end I submitted on the 27th ultimo, as a result of much representation and correspondence, through the United States minister at Madrid, propositions to the Spanish Government looking to an armistice until October 1 for the negotiation of peace with the good offices of the President. In addition, I asked the immediate revocation of the order of reconcentration, so as to permit the people to return to their farms and the needy to be relieved with provisions and supplies from the United States, cooperating with the Spanish authorities, so as to afford full relief.

"The reply of the Spanish cabinet was received on the night of the 31st ultimo. It offered, as the means to bring about peace in Cuba, to confide the preparation thereof to the insular parliament, inasmuch as the concurrence of that body would be necessary to reach a final result, it being, however, understood that the powers reserved by the constitution to the Central Government are not lessened or diminished. As the Cuban parliament does not meet until the 4th of May next, the Spanish Government would not object, for its part, to accept at once a suspension of hostilities if asked for by the insurgents from the general in chief, to whom it would pertain, in such case, to determine the duration and conditions of the armistice. The propositions submitted by General Woodford and the reply of the Spanish Government were both in the form of brief memoranda, the texts of which are before me, and are substantially in the language above given. The function of the Cuban parliament in the matter of 'preparing' peace and the manner of its doing so are not expressed in the Spanish memorandum; but from General Woodford's explanatory reports of preliminary discussions preceding the final conference it is understood that the Spanish Government stands ready to give the insular congress full powers to settle the terms of peace with the insurgents—whether by direct negotiation or indirectly by means of legislation does not appear.

"With this last overture in the direction of immediate peace, and its disappointing reception by Spain, the Executive is brought to the end of his effort. In my annual message of December last I said: 'Of the untried measures there remain only: Recognition of the insurgents as belligerents; recognition of the independence of Cuba; neutral intervention to end the war by imposing a rational compromise between the contestants, and intervention in favor of one or the other party. I speak not of forcible annexation, for that can not be thought of. That, by our code of morality, would be criminal aggression.' Thereupon I review these alternatives, in the light of President Grant's measured words, uttered in 1875, when after seven years of sanguinary, destructive, and cruel hostilities in Cuba he reached the conclusion that the recognition of the independence of Cuba was impracticable and indefensible; and that the recognition of belligerence was not warranted by the facts according to the tests of public law. I commented especially upon the latter aspect of the question, pointing out the inconveniences and positive dangers of a recognition of belligerence which, while adding to the already onerous burdens of neutrality within our own jurisdiction, could not in any way extend our influence or effective offices in the territory of hostilities. Nothing has since occurred to change my view in this regard; and I recognize as fully now as then that the issuance of a proclamation of neutrality, by which process the so-called recognition of belligerents is published, could, of itself and unattended by other action, accomplish nothing toward the one end for which we labor—the instant pacification of Cuba and the cessation of the misery that afflicts the island.

"Turning to the question of recognizing at this time the independence of the present insurgent government in Cuba, we find safe precedents in our history from an early day. They are well summed up in President Jackson's message to Congress, December 21, 1836, on the subject of the recognition of the independence of Texas. He said: 'In all the contests that have arisen out of the revolutions of France, out of the disputes relating to the Crowns of Portugal and Spain, out of the separation of the American possessions of both from the European Governments, and out of the numerous and constantly occurring struggles for dominion in Spanish America, so wisely consistent with our just principles has been the action of our Government that we have, under the most critical circumstances, avoided all censure, and encountered no other evil than that produced by a transient estrangement of good will in those against whom we have been by force of evidence compelled to decide. It has thus made known to the world that the uniform policy and practice of the United States is to avoid all interference in disputes which merely relate to the internal government of other nations, and eventually to recognize the authority of the prevailing party without reference to our particular interests and views or to the merits of the original controversy. … But on this, as on every other trying occasion, safety is to be found in a rigid adherence to principle. In the contest between Spain and the revolted colonies we stood aloof, and waited not only until the ability of the new States to protect themselves was fully established, but until the danger of their being again subjugated had entirely passed away. {588} Then, and not until then, were they recognized. Such was our course in regard to Mexico herself. … It is true that with regard to Texas the civil authority of Mexico has been expelled, its invading army defeated, the chief of the Republic himself captured, and all present power to control the newly-organized government of Texas annihilated within its confines; but, on the other hand, there is, in appearance at least, an immense disparity of physical force on the side of Texas. The Mexican Republic, under another Executive, is rallying its forces under a new leader and menacing a fresh invasion to recover its lost dominion. Upon the issue of this threatened invasion the independence of Texas may be considered as suspended; and were there nothing peculiar in the relative situation of the United States and Texas, our acknowledgment of its independence at such a crisis could scarcely be regarded as consistent with that prudent reserve with which we have hitherto held ourselves bound to treat all similar questions.'

"Thereupon Andrew Jackson proceeded to consider the risk that there might be imputed to the United States motives of selfish interest in view of the former claim on our part to the territory of Texas, and of the avowed purpose of the Texans in seeking recognition of independence as an incident to the incorporation of Texas in the Union, concluding thus: 'Prudence, therefore, seems to dictate that we should still stand aloof and maintain our present attitude, if not until Mexico itself or one of the great foreign powers shall recognize the independence of the new government, at least until the lapse of time or the course of events shall have proved beyond cavil or dispute the ability of the people of that country to maintain their separate sovereignty and to uphold the government constituted by them. Neither of the contending parties can justly complain of this course. By pursuing it we are but carrying out the long-established policy of our Government, a policy which has secured to us respect and influence abroad and inspired confidence at home.'

"These are the words of the resolute and patriotic Jackson. They are evidence that the United States, in addition to the test imposed by public law as the condition of the recognition of independence by a neutral state (to wit, that the revolted state shall 'constitute in fact a body politic, having a government in substance as well as in name, possessed of the elements of stability,' and forming de facto, 'if left to itself, a state among the nations, reasonably capable of discharging the duties of a state'), has imposed for its own governance in dealing with cases like these the further condition that recognition of independent statehood is not due to a revolted dependency until the danger of its being again subjugated by the parent state has entirely passed away. This extreme test was, in fact, applied in the case of Texas. The Congress, to whom President Jackson referred the question as one 'probably leading to war,' and therefore a proper subject for 'a previous understanding with that body, by whom war can alone be declared, and by whom all the provisions for sustaining its perils must be furnished,' left the matter of the recognition of Texas to the discretion of the Executive, providing merely for the sending of a diplomatic agent when the President should be satisfied that the Republic of Texas had become 'an independent State.' It was so recognized by President Van Buren, who commissioned a chargé d'affaires March 7, 1837, after Mexico had abandoned an attempt to reconquer the Texan territory, and when there was at the time no bona fide contest going on between the insurgent province and its former sovereign.

"I said in my message of December last, 'It is to be seriously considered whether the Cuban insurrection possesses beyond dispute the attributes of statehood which alone can demand the recognition of belligerency in its favor.' The same requirement must certainly be no less seriously considered when the graver issue of recognizing independence is in question, for no less positive test can be applied to the greater act than to the lesser, while, on the other hand, the influences and consequences of the struggle upon the internal policy of the recognizing State, which form important factors when the recognition of belligerency is concerned, are secondary, if not rightly eliminable, factors when the real question is whether the community claiming recognition is or is not independent beyond peradventure.

"Nor from the standpoint of expediency do I think it would be wise or prudent for this Government to recognize at the present time the independence of the so-called Cuban republic. Such recognition is not necessary in order to enable the United States to intervene and pacify the island. To commit this country now to the recognition of any particular government in Cuba might subject us to embarrassing conditions of international obligation toward the organization so recognized. In case of intervention our conduct would be subject to the approval or disapproval of such government. We would be required to submit to its direction and to assume to it the mere relation of a friendly ally. When it shall appear hereafter that there is within the island a government capable of performing the duties and discharging the functions of a separate nation, and having, as a matter of fact, the proper forms and attributes of nationality, such government can be promptly and readily recognized and the relations and interests of the United States with such nation adjusted.

"There remain the alternative forms of intervention to end the war, either as an impartial neutral by imposing a rational compromise between the contestants or as the active ally of the one party or the other. As to the first, it is not to be forgotten that during the last few months the relation of the United States has virtually been one of friendly intervention in many ways, each not of itself conclusive, but all tending to the exertion of a potential influence toward an ultimate pacific result just and honorable to all interests concerned. The spirit of all our acts hitherto has been an earnest, unselfish desire for peace and prosperity in Cuba untarnished by differences between us and Spain and unstained by the blood of American citizens. The forcible intervention of the United States as a neutral to stop the war, according to the large dictates of humanity and following many historical precedents where neighboring states have interfered to check the hopeless sacrifices of life by internecine conflicts beyond their borders, is justifiable on rational grounds. It involves, however, hostile constraint upon both the parties to the contest, as well to enforce a truce as to guide the eventual settlement.

{589}

"The grounds for such intervention may be briefly summarized as follows:

First. In the cause of humanity and to put an end to the barbarities, bloodshed, starvation, and horrible miseries now existing there, and which the parties to the conflict are either unable or unwilling to stop or mitigate. It is no answer to say this is all in another country, belonging to another nation, and is therefore none of our business. It is specially our duty, for it is right at our door.

Second. We owe it to our citizens in Cuba to afford them that protection and indemnity for life and property which no government there can or will afford, and to that end to terminate the conditions that deprive them of legal protection.

Third. The right to intervene may be justified by the very serious injury to the commerce, trade, and business of our people and by the wanton destruction of property and devastation of the island.

Fourth, and which is of the utmost importance. The present condition of affairs in Cuba is a constant menace to our peace, and entails upon this Government an enormous expense.

With such a conflict waged for years in an island so near us and with which our people have such trade and business relations—when the lives and liberty of our citizens are in constant danger and their property destroyed and themselves ruined—where our trading vessels are liable to seizure and are seized at our very door by warships of a foreign nation, the expeditions of filibustering that we are powerless to prevent altogether, and the irritating questions and entanglements thus arising—all these and others that I need not mention, with the resulting strained relations, are a constant menace to our peace, and compel us to keep on a semi-war footing with a nation with which we are at peace.

"These elements of danger and disorder already pointed out have been strikingly illustrated by a tragic event which has deeply and justly moved the American people. I have already transmitted to Congress the report of the naval court of inquiry on the destruction of the battleship 'Maine' in the harbor of Habana during the night of the 15th of February. The destruction of that noble vessel has filled the national heart with inexpressible horror. Two hundred and fifty-eight brave sailors and marines and two officers of our Navy, reposing in the fancied security of a friendly harbor, have been hurled to death, grief and want brought to their homes and sorrow to the nation. The naval court of inquiry, which, it is needless to say, commands the unqualified confidence of the Government, was unanimous in its conclusion that the destruction of the 'Maine' was caused by an exterior explosion, that of a submarine mine. It did not assume to place the responsibility: that remains to be fixed. In any event the destruction of them 'Maine' by whatever exterior cause, is a patent and impressive proof of a state of things in Cuba that is intolerable. That condition is thus shown to be such that the Spanish Government cannot assure safety and security to a vessel of the American Navy in the harbor of Habana on a mission of peace, and rightfully there.

"Further referring in this connection to recent diplomatic correspondence, a dispatch from our minister to Spain, of the 26th ultimo, contained the statement that the Spanish minister for foreign affairs assured him positively that Spain will do all that the highest honor and justice require in the matter of the 'Maine.' The reply above referred to of the 31st ultimo, also contained an expression of the readiness of Spain to submit to an arbitration all the differences which can arise in this matter, which is subsequently explained by the note of the Spanish minister at Washington of the 10th instant, as follows: 'As to the question of fact which springs from the diversity of views between the reports of the American and Spanish boards, Spain proposes that the facts be ascertained by an impartial investigation by experts, whose decision Spain accepts in advance.' To this I have made no reply.

"President Grant, in 1875, after discussing the phases of the contest as it then appeared, and its hopeless and apparent indefinite prolongation, said: 'In such an event, I am of opinion that other nations will be compelled to assume the responsibility which devolves upon them, and to seriously consider the only remaining measures possible—mediation and intervention. Owing, perhaps, to the large expanse of water separating the island from the peninsula, … the contending parties appear to have within themselves no depository of common confidence, to suggest wisdom when passion and excitement have their sway, and to assume the part of peacemaker. In this view in the earlier days of the contest the good offices of the United States as a mediator were tendered in good faith, without any selfish purpose, in the interest of humanity and in sincere friendship for both parties, but were at the time declined by Spain, with the declaration, nevertheless, that at a future time they would be indispensable. No intimation has been received that in the opinion of Spain that time has been reached. And yet the strife continues with all its dread horrors and all its injuries to the interests of the United States and of other nations. Each party seems quite capable of working great injury and damage to the other, as well as to all the relations and interests dependent on the existence of peace in the island; but they seem incapable of reaching any adjustment, and both have thus far failed of achieving any success whereby one party shall possess and control the island to the exclusion of the other. Under these circumstances, the agency of others, either by mediation or by intervention, seems to be the only alternative which must sooner or later be invoked for the termination of the strife.'

"In the last annual message of my immediate predecessor during the pending struggle, it was said: 'When the inability of Spain to deal successfully with the insurrection has become manifest, and it is demonstrated that her sovereignty is extinct in Cuba for all purposes of its rightful existence, and when a hopeless struggle for its re-establishment has degenerated into a strife which means nothing more than the useless sacrifice of human life and the utter destruction of the very subject-matter of the conflict, a situation will be presented in which our obligations to the sovereignty of Spain will be superseded by higher obligations, which we can hardly hesitate to recognize and discharge.'

{590}

"In my annual message to Congress, December last, speaking to this question, I said: 'The near future will demonstrate whether the indispensable condition of a righteous peace, just alike to the Cubans and to Spain, as well as equitable to all our interests so intimately involved in the welfare of Cuba, is likely to be attained. If not, the exigency of further and other action by the United States will remain to be taken. When that time comes that action will be determined in the line of indisputable right and duty. It will be faced, without misgiving or hesitancy, in the light of the obligation this Government owes to itself, to the people who have confided to it the protection of their interests and honor, and to humanity. Sure of the right, keeping free from all offense ourselves, actuated only by upright and patriotic considerations, moved neither by passion nor selfishness, the Government will continue its watchful care over the rights and property of American citizens and will abate none of its efforts to bring about by peaceful agencies a peace which shall be honorable and enduring. If it shall hereafter appear to be a duty imposed by our obligations to ourselves, to civilization, and humanity to intervene with force, it shall be without fault on our part, and only because the necessity for such action will be so clear as to command the support and approval of the civilized world.'

"The long trial has proved that the object for which Spain has waged the war cannot be attained. The fire of insurrection may flame or may smoulder with varying seasons, but it has not been and it is plain that it cannot be extinguished by present methods. The only hope of relief and repose from a condition which can no longer be endured is the enforced pacification of Cuba. In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in behalf of endangered American interests which give us the right and the duty to speak and act, the War in Cuba must stop.

"In view of these facts and of these considerations, I ask the Congress to authorize and empower the President to take measures to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the Government of Spain and the people of Cuba, and to secure in the island the establishment of a stable government, capable of maintaining order and observing its international obligations, insuring peace and tranquillity and the security of its citizens as well as our own, and to use the military and naval forces of the United States as may be necessary for these purposes. And in the interest of humanity and to aid in preserving the lives of the starving people of the island I recommend that the distribution of food and supplies be continued, and that an appropriation be made out of the public Treasury to supplement the charity of our citizens.

"The issue is now with the Congress. It is a solemn responsibility. I have exhausted every effort to relieve the intolerable condition of affairs which is at our doors. Prepared to execute every obligation imposed upon me by the Constitution and the law, I await your action.

"Yesterday, and since the preparation of the foregoing message, official information was received by me that the latest decree of the Queen Regent of Spain directs General Blanco, in order to prepare and facilitate peace, to proclaim a suspension of hostilities, the duration and details of which have not yet been communicated to me. This fact with every other pertinent consideration will, I am sure, have your just and careful attention in the solemn deliberations upon which you are about to enter. If this measure attains a successful result, then our aspirations as a Christian, peace-loving people will be realized. If it fails, it will be only another justification for our contemplated action."

_Congressional Record, April 11, 1898._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (April). Action of Congress empowering the President to expel Spanish authority from the island of Cuba, and its result in a state of war with Spain.

On the 13th of April, two days after receiving the President's Message, as above, the House of Representatives adopted the following resolution, by a vote of 324 against 19: "Resolved, That the President is hereby authorized and directed to intervene at once to stop the war in Cuba, to the end and with the purpose of securing permanent peace and order there and establishing by the free action of the people thereof a stable and independent government of their own in the island of Cuba; and the President is hereby authorized and empowered to use the land and naval forces of the United States to execute the purpose of this resolution."

_Congressional Record, April 13, 1898, pages 4192-4196._

Three days later the Senate adopted the following, by 27 votes against 21: "Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

First. That the people of the Island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent, and that the Government of the United States hereby recognizes the Republic of Cuba as the true and lawful Government of that island.

"Second. That it is the duty of the United States to demand, and the Government of the United States does hereby demand, that the Government of Spain at once relinquish its authority and government in the Island of Cuba and withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters.

"Third. That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States, and to call into the actual service of the United States the militia of the several States, to such extent as may be necessary to carry these resolutions into effect.

"Fourth. That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination when that is accomplished to leave the government and control of the island to its people."

_Congressional Record, April 16, 1898, page 4386-4387._

The two Houses were in conflict, it will be seen, on the question of the recognition of what claimed to be the government of the Republic of Cuba, organized by the insurgents. A majority of the House shared the doubts expressed by the President in his message, as to the existence of such a government in Cuba as could be recognized without embarrassment; a majority of the Senate shut its eyes to that doubt. After two days of heated controversy, the Senate gave way, and the following resolution, recommended by conference committees, was adopted in both Houses,—in the Senate by 42 yeas to 35 nays (12 not voting); in the House by 311 to 6 (39 not voting):

{591}

"Resolved, etc.

"First. That the people of the Island of Cuba are and of right ought to be free and independent.

"Second. That it is the duty of the United States to demand, and the Government of the United States does hereby demand, that the Government of Spain at once relinquish its authority and government in the Island of Cuba and withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters.

"Third. That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States, and to call into the actual service of the United States the militia of the several States, to such extent as may be necessary to carry these resolutions into effect.

"Fourth. That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island, except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination when that is accomplished to leave the government and control of the island to its people."

_Congressional Record, April 18, 1898, pages 4421-4422, and 4461-4462._

One week later, on the 25th of April, the President communicated to Congress an account of his action in accordance with this joint resolution, and its result in a state of war between the United States and Spain as follows:

"Upon communicating to the Spanish minister in Washington the demand which it became the duty of the Executive to address to the Government of Spain in obedience to said resolution, the minister asked for his passports and withdrew. The United States minister at Madrid was in turn notified by the Spanish minister for foreign affairs that the withdrawal of the Spanish representative from the United States had terminated diplomatic relations between the two countries, and that all official communications between their respective representatives ceased therewith.

"I commend to your special attention the note addressed to the United States minister at Madrid by the Spanish minister for foreign affairs on the 21st instant, whereby the foregoing notification was conveyed. It will be perceived therefrom that the Government of Spain, having cognizance of the joint resolution of the United States Congress, and in view of the things which the President is thereby required and authorized to do, responds by treating the reasonable demands of this Government as measures of hostility, following with that instant and complete severance of relations by its action which, by the usage of nations, accompanies an existent state of war between sovereign powers.

"The position of Spain being thus made known and the demands of the United States being denied with a complete rupture of intercourse by the act of Spain, I have been constrained, in exercise of the power and authority conferred upon me by the joint resolution aforesaid, to proclaim under date of April 22, 1898, a blockade of certain ports of the north coast of Cuba, lying between Cardenas and Bahia Honda and of the port of Cienfuegos on the south coast of Cuba; and further, in exercise of my constitutional powers and using the authority conferred upon me by the act of Congress approved April 22, 1898, to issue my proclamation dated April 23, 1898, calling forth volunteers in order to carry into effect the said resolution of April 20, 1898. …

"In view of the measures so taken, and with a view to the adoption of such other measures as may be necessary to enable me to carry out the expressed will of the Congress of the United States in the premises, I now recommend to your honorable body the adoption of a joint resolution declaring that a state of war exists between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain, and I urge speedy action thereon, to the end that the definition of the international status of the United States as a belligerent power may be made known, and the assertion of all its rights and the maintenance of all its duties in the conduct of a public war may be assured."

_Congressional Record, April 25, 1898, page 4671._

The recommendation of the President was carried out, on the same day, by the passage in both Houses, unanimously, of an enactment, "First. That war be, and the same is hereby, declared to exist, and that war has existed since the 21st day of April, A. D. 1898, including said day, between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain. Second. That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States, and to call into the actual service of the United States the militia of the several States, to such extent as may be necessary to carry this act into effect."

_Congressional Record, April 25, pages 4674 and 4693._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (April). Cabinet changes.

Two resignations from the President's cabinet occurred in April, both occasioned by failing health. Honorable James A. Gary was succeeded as Postmaster-General by Honorable Charles Emory Smith, and Honorable John Sherman was followed in the Secretaryship of State by his First Assistant in that office, Judge William R. Day.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1898 (April-May). War with Spain. Military preparations. Regular and Volunteer armies. "The Rough Riders."

At the outbreak of the war, the Regular Army of the United States numbered but 28,000 officers and men. Under authority given by acts of Congress it was rapidly increased, and returns for May, 1898, show 2,191 officers and nearly 42,000 men in the ranks. At the same time, a Volunteer Army was being speedily raised and equipped. By proclamation of April 2-3d, the President called for 125,000 volunteers, to be apportioned, as far as practicable, among the states and territories, according to population. On the 25th of May he called for 75,000 more. Before the end of May, 118,580 enlisted volunteers, with 6,224 officers, were reported to have been mustered in. These were assembled in various camps and prepared for service in a more or less hurried way. At the beginning, six army corps were constituted, embracing both the Regular and Volunteer branches of the army. The First Corps, under Major General John R. Brooke, and the Third under Major General James F. Wade, were organized at Camp Thomas, Georgia. The Second was organized under Major General William M. Graham, at Camp Alger, near Falls Church, Virginia. The organization of the Fourth Corps, Major General John J. Coppinger, commanding, was begun at Mobile, Alabama. The Fifth Corps was organized at Tampa, Florid., under Major General William R. Shafter. {592} A Sixth Corps, which had been provided for, was never organized; but the Seventh was formed, at Tampa, Florida, under Major General Fitzhugh Lee. Subsequently an Eighth Corps was concentrated at San Francisco, and transported to the Philippine Islands. Tampa, Florida, was the port chosen for the shipment of troops to Cuba, and extensive preparations were made for the transport service from that point. The movement waited, first, for the preparation of newly levied troops, and, secondly, for naval operations to make the voyage of transports to Cuba safe from attack.

_Annual Report of the Adjutant-General to the Major-General Commanding the Army, 1898._

Among the Volunteer regiments organized, one known as that of "the Rough Riders" excited public interest in the greatest degree. "The moment that the newspapers sent broadcast the tale that such a regiment was contemplated, excitement began in nearly every State in the Union, and did not end until the announcement was made that the regiment was complete. As it stood, finished, the troops which made it up, theoretically came from the following sections, although men from the East and from other States and Territories were scattered through each troop. Troops A, B, and C, from Arizona. Troop D, from Oklahoma. Troops E, F, G, H, and I, from New Mexico. Troop K, from Eastern colleges and cities. Troops L and M, from Indian Territory.

"Senator Warren, of Iowa, is responsible for the idea of the Rough Riders. He introduced and carried through Congress, aided by Senators Kyle, Carter, and others, a bill authorizing the enrollment of three regiments, to be made up of expert hunters, riflemen, cow-men, frontiersmen, and such other hardy characters as might care to enlist from the Territories. Captain Leonard Wood, of the Medical Corps, was the President's chief medical adviser, and had had much experience in Indian fighting in the West. Theodore Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and had had some knowledge of men and things on the frontier, through his life on his Own and other ranches. It was the President's intention to offer to Wood the colonelcy of one regiment, to Roosevelt the colonelcy of a second, and to Griggsby, of Montana, the colonelcy of a third. Wood and Roosevelt received their offers at about the same moment. Roosevelt promptly declined his, on the theory that he had not had sufficient military experience to warrant him in taking command of a regiment. He asked that he might be given the second place in the regiment commanded by Wood, which was done. Thus the Rough Riders began.

"Alexander Brodie, who afterwards became major of the regiment, was probably the first man to systematically start towards the organization of this particular regiment. … It was on the 3d of May that the Arizona men started for San Antonio. It was on the 8th of May that the very last men of all—those of K Troop—left Washington for San Antonio. These were the 'dude warriors,' the 'dandy troopers,' the 'gilded gang.' When their train pulled into San Antonio, and they started stragglingly to march into camp, they encountered a contingent of 340 cowboys from New Mexico. Oil and water are not farther removed than were the everyday natures of these two groups of men. Yet, instantly they fraternized, and from that moment—through the hardships of it all—these men were brothers. … Probably no military organization has ever been made up of men selected from so large a number of applicants, or of men so carefully selected. … A large delegation of men from Harvard College called upon Roosevelt one day in Washington and offered their services in a body. Indeed, delegations of that kind from most of the Eastern Colleges went to him, but went to him in vain. His secretary answered more than five thousand individual applications for places in the regiment, and answered ninety-nine per cent. of them with declinations."

_E. Marshall, The Story of the Rough Riders,