katisfactory free-homestead measure such as has already passed the House and is now pending in the Senate.

TERRITORIES.

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.

ALASKA.

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.

TEMPERANCE.

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

women.

RIGHTS OF WOMEN.

The Republican party is mindful of the rights and interests of 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 cooperation 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.

PLATFORM SILVER PARTY.

[Adopted by the Bimetallic convention at St. Louis, July 24, 1896.]

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 16 to 1, and upon terms of exact equality, as they existed prior to 1873; the silver coin to be 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 50 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 nonproducer, 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 centers.

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.

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 appreciated 100 per cent above all the great staples of our country, and to the end, further, that the gold 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 can not

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.

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PLATFORMS, 1892 AND 1896, ON THE MONEY QUESTION.

1892.

We denounce the Republican legislation known as the Sherman act of 1890 as a cowardly makeshift, fraught with possibilities of danger in the future which should make all of its supporters, as well as its author, anxious for its speedy repeal. We hold to the use of both gold and silver as the standard money of the country, and to the coinage of both gold and silver without discriminating against either metal or charge for mintage, but the dollar unit of coinage of both metals must be of equal intrinsic and exchangeable value, or be adjusted through international agreement or by such safeguards of legislation as shall insure the maintenance of the parity of the two metals and the equal power of every dollar at all times in the markets and in the payment of debts; and we demand that all paper currency shall be kept at par with and redeemable in such coin. We insist upon this policy as especially necessary for the protection of the farmers and laboring classes, the first and most defenseless victims of unstable money and a fluctuating currency.

1896.

Recognizing that the money question is paramount to all others at this time we invite attention to the fact that the 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 money unit of value 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 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 indomitable spirit and love of liberty which proclaimed our political independence in 1776 and won the War of the Revolution.

We demand the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation. We demand that the standard silver dollar shall

25 per cent proof spirits.....

$2 per gal.

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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 obligation in either silver coin or gold coin.

POPULISTS IN CONGRESS.

They Fail to Substantiate Serious Charges When Called upon to do so in Congress.

The extravagant claims of the Populist members of Congress, as they are intended strictly for home consumption, are usually treated with silence and contempt by their associates. Republican members with due regard for their own dignity seldom challenge these extravagant statements, for they are usually too ridiculous to be seriously accepted by people who think. On such rare occasions as arise to challenge any reply, or when the Populists are asked to produce proof in support of their statements and charges, they are completely demoralized and forced to seek refuge in flimsy subterfuges and extravagant quibbles. A few examples will illustrate the point.

Senator Marion Butler, of North Carolina, chairman of the national committee of the Populist party, on April 25, after war had been declared, delivered an extended speech to prove that our warships were covered with defective armor plates, due to fraudulent contracts entered into with the Government. The quality of our ships and their armor were put to the severest tests to which warships could be subjected, and the falsity of Senator Butler's claims were demonstrated by the battles of Manila and the bombardment of Matanzas, San Juan, and Santiago. In the light of these events the following extract from his speech is interesting:

The facts are already public property, and if they were not secrecy would not save one of our battle ships if a Spanish shot should hit one of these rotten plates. I am not surprised that some people do not want to hear about them. The New York is one of our ships that is now facing Morro Castle.

Mr. HALE. The New York is not a battle ship.

Mr. BUTLER. It is there as a flag ship. It has armor plate on it.

Mr. HALE. The New York is not an armor-plated battle ship. Mr. BUTLER. But it has armor plate on it.

Mr. HALE. Only slight armor. It does not enter into it to any

extent.

Mr. BUTLER. If it is slight, there is no reason why it should