worthy soldiers disabled in line of duty in the wars of the republic, and for the payment of such pensions as congress may from time to time grant to such soldiers, a like fund for the sailors having already been provided; and any surplus shall be paid into the treasury.

We favor an American, continental policy based upon more intimate commercial and political relations with the fifteen sister republics of North, Central and South America, but entangling alliances with none.

We believe in honest money, the gold and silver coinage of the constitution, and a circulating medium convertible into such money without loss.

Asserting the equality of all men before the law, we hold that it is the duty of the government in its dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all citizens of whatever nativity, race, color or persuasion, religious and political.

We believe in a free ballot and a fair count, and we recall to the memory of the people that noble struggle of the Democrats in the forty-fifth and forty-sixth congresses, by which a reluctant Republican oppostion was compelled to assent to legislation making everywhere illegal the presence of troops at the polls, as the conclusive proof that a Democratic administration will preserve liberty with order.

That the selection of federal officers for the Territories should be restricted to citizens previously residents therein.

We oppose sumptuary laws which vex the citizen and interfere with individual liberty.

We favor honest civil service reform and a compensation of all United States officers by fixed salaries; the separation of church and State and the diffusion of free education by common schools, so that every child in the land may be taught the rights and duties of citizenship.

While we favor all legislation which will tend to the equitable distribution of property, to the prevention of monopoly, and to the strict enforcement of individual rights against corporate abuses, we hold that the welfare of society depends upon a scrupulous regard for the right of property as defined by law. We believe that labor is best rewarded where it is freest and most enlightened. It should therefore be fostered and cherished. We favor the repeal of ail laws restricting the free action of labor, and the enactment of laws by which labor organizations may be incorporated, and of all such legislation as will tend to enlighten the people as to the true relations of capital and labor.

We believe that the public land ought, so far as possible, to be kept as homesteads for actual settlers; that all unearned lands heretofore improvidently granted to railroad corporations by the action of the Republican party should be restored to the public domain; and that no more grants of land shall be made to corporations, or be allowed to fall into the ownership of alien absentees.

We are opposed to all propositions which, upon any pretext, would convert the general government into a machine for collecting taxes to be distributed among the States or the citizens thereof.

In reaffirming the declaration of the Democratic platform of 1856, that the liberal principles embodied by Jefferson in the declaration of independence, and sanctioned in the constitution, which makes ours the land of liberty and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation, have ever been cardinal principles in the Democratic faith, we nevertheless do not sanction the importation of foreign labor or the admission of servile races, unfitted by habits, training, religion or kindred, for absorption into the great body of our people, or for the citizenship which our laws confer. American civilization demands that against the immigration or importation of Mongolians to these shores our gates be closed.

The Democratic party insists that it is the duty of the government to protect with equal fidelity and vigilance the rights of its citizens, native and naturalized, at home and abroad, and to the end that this protection may be assured, United States papers of naturalization, issued by courts of com

petent jurisdiction, must be respected by the executive and legislative departments of our own government and all foreign powers. It is an imperative duty of this government to efficiently protect all the rights of persons and property of every American citizen in foreign lands, and demand and enforce full reparation for any invasion thereof. An American citizen is only responsible to his own government for any act done in his own country or under her flag, and can only be tried therefor on her own soil, and according to her laws; and no power exists in this government to expatriate an American citizen to be tried in any foreign land for any such act.

This country has never had a well-defined and executed foreign policy save under Democratic administration. That policy has ever been in regard to foreign nations, so long as they do not act detrimental to the interests of the country or hurtful to our citizens, to let them alone; that as a result of this policy we recall the acquisition of Louisiana, Florida, California, and of the adjacent Mexican territory by purchase alone, and contrast these grand acquisitions of Democratic statesmanship with the purchase of Alaska, the sole fruit of a Republican administration of nearly a quarter of a century.

The federal government should care for and improve the Mississippi river and other great waterways of the republic, so as to secure for the interior States easy and cheap transportation to tide water.

Under a long period of Democratic rule and policy our merchant marine was fast overtaking and on the point of outstripping that of Great Britain. Under twenty years of Republican rule and policy our commerce has been left to British bottoms, and the American flag has almost been swept off the high seas. Instead of the Republican party's British policy, we demand for the people of the United States an American policy. Under Democratic rule and policy our merchants and sailors, flying the stars and stripes in every port, successfully searched out a market for the varied products of American industry; under a quarter century of Republican rule and policy, despite our manifest advantage over all other nations in high-paid labor, favorable climate, and teeming soils; despite freedom of trade among all these United States; despite their population by the foremost races of men, and an annual immigration of the young, thrifty, and adventurous of all nations; despite our freedom here from the inherited burdens of life and industry and the Old World monarchies, their costly war navies, their vast tax-consuming, nonproducing standing armies; despite twenty years of peace, that Republican rule and policy have managed to surrender to Great Britain, along with our commerce, the control of the markets of the world. Instead of the Republican party's British policy we demand, in behalf of the American Democracy, an American policy. Instead of the Republican party's discredited scheme and false pretense of friendship for American labor, expressed by imposing taxes, we demand, in behalf of the Democracy, freedom for American labor by reducing taxes to the end that these United States may compete with unhindered powers for the primacy among nations in all the arts of peace and fruits of liberty.

With profound regret we have been apprised by the venerable statesman through whose person was struck that blow at the vital principle of republics, acquiescence in the will of the majority, that he cannot permit us again to place in his hands the leadership of the Democratic hosts, for the reason that the achievement of reform in the administration of the federal government is an undertaking now too heavy for his age and failing strength. Rejoicing that his life has been prolonged until the general judgment of our fellowcountrymen is united in the wish that that wrong were righted in his person, for the Democracy of the United States we offer to him, in his withdrawal from public cares, not only our respectful sympathy and esteem, but also that best homage of freemen, the pledge of our devotion to the principles and the cause now inseparable in the history of this Republic from the labors and the name of Samuel J. Tilden.

With this statement of the hopes, principles, and purposes of the Democratic party, the great issue of reform and change in administration is

submitted to the people, in calm confidence that the popular voice will pronounce in favor of new men and new and more favorable conditions for the growth of industry, the extension of trade and employment and due reward of labor and of capital, and the general welfare of the whole country.

For this platform Mr. Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts offered the following substitute, which was rejected:

Resolved, That no taxes, direct or indirect, can be rightfully imposed upon the people except to meet the expenses of an economically administered government; to bring taxation down to this point is true administrative reform.

Resolved, That the people will tolerate direct taxation for the ordinary expenses of the government only in the case of dire necessity or war.

Resolved, Therefore, that the revenue necessary for such expenses should be raised by customs duties upon imports after the manner of our fathers.

Resolved. That in levying such duties two principles should be carefully observed. First, that all materials used in the arts and manufactures, and the necessaries of life not produce in this country shall come in free, and that all articles of luxury should be taxed as high as possible up to the collection point; second, that in imposing customs duties the law must be carefully adjusted to promote American enterprise and industries, not to create monopolies, and to cherish and foster American labor.

Faithful industry is the basis on which the whole fabric of civilization rests under our system. Toilers are producers. The mass of the people are the governing power. Being the true Democracy, they demand the fullest consideration of measures for their education, their advancement, and their protection. Labor and capital are allies not enemies. No contention can arise between them if each has done his duty to the other. Under the existing laws, State and national, all such controversies can only be settled by brute force-capital starving labor and labor despoiling capital, the contention ending in the crippling or the ruining of both. But capital is strong; labor is weak; therefore labor has a right to demand of the government to establish tribunals in which these great controversies which may lead to revolution may be judicially and justly determined with the fullest powers to enforce their decrees; to provide by law that laboring men may combine and organize for their own protection as capital may be incorporated and combined for its protection; and that all devices either by contract or terrorism, or otherwise, to obstruct and set aside this right in laboring men are oppressive and in derogation of the rights of an American freeman, and should be made penal by law.

All the great woes upon our country have come because of imported labor. Our fathers made this land the home of the free for all men appreciating our institutions, with energy enough to bring themselves here, and such we welcome. But our country ought never to be a lazar-house for the deportation of the pauper labor of other countries through government aid, or the importation of the same kind of labor as an instrument with which capital can debase American workingmen and women from the proud position they now occupy, by competing with them by imported or convict labor, while at the same time capital asks and receives protection of its interests at the hands of the government under guise of providing for American labor. This evil, like all others that find birth in the cupidity and seldishness of men, labor demands should be redressed by law. Labor has a right to demand a just share of the profits of its own production.

The future of our country unites with the laboring men in the demand for the liberal support by the United States of the school system for the common school education of all the children, the same affording a sufficient foundation for the coming generations to acquire due knowledge of their duties as citizens.

That every species of monopoly engenders two classes, the very rich and

the very poor, both of which are equally hurtful to a republic, which should give to its people equal rights and equal privileges under the law.

Resolved, That the public lands of the United States were the equal heritage of all its citizens, and should have been held open to the use of all in such quantities only as are needed for cultivation and improvement by all. Therefore, we view with alarm the absorption of those lands by corporations and individuals in large acres-some of them more than equal to princely domains and demand of congress to apply appropriate remedies with a stern hand, so that the lands of the people may be held by the many and not by the few.

Resolved, That the public lands of the nation are held by the government in trust for those who make their homes in the United States and who mean to become citizens of the republic, and we protest against the purchase and monopolization of these lands by corporations and the alien aristocracy of Europe.

Resolved, That all corporate bodies created either in the States or nation for the purpose of performing public duties are public servants, and to be regulated in all their actions by the same power that created them at his own will, and that it is within the powe, and is the duty of the creator to so govern the creature that by its acts it shall become neither a monopoly nor a burden upon the people, but be their servant and convenience, which is the true test of its usefulness. Therefore we call upon congress to exercise great constitutional power for regulating inter-State commerce; to provide that by no contrivance whatever, under forms of law or otherwise, shall discriminating rates and charges for the transportation of freight and travel be made in favor of the few against the many, or enchance the rates of transportation between the producer and the consumer.

The various offices of the government belong to the people thereof, and who rightfully demand to exercise and fill the same whenever they are fitted by capacity, integrity, and energy, the last two qualifications never to be tested by any scholastic examination. We hold that frequent changes of federal officials are shown to be necessary, first, to counteract the growing aristocratic tendencies to a caste of life offices; second, experience having shown that all investigation is useless while the incumbent and his associates hold their places. Frequent change of officers is necessary to the discovery and punishment of frauds, peculations, defalcations, and embezzlements of the public money.

Resolved, That we adhere to and affirm the doctrine enunciated and established by Jackson; that the government alone has the power to establish and issue money for the people; that the issue of the legal-tender note, made by the government as a method of borrowing money to carry on the war in the exercise of a constitutional power, has become the fixed currency of the United States, equal to coined gold and silver; that neither policy nor duty calls for any meddling with it.

The convention proceeded to ballot for a candidate for President, the first ballot resulting as follows:

On the second ballot Mr. Cleveland was nominated, the vote

Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana was unanimously nominated as

a candidate for Vice-President.

The popular and electoral vote cast is as follows:

FIFTEENTH NATIONAL CONVENTION.

Held in St. Louis, Mo., June 5 to 7, 1888-Cleveland and Thurman the Nom

inees.

The Fifteenth National convention of the Democratic party convened at St. Louis, Mo., June 5, 1888, and was called to order by W. H. Barnum of Connecticut, chairman of the national committee.