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HISTORY 1865-1910] in the election of 1896 had not England exhibited exceptional moderation and self-restraint in her attitude. The silver question, therefore, became the important issue. The Republicans nominated McKinley and declared for the gold standard in opposition to free coinage, losing thereby an influential following in the silver-mining and prairie states, but gaining the support of multitudes of business men among the Democrats in the East and Middle West, who saw in the free-silver programme a violation of good faith and a menace to returning prosperity. The Democratic convention marked a revolution in the party.

The old school leaders were deposed by decisive majorities, and a radical platform was constructed which made “the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation,” the paramount issue. Objecting also to the decision against the income tax, and to “government by injunction as a new and highly dangerous form of oppression,” they incurred the charge of hostility to the Federal judiciary. William J. Bryan made a brilliant speech in behalf of free coinage, and so voiced the passion and thought of the captivated convention that he

was nominated by it for the presidency over the veteran free-silver leader, Richard P. Bland of Missouri. The Cleveland men, or “gold Democrats,” broke with their party after it became committed to free silver, and holding a convention of their own, nominated General John McA. Palmer of Illinois for the presidency on a platform which extolled Cleveland, attacked free coinage, and favoured the gold standard. Its main influence was to permit many Cleveland men to vote against Bryan without renouncing the name of Democrats. On the other hand the Populist convention also nominated Bryan on a platform more radical than that of the Democrats, since it included government ownership of the railways, the initiative and referendum, and a currency issued without the intervention of banks.

372. The contest was marked by great excitement as Bryan travelled across the country addressing great audiences. The endangered business interests found an efficient manager in Marcus A. Hanna of Ohio, McKinley's adviser, and expended large sums in a campaign of education. In the event, the older states of the Middle West, holding the balance between the manufacturing and capitalistic East and the populistic prairie and mining states of the West, gave their decision against free silver. But class appeals and class voting were a marked feature of the campaign, the regions of agricultural depression and farm mortgages favouring Bryan, and those of urban life favouring McKinley. Labour was not convinced that its interests lay in expanding the currency, and Mr Hanna had conducted McKinley's campaign successfully on the plea that he was the advance agent of prosperity under the gold standard and a restoration of confidence. McKinley carried all the Northern

states east of the Missouri, and North Dakota, Oregon and California of the Farther West, as well as Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia and Kentucky along the borders of the South. His plurality over Bryan in the popular vote was more than 600,000, and his electoral majority 95. All the departments of government were transferred by the election to the Republicans.

373. Having secured power, the administration called a special session of Congress, and enacted the Dingley protective tariff (July 24, 1897) under which the deficit in the treasury was turned into a surplus. The act raised duties to their highest point, and as the protective schedules included some important articles produced by trusts which had a practical monopoly, such as sugar and petroleum, this was seized upon by the Democrats to stigmatize the tariff as the “mother of trusts.” Many articles which had been placed on the free list in the Tariff Act of 1894, including lumber, wool and the raw material for cotton baling, were made dutiable. The high rates were defended, in part, by the provision authorizing the president to negotiate reciprocity treaties under which they might be lowered. Several

such treaties were signed, but the Senate refused to ratify them.

374. The Republicans also wrote their triumph into the Gold Standard Act of the 4th of March 1900, which ensured

the maintenance of this standard by reserving $150,000,000 of gold coin and bullion to redeem the United States notes and the treasury notes of 1890, and by authorizing the sale of bonds when necessary to maintain the reserve. National banks were authorized in the smaller towns (three thousand or less) with a capital of $25,000, half of that formerly required, and increased circulation was further provided for by permitting the national banks to issue United States bonds up to their par value.

375. The economic policy of the Republicans was facilitated by the prosperity which set in about 1898. The downfall of silver-mining turned the prospectors to seek new gold fields, and they found them, especially in Alaska, about this time; and contemporaneously the chemists discovered cheaper and more efficient methods of extracting the gold from low-grade ores. Within five years after the crisis of 1893 the gold production of the United States nearly doubled. The United States

coined $437,500,000 in gold in the five-year period 1897-1902, while the average for five-year periods since 1873 had been only $224,000,000. Thus gold instead of silver began to inundate the market, and to diminish the demand for expansion of the currency. Agriculture, prostrated in the years immediately preceding and following the panic of 1893, turned to the scientific study of its problems, developed dry farming, rotation and variety of crops, introduced forage crops like alfalfa, fed its Indian corn to cattle and hogs, and thus converted it into a profitable and condensed form for shipment. Range cattle were brought to the corn belt and fattened, while packing industries moved closer to these western centres of supply. Dairy-farming replaced the unprofitable attempts of older sections of the Middle West and the East to compete with the wheat-fields of the Farther West. Truck and fruit farming increased in the South, and the canning industry added utility to the fruits and vegetables of the West. Following the trend of combination the farmers formed growers' associations and studied the demand of the market to guide their sales. The mortgaged farms were gradually freed from debt. The wheat crop increased from less than 400,000,000 bushels valued at $213,000,000 in 1893 to 675,000,000 bushels valued at $392,000,000 in 1898. Prosperity and contentment replaced agitation in the populistic West for the time, and the Republican party gained the advantage of these changed conditions. Land values and the price of farm products rose. The farmers soon found it profitable to sell all or part of their land and re-invest in the cheaper virgin soils of the farther North-West and South-West, and thus began a new movement of colonization into the new West, while the landowners who remained gained an increasingly higher status, though farm labour failed to share proportionally in this advance.

376. In the South also there was greater contentment as the new industries of iron, textiles and forestry grew, and as

the cotton crops increased. Unrest was diminished by the new state constitutions, which after 1890 disqualified negro voters by educational and tax requirements so contrived as not to disfranchise the poor whites.

377. In the decade which followed the crisis of 1893 a new industrial structure was made out of the chaos of the panic.

“High financiering” was undertaken on a scale hitherto unknown. Combinations absorbed their rivals; Standard Oil especially gained large interests in New York banks and in the iron mines and transportation lines about the Great Lakes, while it extended its power over new fields of oil in the South-West. In general, a small group of powerful financial interests acquired holdings in other lines of business, and by absorptions and “community of interest” exerted great influence upon the whole business world. The group of financiers, headed by J. Pierpont