publican Convention. The law of Ohio required the election of delegates to national conventions by congressional districts. Most of the districts were for Governor Harmon, but several of them chose men favorable to Clark or Wilson. The State convention, controlled strongly by the supporters of Harmon, instructed the delegation to vote as a unit. The Committee on Rules proposed a rule that all delegations instructed by the State convention to vote as a unit should so vote. A minority of the committee, consisting of nineteen members, offered a modification, providing for the exception where the State law required the choice to be made by districts, and did not put the district delegates under the authority of the State convention. After debate the minority report prevailed by 562 votes against 4923. Those who spoke in favor of the minority report avowed their adherence to the time-honored unit rule, in principle, and based their yielding in this case upon their reverence for the authority of a "sovereign State."

The report of the Committee on Credentials was taken on the third day. There was an interesting but unimportant contest in the delegation from South Dakota. After that was decided the permanent organization was effected by the choice of Ollie M. James, of Kentucky, as president, and E. E. Britton, of North Carolina, as secretary. The convention then took a recess until evening when Mr. Bryan made a dramatic entry into the proceedings by offering the following resolution:

Resolved, That in this crisis in our party's career and in our country's history this convention sends greeting to the people of the United States, and assures them that the party of Jefferson and Jackson is still the champion of popular government and equality before the law. As proof of our fidelity to the people we hereby declare ourselves opposed to the nomination of any candidate for President who is the representative of or under obligation to J. Pierpont Morgan, Thomas F. Ryan, August Belmont, or any other of the privilege-hunting and favor-seeking class.

Be it further resolved, That we demand the withdrawal from this convention of any delegate or delegates constituting or representing the above-named interests.

The rules of the convention required the reference of all resolutions to the Committee on the Platform, but Mr. Bryan asked unanimous consent for the immediate consideration of his resolution. That being refused, he moved that the rules be suspended. An excited debate took place, for both Mr.

Ryan and Mr. Belmont were members of the convention. Several of the speakers having expressed themselves as willing to vote for the first paragraph, but not for the second, Mr. Bryan withdrew that paragraph. Ultimately, under the operation of the previous question the rules were suspended and the resolution was adopted, 883 yeas to 201 nays.

Nominating speeches being now in order,

for the Commit

tee on Rules had deliberately provided, and the convention had voted, that the nominations should be made before the platform was reported, the names of Messrs. Underwood, Clark, Baldwin, Wilson, Marshall, and Harmon were presented in that order, an order that was determined solely by the alphabetical position of the States presenting or seconding candidates. A single roll-call for a nomination was taken the same night

or rather morning; for when the announcement was made that there was no choice it was after 7.30 o'clock on Friday morning. The convention then adjourned until afternoon of the same day, when, and on the following days, until the afternoon of Tuesday, the seventh day of the session, forty-five more votes were taken. Woodrow Wilson was nominated on the forty-sixth trial. The following table gives the votes in detail. The convention nominally consisted of 1088 delegates, and two-thirds of that number, 726, were necessary for a choice. Several States sent to the convention twice as many delegates as they were entitled to elect, each with half a vote; and one State, Kentucky, sent a triple delegation, giving to each man a third of a vote. That is the explanation of the fractions below. Fractional votes have usually resulted from contests for seats; the convention, being unable or unwilling to decide against either party, has admitted both, with half a vote each.

During the contest for nomination thirteen persons in all received votes. They were: Woodrow Wilson, of New Jersey; Champ Clark, of Missouri; Judson Harmon, of Ohio; Oscar W. Underwood, of Alabama; Simeon E. Baldwin, of Connecticut; Thomas R. Marshall, of Indiana; Eugene N. Foss, of Massachusetts; William J. Bryan, of Nebraska; William Sulzer, of New York; John W. Kern, of Indiana; William J. Gaynor, of New York; James H. Lewis, of Illinois; and Ollie M. James, of Kentucky. The votes for the six lastnamed are not included in the table, as the number any one of them received only once exceeded five. On most of the trials Mr. Bryan had one or more votes usually one; and Mr.

Kern also was favored with a single vote more than half of the time. The votes for the leading and secondary candidates were as follows:

The nomination was made unanimous on the motion of Senator Stone, of Missouri, Mr. Clark's manager. The result was not reached without a sensational incident in which Mr. Bryan was again the most conspicuous figure. The ninety votes of New York, which were at first given to Harmon,

Foss

were transferred on the tenth roll-call to Clark. That change to the candidate whom Mr. Bryan was himself supporting led him to interpose, after the thirteenth trial, to explain his vote. The point which he made was that the change of its vote by New York was the work of Tammany, or rather of the leader of that organization; that if it were effectual in leading to the nomination of Clark it would put the nominee under obligation to that leader and to the three men named in his condemnatory resolution; and that it indicated the opinion of the man whom he believed to be in control of the delegation that Clark was more conservative and less progressive than Wilson. Accordingly he announced that so long as the vote of New York was given to Clark, he, who was under instructions to support Clark, would withhold his vote from that candidate and vote for Wilson.

On the roll-call that followed his intervention no other Nebraska delegate imitated Mr. Bryan's example; and, as will be seen from the table, Mr. Clark lost only one half-vote besides that of Bryan. But the decline in the Clark vote began at that point and continued to the end. On the twenty-seventh roll-call a prominent New York member made a vigorous defence of the honor of the delegation, and repudiated with indignation Mr. Bryan's outspoken accusation that the members were influenced and controlled by the Tammany leader. On a poll of the delegation Clark had 78 votes; Wilson, 9; Underwood, 2; not voting, 1. But under the unit rule which governed New York, its ninety votes were still cast for Clark.

The Committee on Resolutions interrupted the nominating speeches for Vice-President, in the evening, by reporting the following platform, which was unanimously adopted without discussion:

We, the representatives of the Democratic party of the United States, in national convention assembled, reaffirm our devotion to the principles of Democratic government formulated by Thomas Jefferson and enforced by a long and illustrious line of Democratic Presidents.

We declare it to be a fundamental principle of the Democratic party that the federal government under the Constitution has no right or power to impose or collect tariff duties, except for the purpose of revenue, and we demand that the collection of such taxes shall be limited to the necessities of government honestly and economically administered.

The high Republican tariff is the principal cause of the unequal distribution of wealth; it is a system of taxation which makes the rich richer and the poor poorer; under its operations the American farmer and laboring man are the chief sufferers; it raises the cost of the necessaries of life to them but does not protect their product or wages. The farmer sells largely in free markets and buys almost entirely in the protected markets. In the most highly protected industries, such as cotton and wool, steel and iron, the wages of the laborers are the lowest paid in any of our industries. We denounce the Republican pretence on that subject and assert that American wages are established by competitive conditions and not by the tariff.

We favor the immediate downward revision of the existing high and in many cases prohibitive tariff duties, insisting that material reductions be speedily made upon the necessaries of life. Articles entering into competition with trust controlled products and articles of American manufacture which are sold abroad more cheaply than at home should be put upon the free list.

We recognize that our system of tariff taxation is intimately connected with the business of the country and we favor the ultimate attainment of the principles we advocate by legislation that will not injure or destroy legitimate industry.

We denounce the action of President Taft in vetoing the bills to reduce the tariff in the cotton, woolen, metals and chemical schedules and the farmers' free list bill, all of which were designed to give immediate relief to the masses from the exactions of the trusts.

The Republican party, while promising tariff revision, has shown by its tariff legislation that such revision is not to be in the people's interest and, having been faithless to its pledges of 1908, it should not longer enjoy the confidence of the nation. We appeal to the American people to support us in our demand for a tariff for revenue only.

The high cost of living is a serious problem in every American home. The Republican party, in its platform, attempts to escape from responsibility for present conditions by denying that they are due to a protective tariff. We take issue with them on this subject and charge that excessive prices result in a large measure from the high tariff laws enacted and maintained by the Republican party and from trusts and commercial conspiracies fostered and encouraged by such laws, and we assert that no substantial relief can be secured for the people until import duties on the nec essaries of life are materially reduced and these criminal conspiracies broken up.

A private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable. We, there