Fellow Citizens and Fellow Townsmen:It is a pleasure to come home and to meet you here in this familiar and historic place, and to say that as a citizen of New York, I have been proud of Governor Odell's administration during the past two years. Standing a little aside from the daily events and specific discussions of State administration, and looking from outside upon the general course of affairs it has seemed to me that the people of the State owe the Governor a debt of gratitude for what he has done in their interest. He has shown himself a strong man, and an honest one, in the Governor's chair as he has always been in business and in politics. He is familiar with business affairs and with business men, and he knows all the men in politics and can weigh and measure them, and cannot easily be deceived. He has had the courage to do disagreeable things in the public interest and has made some enemies by it, and the people of the State for whose interest he has acted ought to stand by him. He has reduced taxes and made the public service more efffective and has given the State a clean and efficient business administration. He ought to be re-elected for the good work he has done as Governor. He ought to be re-elected for the good he will be able to do during another term. And he ought to be re-elected as a rebuke to the outrageous and unfounded personal attack that has been made upon him by opponents who are trying to abscure and get away from the real issues of the campaign. We ought to make it known that a long life of probity and distinguished public service cannot be effaced by a handful of mud, and that kind of politics doesn't go in our State.

The national issue of this political campaign, in its most important and practical aspect, is whether President Roosevelt 00034shall be sustained in his administration of the National Government.

Will the people of the United States elect a House of Representatives with a Republican majority to work in harmony with the President and with the Republican majority of the Senate, so that he may go on, as he has begun, with an effective government, working out practically the plans for improving administration and for the remedy of evils along the lines upon which the legislative and executive branches agree; or will the people elect a House with a Democratic majority which will be hostile to the President,will not agree with him upon any course of conduct, and will hinder and embarrass him in all his efforts for the public good during the remainder of his present term of office?

There ought to be no indifference upon this question among the people of the State of New York. There ought to be no uncertain or faint answer to the question. If the people of the State feel towards the President as they did when they elected him their Governor in 1898, and as they did when they gave the electoral vote of the State to him for Vice-President in 1900, they will answer. Still more, if they think better of him now than they did then, as I believe they do; if they think he has made a good President, as I believe they do; if they are proud of him, as I think they are--proud of his manly and noble qualities, his courage, his frankness, his freedom from guile and double dealing, the genuineness of his Republican simplicity, the sincerity of his love of country and of his countrymen, the rugged strength of his character, the exceptional power of his trained intelligence, the wise thoughtfulness and boldness with which he is grappling problems of government when smaller and selfishly politic men would temporize, then the people of the President's own State will do their duty by him as he is doing his duty by them, and will send Representatives to Congress at the coming election who will stand 00045by him and work with him for the good of the country. This is a patriotic duty in every Congressional District of the United States, but there is a special obligation resting upon the people of New York to support and hold up the hands of a son of New York when he deserves support.

I am not going to talk about what the Republican administration at Washington has done further than to say that I believe it has be honest and efficient, and that it has accomplished successfully many difficult tasks, avoided many dangers, and attained many results beneficial and creditable to the country. I think its policies have been justified and its conduct of affairs approved by their fruits, and that it is entitled to a continuance of public confidence.

It will be difficult to find a better record of wise and painstaking legislative performance than is furnished by the Republican majority in the present Congress. Besides dealing with all of the great appropriation bills, with their multitude of difficult questions affecting the public welfare in their first session they relieved the industry and property of the country from the burden of the War Revenue taxes; they settled by an admirable statute the long vexed question of the Isthmain canal; they inaugurated a new system for the irrigation of arid lands in the West; they worked out and adopted laws for the safe government of the Philippine Islands, exhibiting a high order of constructive ability. All these great measures received most thorough and careful consideration, and involved patient and laborious work in committee and instructive discussion in both houses. The one case of urgent necessity for action which failed of response was the bill for a just measure of reciporcity with Cuba; and that was defeated by a combination between the Democrats in Congress and a small minority of the Republicans refusing to go with the majority of their party. There is good reason to believe that the measure will succeed at the next session. The people of the country have 00056reason to be well satisfied with the ability, sense of duty, and honest patriotism of the 57th Congress. No reason for changing the political complexion of the House of Representatives can be found in the past action of that body.

What is there to come in the future which calls for such a change? Is effective treatment of labor troubles, or for a revision of the tariff Certainly not.

Our Democratic friends talk as if some capitalists securing undue profits and some tariff provisions becoming out grown with changing conditions, and some stubborn contests between employers who wish to pay less and wage earners who wish to be paid more for labor, were new and strange phenomena, threatening our social and political system, and calling for desperate and revolutionary remedies. They are not new or strange or threatening. They are but reappearances, in slightly varied forms, of some of the difficulties which have always accompanied material prosperity since the beginning of successful enterprise. Unfair and oppressive trusts, so-called, are weeds in the garden of prosperity. It is easy to kill them if you kill the flowers and the fruit also, but if you would keep the weeds down and have the garden grow you must devote yourself not to desperate and destructive remedies, but to a patient, discriminating and unceasing process--pulling out the weeds and leaving the useful plants. So in curbing and regulating those combinations of capital which are injurious to the public, either because they monopolize the market or the sources of supply or the avenues of employment, or prevent competition unfairly and oppressively, care must be taken not to stop great enterprises which have legitimately reduced the cost of production, not to take America out of the race of competition for the markets of the world, not to close the mills and the mines, not to 00067throw millions of workmen out of employment and deprive the farmer of his market for the raw material of manufacture.

The evils complained of are an outgrowth of the process of industrial development of the age.

Their regulation is also a necessary part of that process. Our industrial history shows that the steady course of the process has always been and is now towards better and not towards worse conditions; that the diffusion of wealth is outstripping its concentration; that the great body of the people in the United States are climbing up above the hard conditions of poverty, which have been the rule in the world's life, into general comfort and independence to a degree never before known; that our prosperity is sound and wholesome; and that courage and hope are justified rather than despondency.

The wonderful scientific discoveries and inventions of the last half century have enormously and progressively increased the productive power of mankind. The creation of wealth has proceeded at a rate beyond all precedent in human history. The dry statistics of manufactures read like fairy tales. There has been greater progress in productive power during the last century than in any thousand years before! The total number of wage earners in the United States employed in manufactures in 1850 was 957,000. In 1900 it was 5,316,000, but in 1900 the aggregate horse-power driving the machinery which these 5,316,000 workmen were directing or supplementing was equivalent in producing capacity to the labor of 113,000,000 able-bodied men working every day in the year. This enormous addition to the productive power of labor was due first, to the brains that made the discoveries and inventions and organized the great combinations of capital necessary to utilize the new powers and the new methods necessary for their use; and second, to the capital that 00078built the machines and the mills and the railroads and was wasted in unsuccessful experiments and the renewal of material superseded by new inventions and took the chances of loss to gain the rewards of successful enterprise. Both the brains and the capital have come from every part of this great country, and their interest in the enterprises to which both of them have contributed is represented by the stocks and bonds of the corporations which own the mills and the mines and the railroads. It is plain that in the distribution of this newly acquired wealth the brains that invent and that organize should have their share; the capital that constructs and maintains should be rewarded for its investment and its risk; the laborer should have higher wages because his labor is producing more; and the consumer should have lower prices because the product which he purchases is produced with greater ease and at less cost. The industrial history of the last half century is a history first, of the steady increase of productive power, and second only to that, of the continual struggle between these four interests--the brains, the capital, the laborer, and the consumer, to secure what each considers to be a fair share of the benefits of the increased wealth. That struggle will continue so long as the increase of productive power and the added increments of wealth that come from the increase, continue. Capital and brains always get the advantage at first. The first fruits of each new increase of productive power, whether through invention or through organization, come to them. But our industrial history shows that the laborer and the consumer slowly but surely wrest their share of the advantage from capital and secure it for themselves. The organizers of the Sugar Trust made a great deal of money for themselves, but we are getting sugar now for less than it cost to make it before the Sugar Trust was formed. The organizers of the Standard Oil Company have made a great deal of money, but the poorest American 00089farmer is lighting his little house to-night at trifling cost, more brilliantly than palaces were lighted a century ago; and these are the consumers' shares of the wealth created by the brains and capital of the Sugar Company and the Standard Oil Company.

While the 957,000 wage earners of 1850 increased to 5,316,000 in 1900, the wages paid to them increased from $236,000,000 in 1850 to $2,328,000,000 in 1900; that is to say, about five times the number of workmen received about ten times the amount of wages, or wages just about doubled during the fifty years. On the other hand, while $533,000,000 invested in manufactures in 1850 had swelled to $9,835,000,000 in 1900, every dollar of capital so invested in 1900 received less than one-third of the return that every dollar of capital received in 1850. Thus, while the returns of capital seem great because they are massed together, and the returns of labor seem small because they are scattered, capital's proportionate share of the new wealth is constantly decreasing and labor's proportionate share of it is constantly increasing. And the wages of one man's labor in manufacture is to-day equal to the profit of six times as much money employed in manufacture as it was equal to in 1850. The same change is shown in the decrease in the rates of interest for the use of money. In 1850, the capitalist could get for the use of his money 7 or 8 per cent., while now he is reduced to 3 or 4 per cent.

Not only have the wages of labor increased but the cost of food and clothing has decreased. In 1860 wheat flour ranged from $8 to $9 a barrel; in the first half of 1902 it ranged from $3.75 to $4.75 a barrel.

In 1850 fair Rio coffee ranged from 7 1/2 cents to 11 1/2 cents per pound; in the first half of 1902 it ranged from 5 1/4 cents to 6 15-16 cents per pound.

In 1850 refined sugar ranged from 8 3/8 cents to 10 1/8 cents per pound; in the first half of 1902 it ranged from 4.65 cents to 4 3/4 cents per pound.

In 1850 salt messed pork ranged from $10.25 to $11.875 per barrel; in 1900, before the failure of the corn crop of 1901, it ranged from $10.25 to $14.25 per barrel.

In 1850 fine salt was $1.19 per barrel; in October, 1901, it was 65 cents per barrel.

In 1850 calico prints ranged from 9 1/2 cents to 10 cents per yard; in 1902 they were 5 cents per yard.

In 1850 print cloths ranged from 5 1/8 cents to 5 3/8 cents per yard; in 1901 and 1902 they ranged from 2.60 cents to 3.31 cents per yard.

In 1869 to 1872 Amoskeag ginghams ranged from 13 cents to 16 cents; in 1901 and 1902 they ranged from 4.75 cents to 5 1/2 cents per yard.

From 1877 to 1887 men's split boots ranged from $20 to $24 per dozen pairs; in 1901 they ranged from $18 to $19 per dozen pairs.

From 1865 to 1875 women's solid grained shoes ranged from $1.125 to $2.25 per pair; in 1901 they ranged from 85 cents to 92 1/2 cents per pair.

In women's dress goods, cotton alpaca has gone down from a range of from 9 to 11 1/2 cents per yard in 1880 and 1881 to 7.11 cents in 1901.

Cashmere fell from 10 1/4 cents in 1881 to 7.60 cents in 1900 and 1901.

Anthracite coal went up before the recent strike, from $3.35 in 1850 to $4.50 in 1902; but bituminous coal has gone down from a range of $5.50 to $6.00 in 1857 to $2.85 in 1902.

A comparison of retail prices by the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor shows that for the 30 years from 1872 to 1902 the retail price in that State for wheat flour had decreased from $10.75 per barrel to $5.20 per barrel; of coffee, from 34 1/2 cents to 22 cents per pound; of granulated sugar, from 12 cents to 5 1/4 cents per pound; of New Orleans molasses, from 70 cents to 49 3/4 cents per gallon; 001011of roasting beef; from 19 cents to 17 1/2 cents per pound; of butter, from 39 1/4 cents to 30 1/4 cents per pound; cheese, from 17 1/2 cents to 16 cents per pound; of hard coal, from $9.25 to $6.65 3-5 per ton; of brown shirting, from 13 cents to 6 3/4 cents per yard; of bleached shirting, from 16 cents to 8 3/4 cents; of prints, from 11 3/4 cents to 6 cents; men's heavy boots, $3.94 per pair to $1.99 1/2 per pair; while there was a slight, but very slight, advance in the cost of pork and of potatoes; that every dollar of the wage earners' pay would, in 1902, buy far more beef and flour and coffee and sugar and molasses and butter and cheese and milk and eggs and clothing than it would thirty years before.

The result of this process is a diffusion of wealth among our people, the contemplation of which makes the comparatively few large fortunes seem of trifling importance. In the year 1901 there were 6,358,723 separate savings bank accounts in the United States with deposits amounting to $2,507,094,580. These were not the accounts of millionaires, but of the people whom, according to our American standards, we call poor. These six million and odd depositors were of course chiefly in the towns where savings banks were accessible. Go out into the country, and you find that in 1901 there were 5,739,657 separate farms, with an average of 146.6 acres to the farm--a little more than one farm to every nine persons of the rural population of the United States. The great majority of these farms were worked by their owners, only 13.1 per cent, by managers or overseers. The value of the farm property was over twenty billion dollars. Taking together the savings bank accounts in the towns and the farms in the country, there are owned by the plain working people almost an average of a farm or a bank account for every family in the United States. There were, in 1901, 14,395,443 life insurance policies outstanding in the country in the regular insurance companies. The 001112total insurance under them amounted to $8,562,139,740. Every one of these policies represented money laid up by people who were not rich, for provision again st old age or for the wife and child. The assests of these insurance companies amounted to $1,742,414,173. All of this was owned by these fourteen mmillion policy holders. In addition to this there were $2,725,221 persons who hheld policies in assessment companies and fraternal societies, and 1,539,593 who held interests in loan and building companies with $565,387,966 of assests. This already increase in the earnings of labor, as compared with the earnings of capital, this wonderful diffusion of wealth among the men who work with their hands, has been accomplished in spite of the fact that we have been continually adding to our population by the immigration of the poor of other countries, withhout means and wihth the lowest earnings capcity, to the extent of 17,249,377 since the year 1850; and these continual additions at the bottom of the scale of prosperity and earning power have continually kept down the average of earnings and of popular wealth. More significant than all else is the fact, that we have commenced this new century with over seventeen million children in school in the United States, and over fifteen millions of these in the public schools--children of the plain people, of free, law-abiding, self-respecting people, looking up to no superiors and masters of their own lives: children well feb, well housed, well nourished, looking forward with clear, bright eyes through the open gateways of boundless opportunity in this free republic where the highest rewards are to be won by individuals enterprise, and where not wealth, nor birth, nor social position, but the personal qualities of the man himself, whether he be rich or poor, are the sole title to the highest distinction ad the greatest power. Let us not, in fixing our gaze upon small evils, forget the greater good. The augomobiles are of little account. Who owns the 001213farm wagons? is the important question. Let us keep our faithh in American institutions and deal with the evils that are before us now and are to come hereafter, along the lines of the same beneficent system which has dealt successfully with evvery phase of the great struggle for the distribution of wealth in our past. The capacity of a people for self-government is shown by its ability to reject violent and destructive remedies, and to proceed patiently with practical, common sense, separating the good from the bad, and checking and suppressing what is bad while holding on to what is good.

The Republican party proposes to follow this course; to regulate and curb and suppress the bad trusts rather than to destroy the good and the bad togethher, and with them the prosperity which brings such beneficent results to all our country. The only Federal law to accomplish this result--the Sherman Act--was passed by a Republican Congress against Democratic opposition. If you will read the speech made this month by Attroney Genneral Knox at Pittsburg, you will see how actively and with what successful results hhe is engaged in the enforcement of that law. The Presidennt has suggested an extension of the law. The Attorney General, after careful study, has given his opinion that it can be extended and made more far-reaching and efffective. So far as it is possible to ascertain the attitude of the Democratic party, that party is again opposed to the effort on thhe part of the Federal Government to regulate and curb the evil of trusts. The Democratic candidate for Governor in our own State has formally put himself on record in violent opposition to what he calls "the astonishing centralizing policy of the Republicann party." He said in his speech at the Manhattan Club last week:

"The proposal that the States are powerless to regulate their own affairs and that Federal control is the only means of preventing the abuse of corporate 001314power, is a stigma which comes with ill grace from a citizen of New York, whether he be the President of the United States or no. The fountain cannot rise above its source. If the intelligence of our people is not adequate to cope with the corporations which they created and to submit them to proper restraints, then it is doubtful if the intelligence of the people of other States, combined in the Federal Congress, is adequate for such a mission.

"For my part I believe that the State of New York, the Empire State of the Union, and all her sister States, are themselves capable of dealing soberly and intelligently with the great interests that have been born out of the enterprise, foresight and energy of their people."

So, speaking through the voice of its chosen standard bearer, the Democratic party in this State, at least, is against any Federal regulation of corporate combinations.

The continually recurring contests between capital and labor are a necessary part in this great process of industrial development and distribution of wealth, each striving to get what it thinks to be its share and naturally differing about the proportions. There is no occasion to groan or to wring our hands or to be alarmed over the process. It is natural and healthy, and a process of industrial improvement. Of course, there are wrongs committed, unjustifiable and irritating things are done upon both sides, but these are continually being remedied and just results are continually being wrought out. We are in the habit of saying that the interests of capital and labor are one or that they are reciprocal, which is another way of saying the same thing. Their interests are one in the production of wealth, and their interests are reciprocal in not being so unreasonable about the division of the benefits as to stop the production. There is a continual approach towards a good understanding of the terms and relations which are dictated by a recognition of these 001415mutual and reciprocal interests. If you will look back at the condition of the railroad business at the time of the Debs riots, then consider the relations since established between the railroad owners and the associated engineers, firemen, trainmen, and conductors, under the leadership of Mr. Arthur, Mr. Sargent, Mr. Clarke, and Mr. Morrissey, you will see a striking illustration of the progress to which I refer. Another good illustration is to be found in the agreement made the other day between the tin plate manufacturers and their workmen, in which the workmen voluntarily agreed to a reduction of wages in order to enable the manufacturers to underbid foreign competitors for the contract to supply tin cans for the Standard Oil product. Another illustration is the agreement between employers and employed for the annual readjustment of wages throughout the greater part of the bituminous coal field. The more intelligent the parties are, the more readily such relations are reached, and as we are all growing more intelligent, all learning all the time, the prospect is not dark but bright. When our President, in his brave and direct way, acting out of his deep feeling for the needs of his people, undertook to get coal for them against the coming winter by urging the substitution of peace for war in the anthracite region, Mr. Hill in New York and Mr. Olney in Boston condemned him, but I have an idea that the people of the country do not agree with them; and I have an idea also that his action will prove in the end to have resulted, not merely in getting the coal, but in making a valuable contribution to the peaceful and reasonable process of development I have been describing.

What do the Democratic party propose to do, if the people of the United States put the power into their hands, to remedy these industrial evils and annoyances which have come along with our great prosperity? They have made two proposals. The first is to revise the tariff.

It is easy to say that the tariff needs revising. In the nature of things time must call for changes in every tariff law, because it is a fixed statute applied from day to day to constantly changing conditions. The purpose of the law itself is to change conditions by improving them, and it is impossible that such a statute should continue any considerable period without our finding rates of duties which may well be changed. But in considering the making of such changes it is important to keep two things in mind:

First. That if a tariff law has on the whole worked well, and if business has prospered under it and is prospering, it is better to endure some slight inconveniences and inequalities for a time than to incur the uncertainity and disturbance of business which necessarily results from the process of making changes. The mere fact that a different rate of duty would be better than the rate fixed in the statute, does not settle the question whether the change should be made now or should be deferred. Every tariff deals with duties on a vast number of articles, and involves a vast number of interests, often conflicting, and whenever the law is taken up by Congress for consideration with reference to one change, every schedule in the law is going to find some one urging a change in that schedule; and all the business interests of the country are going to be left, during a long continued discussion, in a state of uncertainty as to what will be the outcome of duties upon the things they are producing, and therefore, in uncertainty as to what competition from abroad they will be obliged to meet.

The second thing to be kept in mind is that if the consideration of all the questions thus re-opened is at the hands of a party in power which is avowedly hostile to the principle of protection, the uncertainty incident to the discussion will be accompanied by loss of confidence and fear of the results. Apprehension of probable but 001617unknown competition, and reduction of the prices which can be obtained for the products of industry, will inevitably lead manufacturers and producers generally to stop risking more money with the probability of loss and to contract their operations and reduce their product. Mills will be closed and workmen thrown out of employment. If this were to happen, as over 81 per cent. of the raw materials of manufacture are now supplied by agriculture, the contraction of manufacture would leave the farmers without a market for their produce, and the farmers not selling that, themselves could not buy the products of manufacture, the men thrown out of employment could not buy, and so further contraction would take place and the whole fabric of our business prosperity would come tumbling down. That is why when the tariff is to be revised it should be revised by its friends, so that the people whose interests are to be affected may go on with their business with a just and confident assurance that while outgrown or erroneous provisions are to be corrected, they are not to be deprived of reasonable and fair protection.

Now, what does the Democratic party propose? Does it say "We assent to the principle of protection, and we ask the people of the United States to commit to our hands the revision of the tariff in conformity to that principle?" Far from it. They avow their unrepenting hostility to the principle of protection, and ask that the people of the country put in their hands the revision of the tariff in order that they may revise the protection out of it and repeat the experiment of Mr. Cleveland's second administration, which, according to Mr. Gompers, the President of the American Federation of Labor, put three million American workmen to walking the streets without work and without bread for their families. It is not a revision of the protective tariff, but the destruction of the protective tariff upon which the people are to pass in voting for members of 001718Congress next Tuesday, and with that destruction would disappear necessarily the conditions of our present prosperity. It may be that some time or other we may have another period of prosperity under some other kind of law; but the prosperity we have to-day is under the protective tariff. You sweep that away and this period of prosperity ends.

The specific ground upon which the Democratic party now says that it should be permitted to revise the tariff is that the tariff protects the trusts. Observe that they do not propose to confine themselves to cutting off the duties upon the articles made by the trusts, but their remedy is to destroy the protection of all American products and destroy the trusts by dragging them down in the general ruin. But consider their proposition regarding the trusts by themselves. The manufacturing trusts are protected by the tariff in common with all other producers of similar articles, and the census of 1900 showed that less than 15 percent. of the manufactured product of the country was made by trusts. If the duties which protect trust-made articles are unreasonably high, then they ought to be reduced as to all the producers without any reference to the question whether they are made by the trusts or not, and if the duties are reduced as to any of the producers they must be as to all. You do not hurt the trusts by such reduction unless you make the reduction so great that it will become unprofitable to manufacture the articles in this country. If that is done you can kill the trusts; you can close their mills; you can turn their laborers out of employment; but you close the mills also of all other producers of similar articles, and you substitute for domestic production of the articles the importation of foreign articles. As the production of foreign articles is in a very great measure controlled by trusts, you substitute a foreign trust for an American trust. You abandon the remedy of American 001819competition and substitute for it a foreign monopoly. As you pass along the line, gradually destroying industry after industry, you will speedily attain the blessings of free trade in exchange for the injuries of domestic production! Is this necessary? Is it reasonable? Is it worth the while to destroy American trusts by making American manufacture unprofitable? Surely this ought not to be done except as a last resort. Surely we ought first to give American competition a chance and see whether with wise laws and effective administration, preventing oppression and secret rebates and unfair practices, American competition will not ultimately take care of itself and take care of the trust question at the same time. A little study of the course of business in the country leaves no doubt that it will take care of itself. Capital may combine for the moment all the productive plants of the country, and so for the moment monopolize the market, but American competition immediately commences the construction of new plants. The country is too big, raw material is too plentiful, the market is too wide, our wealth is too great, our people are too enterprising for any one concern to monopolize the field if there is fair play. When the Sugar Trust was formed it took in over 90 per cent of the refining capacity of the country. Immediately new refineries were started, and to-day over 40 per cent of the sugar of the country is made by outside concerns. The latest and greatest combination--the United States Steel Company--was supposed to be an overwhelming monopoly; but the statistics of the American Iron and Steel Association for last August show that already in the year 1901 independent companies produced over 57 per cent. of the iron ore of the country, over 57 per cent of the total pig iron, over 40 per cent. of the Bessemer steel rails, over 37 per cent. of the structural iron, over 49 per cent. of all rolled products. We forget the Cambria Steel Company, the Pennsylvania Steel 001920Company, the Bethlehem Steel Company, and the Republic Iron and Steel Company, and scores of other great establishments with hundreds of mills and furnaces. Competition is growing new plants are being equipped. The Union Steel Company is building, the Crucible Steel Company is building; the Lackawanna Steel Company is building at Buffalo in our own State, a thirty million dollar plant. Are you going to ruin all such independent industries for the purpose of punishing the trusts or are you going to help them in their competition by wise regulation and seeing to it, if need be, that the big concern is fair to the smaller ones? Are you going to say to the workmen in the tin plate mills who have just cut their own wages to make competition with foreign producers possible. "You are working for a trust! We are going to make your sacrifice useless and throw you out of work by cutting the tariff so as to bring in a foreign competitor and drive your employer out of business because it is a trust?"

The second proposal of the Democratic party is contained in the plank of the New York platform adopted while the anthracite coal strike was at its height, and now famous as the "Coal Plank."

"We advocate the National ownership and operation of the anthracite coal mines by the exercise of the right of eminent domain."

I cannot resist the temptation to put in "deadly parallel" by the side of this official declaration of the Democratic party of the State, the words of Mr. Coler's speech at the Manhattan Club:

"This great commonwealth, concentrating within its limits practical control of the great financial and transportation interests of the country, should consider seriously before endorsing the astonishing centralizing policy of the Republican Party.

"The proposition that the States are powerless to regulate their own affairs and that Federal control is 002021the only means of preventing the abuse of corporate power, is a stigma which comes with ill grace from a citizen of New York, whether he be the President of the United States or no."

It is a serious thing that a great party which hopes to secure a majority of the votes in the greatest State of the Union should put such a declaration in its platform. The proposition itself does not need to be seriously considered now, but it is a serious thing that the Democratic party should adopt such a proposition. The least of the offenses involved in the declaration is that it is unconstitutional. It is plainly, baldly, without room for argument, unconstitutional. Mr. Hill's parade of pretended argument in the neighborhood of the question, but not on the question, is an insult to the intelligence of the people of the State, and he is too good a lawyer not to know it. I say that is the least of the offenses, because a man has a right to argue an unconstitutional proposition to the people who make constitutions, and ask them to change the constitution, but he ought to be frank about it and say that he wants the constitution changed.

The Democratic leader shrinks from that because the demand for a change of the constitution of the United States, to make the proposition of the coal plank possible, would reveal the greater fault that it seeks to break down absolutely the line of demarkation between Federal and State authority, and vest in the National Government all those powers over the ordinary affairs of life which our carefully devised constitutional system has vested in the States. If the principle embodied in this proposition were adopted, the American system of local self-government would be at an end, and the States would become but counties and geographical divisions of a great centralized power. For if the National Government has power to enter the State of Pennsylvania and take the anthracite coal field into its 002122possession and ownership and mine the coal to supply the wants of the people of the United States, it can take the bituminous coal fields of Ohio and Illinois, it can take the grain fields of the West to furnish food and the cotton fields of the South to furnish clothing; it can take the railroads and ships that transport the necessary supplies, and the mills and furnaces which fit the raw material for use; every requirement of human life becomes a public use of the United States, and in the presence of that all pervading and direct relation the distribution of powers between National and State governments and the sovereign States themselves, would disappear.

The proposition involves not merely the destruction of our political system but of our social system as well. While the assertion of the power negatives the right of States to local self-government, its exercise would be rank and extreme socialism. Under it a paternal government controlling the business of the country, with its army of officeholders and its millions of employees, would take the place of the individual enterprise, freedom of contract, and open competition, which have made America great and prosperous.

But I have said too much about the merits of the proposition. The worst thing about it is that it is not honest. It negatives the basic principles of the Democratic party. It was put into the Democratic platform at the height of the coal strike, not because the Democratic party of the State believed in it, but in the expectation that the strike would continue and in the hope of catching votes by an appeal to passion and prejudice stirred up by the heat of that great struggle, and by the suffering resulting from the want of fuel. That the Government which governs least governs best, that the Federal authority shall be strictly confined within the limits of express constitutional authority, that the sovereign local control of the States shall 002223be maintained inviolable, were the fundamental principles of Jefferson's political religion, and have been the fundamental principles of the Democratic party ever since his day. How can we respect the sincerity of the men who claim to be the disciples of Jefferson and profess the principles of that party, and with such shameless effrontery abjure and deny those principles for the sake of winning votes from the passing passion of a day?

Unfortunately this not very creditable act well illustrates the fatal weakness of the Democratic party. For forty years it has had no cohesion except by force of the desire to turn the Republican party out of office. It has had no policy upon which it could agree; but has been continually, like Mr. Hill, with his coal plank, calling for national ownership of the coal fields, and Mr. Coler, protesting against national interference. It has had no principles which it was not willing to throw overboard at a moment's notice on the chance of winning an election. For forty years it has uniformly taken its position, not with reference to what it believed, but with reference to producing Republican failure. In 1864 it declared the war to be a failure, because the people seemed to be weary of the long struggle and there seemed a chance to appeal to their weakness; in 1872 it took Greeley as its candidate, although it hated him and abhorred his opinions, because there seemed a chance of dividing Republican voters; when the Republicans were for sound money Democrats were for inflation and for free silver because cheap money was an alluring cry for the demagogue to catch the fancy of the crowd; when then the suppression of the Philippine insurrection became tiresome, they appealed again to the supposed weakness of the people as they did in 1864, and demanded a yielding of the sovereignty of the United States to the forces in arms against it, whose suppression they themselves had originally joined in requiring. When they did obtain power, 002324full and uncontrolled, in the second administration of Mr. Cleveland, they were unable to use it; and although when they nominated Mr. Cleveland they loved him for the enemies he had made, a large part of them have ever since hated him for the good qualities he displayed. The reason for the Democratic party's failure under that administration was that it was ingrained with the destructive habit and had no constructive capacity. For half a century the Democratic party has constructed nothing but the Southern Confederacy and the Wilson tariff bill. The Wilson tariff was so bad that the Democratic President would not sign it and denounced it as a fraud; its enforcement was accompanied by disaster and poverty; and its repeal under Republican rule has been followed by abounding prosperity; while the very men whose splendid courage wreathed the standards of the Lost Cause with imperishable renown declare that the failure of the Confederacy was a blessing to mankind, to our common country, and to the people of the South themselves. Long ago, before the war for the Union, there was a Democratic party with capacity to govern. It exists no longer. A motley crew of touters for votes by hook and by crook, has usurped its name, and the appropriate expression of their political character is to be found in the coal plank of the New York Democratic platform, advertised under the name of Thomas Jefferson.