THE

HE Democrats of Massachusetts in convention assembled, reaffirming their allegiance to the fundamental principles of Democracy, invite the support of all opponents of modern Republican policies, and make the following declarations upon questions which now demand public attention and require speedy legislative action.

In the place of the Republican policy of fostering and protecting great monopolies by legislation, at the expense of the people, we demand protec tion for the people against the abuses and exactions of monopoly. We make no warfare upon any legitimate corporate business which is willing to sustain itself without governmental favors, and to submit to reasonable governmental supervision and regulation, but the supremacy of the State over its corporate creatures must be asserted and maintained, and they must conduct their business with due regard to the vast public interests in their charge.

Exorbitant tariff duties are producing a surplus which is to-day locking up in the Treasury money which our business needs urgently require these should be reduced to a reasonable revenue basis.

Free raw material is the only sound foundation for the manufacturing supremacy which this country is seeking; we again demand that the duties upon such material, so injurious and unfair to the industrial development of this commonwealth, shall be wholly removed. We demand particularly free coal, free iron ore, free wool, and free hides, and we condemn the Republican policy of sacrificing great New England interests to its political exigencies. We favor any honest policy of reciprocity with other nations, and we particularly demand the passage of a liberal measure of reciprocity with Canada.

The present tariff is protecting great trusts and making exorbitant profits upon the necessities of our people, while selling their products to foreign markets at much lower prices than the prices exacted here. We demand the repeal of all tariff duties upon articles whose production is controlled by trusts. This is the one simple, practical, and immediate remedy which will at

least limit the exactions of monopoly; it can be applied while further legislation is being formulated and discussed. The Federal Government can at least allow the people to purchase their coal and their meat, which have been rising toward prohibitive prices, without paying tribute to the coal trusts and the meat trusts.

A decent regard for the interests of the people requires that both sides to a great industrial controversy should accept the principle of arbitration. We condemn the arrogant refusal of the representatives of the anthracite coal combination to submit to arbitration their differences with their employees as the cause of vast loss and injury to the general public.

As we declared a year ago, "The people of Cuba, for whose welfare we have made ourselves trustees, are plainly entitled to the most favored commercial relations with this country." The refusal of the present Republican Congress, under the dictation of selfish special interests, to give Cuba, through proper tariff concessions, a living chance of establishing a stable and efficient government, under her own flag, was a shameful betrayal of our national honor. While she is entitled, whenever it is her own desire, to enjoy the advantages of a full political union with this country, and consequently freedom of trade with us, such a union should never be forced upon her by bankruptcy deliberately created by our actions. We denounce the small measure of relief which some Republicans were willing to grant as utterly inadequate to meet the situation in which their representatives left Cuba.

We are opposed to all forms of governmental subsidies to favored interests or classes, whether on land or on the sea.

We reaffirm our opposition to colonial imperialism in every form, and again demand that our government shall declare its purpose to give to the people of the Philippine Islands, at the earliest possible date, their independence under the protection of this country.

The action of the Federal Government has proved inadequate to adapt Boston Harbor to the rapidly growing requirements of commerce, and

to maintain its relative position with other ports; we believe that the business interests of this State now require that the commonwealth, in conjunc. tion with the city of Boston, should join in this work of improvement, and hasten and extend it.

We favor stringent laws to prevent the use of the patronage of corporations to influence legis. lation and political action; corporations should be prohibited from giving employment to persons recommended by office-holders or members of political committees, and recommendations by them for such employment should also be forbidden.

We heartily approve and applaud President Roosevelt's vigilant care of the country's interests, domestic and foreign. We share his pride in the magnificent work of the American soldier and sailor and the American administrator in the country's new dependencies, and his resentment against their unpatriotic traducers, and we favor his nomination for the Presidency by the National Republican Convention of 1904.

We believe, with Lincoln, Garfield, Blaine, McKinley, and Roosevelt, in a protective tariff that wisely fosters American industries and safeguards American wages. We oppose a general revision of the tariff at this time as both inopportune and unnecessary. If, in any schedule, import duties are found that have been notoriously perverted from their true purpose to the inordinate enrichment of corporations, monopolistic in fact or in tendency, we look to a Repub lican Congress to apply, in its wisdom, the needed corrective without impairing the principle of protection.

We believe, with William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, in the policy of trade reciprocity as the natural supplement of tariff protection, and the key with which to unlock the world's markets for the surplus products of American fields and American mills. Especially we commend the President's efforts to perform a plain duty, and obtain for this country a lucrative commerce by arranging a judicious reciprocity treaty with Cuba. And we also commend and thank the chairman of the Committee on Relations with Cuba, our honored and beloved Senator O. H. Platt, for his earnest support of the President in these efforts.

The Republican party has ever recognized the value and dignity of labor, which is the founda

Emphasizing the above matters as those now demanding most immediate consideration, while reaffirming our support of the reforms in State government and legislation embodied in our last platform, including responsible executive gov. ernment, restriction of special legislation, a proper system of referendum, primary elections, direct nominations, elections of the United States Senators by the people, progressive labor legisla. tion, including an eight-hour law, home rule for cities, we confidently appeal to the people to support our candidates.

Let us, then, turn our attention to the wider field. Shall we endorse or condemn the Republican administration so gloriously begun by Willam McKinley, so grandly continued by Theodore Roosevelt? The United States has enjoyed six years of unexampled prosperity. That prosperity has been coincident with Republican administration. During that period our career has been one of uninterrupted development, progress, and glory. In whatever contributes to domestic prosperity and happiness, and to international influence and helpfulness, the United States has, under Republican administration, reached high-water mark. Six years ago the business of the country was in the depths of depression. National credit was shaken to its foundations. Its people were largely unem. ployed, discontented, and unhappy. We were

lightly esteemed by the nations of the earth. A short six years, and what do we behold?-prosperity in business surpassing all former periods, unequaled national credit, all our workmen employed at better wages than ever before in our history, the people contented and happy, our voice the most persuasive and potent in the councils of the nations. In wise administration, in substantial development, in international influence, we lead the world to-day. What other issue does the Republican party need to present? How can it better commend itself to the support of the people of the United States than by patient continuance in this well-doing? Nor is our national prosperity and glory accidental. Our country has always prospered under Republican rule; it has always languished when so unfortunate as to come under the sway of the Democratic party. The one overwhelming issue of this campaign is the endorsement of the Republican administration of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.

Recognizing the force of this, our opponents are indulging in a most frantic hunt for some other issue on which to go before the people. There is a fascination in hunting when there is game to be found and secured, but it is dull and tiresome sport where there is no game to be either found or secured, and this hunt of the Democratic party for a new issue must be both dull and tiresome. When we restored the gold standard and reëstablished the credit of the nation on solid foundation, its free-silver issue disappeared with the clouds. When we gave Porto Rico popular and representative government, when we put down rebellion in the Philippines, established civil government there, clothed its inhabitants with all the rights guaranteed to our own citizens by the Constitution, we started it on the road to popular and representative government; its paramount issue of imperialism became but a dissipated fog.

We have wrought a grand and glorious work in the Philippines, and the people now know it. No nation in the long annals of history has ever accomplished so much for justice, for civilization, for the advancement of humanity, in a conquered territory as we in the Philippines. It is mar'velous beyond the dream of the philosopher or the prediction of the prophet. The example of a semi barbarous and warlike people pacified, and in four years transformed into a people seeking to regulate their own affairs under the sovereignty of the United States, and under our promise of self-government to the full limit of their capacity, is not to be found elsewhere in the world's history. That it has been accom. plished against virulent opposition and attack.

upon both our military and civil administration only attests the wonder of its consummation.

For once in its history it is apparent that the Democratic party is ashamed of the issues upon which it has so recently sought power. The mere mention of free silver, anti-expansion, and anti-imperialism, which but a few short years since constituted the entire stock in trade of the Democratic and Populistic partnership, is most distasteful, and so it now has started on its vain and vexing hunt for other issues with which to delude voters into its support. Thus in all Demo. cratic journals, and from all Democratic platforms, we now hear the cry revise the tariff, down with the trusts." On this subject the Republican party has something to say, and says it frankly.

The Republican party stands for a protective tariff. The Democratic party is against a pro. tective tariff. Protection has brought prosperity and filled our land with happiness, and when the time comes for either a complete or partial revision of the tariff, the interests of the country require that it shall be revised along the lines of protection and not for the establishment of free trade. Whenever and however there shall be tariff revision, it should be a revision which will not destroy our home market or take away work from our own workmen to give it to the workmen of foreign countries. Tariff revision should be attempted only when it will not seriously disturb the business of the country, or check our developing activities. When that time shall come, and the need shall be apparent, the Republican party may be relied upon to undertake this work. Tariff schedules are not sacred. The principle of protection should be held sacred in the United States. The Democratic cry for tariff revision which is sounding through the country is pitched upon one key: the destruction of protection, which is the main factor of our prosperity.

With regard to great aggregations of capital, indefinitely called trusts, all men know that business cannot now be conducted successfully in the United States with the limited capital of former times; that to attempt it would result in wide spread disaster and misery, and that even if it were possible to reestablish old trade conditions the consumers would necessarily be com pelled to pay enhanced prices for the needed ar ticles of consumption. Other nations were first to seize the opportunities which steam and elec tricity offered in extending business operations throughout the field of the world which had been previously limited by slow correspondence and transportation. The United States was forced by the changed conditions of trade to do business upon a larger scale, and that could only be done with augmented capital. Business thus con

ducted, honestly and fairly according to the common judgment of mankind, is not only a necessity, but a blessing.

But great aggregations of capital result in enormous power, and there comes with that power the temptation to do business unfairly, and without due regard to the rights and interests of the great body of our people. The difference between the Republican and Democratic parties in the matter of trusts may be stated thus: The Democratic party proposes to destroy trusts and the business conducted by them; the Republican party proposes to regulate trusts and the business conducted by them, so that no un fair advantage shall be taken of the people of the United States, and to the full limit of its constitutional power it will carry out this policy. The Republican party does not set itself against business or the capital needed to develop business; it does set itself against capitalistic monopoly or extortion. The Democratic party, true to its traditional policy of destruction, has apparently but one, and only one, remedy for evils arising from the improper management of business carried on by great corporations, and that is to put all articles manufactured by corporations which have the supposed ability to control prices on the free list, thus destroying at one blow protection to our industries and the business pursued by the trusts.

No more fatuous policy could be conceived. We deny that the tariff is the mother of trusts, we affirm that the tariff is the parent of prosperity. Upon the Republican policy of regulation as against the Democratic policy of destruction, we appeal confidently to the good sense and sober judgment of the thinking people of the United States. It will be a sad day for our workmen if ever in an attempt to punish and destroy our trusts the work now performed by them shall be transformed to the workmen employed by foreign trusts. And right here it may be observed that no plan has ever been proposed by the Democratic party relating either to tariffs or trusts which would result in the employment of an additional workman in the United States, or in the enhancement of the wages of labor. What then can be said of Democratic profession of sympathy for wage-earners but that it is a hollow pretense, —in a word, demagogy. Upon this subject the Republican party has no more courageous, intelligent, or honest exponent of its principles and policies than Theodore Roosevelt. Read his utterances upon this subject and be assured that he speaks for the Republican party. From the at

tempt to sway the people of the United States by appeals to prejudice, the Republican party appeals to reason.

Right alongside the policy of protection, going hand and hand with it, is the policy of reciproc. ity, a reciprocity which shall extend and not curtail our trade; which, on the whole, will give us wider markets without seriously crippling our own. This reciprocity has been aptly denomi nated the handmaid of protection, and whenever and wherever reciprocal trade arrangements with foreign countries can be made which will result in more widely extended markets without serious injury to the business of this country, the Republican party is bound by the expressed views of its late President, in what may be termed his farewell address to the American people, as well as in the explicit declarations of President Roosevelt, to sanction and ratify such arrangements. Democratic reciprocity is but another name for free trade. Republican reciprocity is entirely consistent with protection.

I must speak to you feelingly in behalf of reciprocal trade arrangements with our nearest neighbor, Cuba. I would make such arrangements along the lines which I have indicated,reciprocity in trade between the two countries mutually advantageous to each, a reciprocity whereby we would extend our own trade and at the same time benefit the industrial interests of Cuba. That this is entirely practicable I do not for a moment doubt. Cuba, more than any other nation, is related to us. It is a child rescued and adopted by us. We are both its liberator and its sponsor. It is neither for her interests nor for ours that Cuba should become a part of our nation; it is both for her interests and ours that she should find prosperity in independence, and stability growing out of that prosperity. If ever one nation was obligated to deal justly and liberally with another, we are obligated to deal justly and liberally with Cuba. We can help Cuba in the maintenance of her independence with great benefit to ourselves. We can enable her to start on a career of self-supporting nationality without perceptible injury to any American industry and with manifest benefit to all. There are times when popular prejudices and fear obscures the most important issues and prevents wise legisla. tion, but the second sober thought of the Amer ican people sweeps away the barriers erected by prejudice and fear, and allows the voice of conscience, and justice, and wise policy, to be heard. I believe that the time of dealing justly with Cuba has only been delayed, and will surely come.

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