of this lofty place, and New York answers with a candidate who grew from youth to man in the humble walks of life; who lived and learned what all our common folk must live and learn; a man who ripened with advancing years in the rich attainments of the law until he went, by choice of those who knew him best, to hold the heavy scale of justice at the highest point of our great judicial system, where, with the masters who moulded State and Nation, and the men who drive commerce o'er the wheel of Time, he surveyed to the very ground every inch of this great Republic and saw with expanding vision the material growth and glory of his State. (Applause.)

The country called upon New York for a man to fit this, the critical hour and place in our national life, and New York answers with a man who puts against the strenuous sword play of a swaggering administration, a simple faith in all the perfect power of the Constitution (applause); a man who puts against an executive republic the virtue of a constitutional republic; a man who puts against executive usurpation a knowledge of and a deep love for the poise and balance of its three great powers; a man who puts against the stealthy hunt "with the big stick" a faithful observance of constitutional restraints. The country called upon New York for a man of stainless character in private and public life, and New York answers with a man whose path leads from the sweet and simple fireside of his country home where he enjoys the gentle society of his family, to his place of labor and honor at the head of one of the greatest courts of Christendom. And nowhere through his active and useful life has aught but honest praise found utterance on the lips of those who know him best. (Applause.) If you ask me why he has been silent, I tell you it is because he does not claim to be the master of the Democratic party, but is content to be its servant. (Applause.) If you ask me why he has not outlined a policy for this Convention, I tell you that he does not believe that policies should be dictated, but that the sovereignty of the party is in the untrammeled judgment and wisdom of its members (applause); if you ask me what his policy will be, if elected,

Mr. Parker

will obey

the Con

stitution.

An appeal to all sec

tions of the

country.

An appeal for harmony.

I tell you it will be that policy which finds expression in the plat-
form of his party.

With these, as some of the claims upon your conscience and
judgment, New York comes to you, flushed with hope and pride.
We appeal to the South, whose unclouded vision and iron courage
saw and fought the way for half a century; whose Jefferson awoke
the dumb defiance of development into a voice that cried out to
the world a curse upon the rule of kings and a blessing upon a
new-born republic; whose Madison translated the logic of events
and the law of progress into the Constitution of the country;
whose Jackson reclaimed the lost places of the far South and
democratized the politics of the nation; and whose soldiers showed
the wondering world the finest fruits of brain and nerve and heart
that ripen in her temperate sun, and who, through all the sons she
lost, and all the sons she saved and all the tears she shed amid the
sorrowful ruins of war and through all the patient loyalty and
labor of after years so wrought for human happiness that all the
world exclaims, "Her greatness in peace is greater than her valor
in war." We appeal to you of the Old South and the New to join
with us in this contest for the supremacy of our party. We appeal
to the West, whose frontier struggles carried our civilization to the
Pacific slopes, whose courage conquered the plain and the forest,
and whose faithful labor has built beautiful cities clear through
to the Rocky Mountains. We appeal to you, as he did follow
your leadership through eight long years of controversy, you turn
and follow him now when victory awaits us in November. We
appeal to New England, faithful sentinel among her historic hills,
in the name of all her unfaltering and brilliant Democrats, living
and dead, to join us in our labor for success. (Applause.)

We appeal to every Democrat from everywhere to forget the bitter warfare of the past; forget the strife and anger of the older, other days; abandon all the grudge and rancor of party discontent, and, recalling with ever increasing pride, the triumphs of our fifty years of a constitutional government of Liberty and Peacehere and now resolve to make the future record that resplendent

reach of time in which Liberty and Peace went up and down the nations of the earth, building their kingdom in the hearts of men and gathering the harvest of genius and toil; in which reason struck from the hand of force the sword of hate and plucked from the heart of war the germ of greed; in which conscience smote the thoughts of wrong and filled the mind with mercy's sweet restraint; in which power grew in the human brain, but refused the shelter of a glittering crown; in which the people of all lands and tongues, awakened to hope by the inspiration of our example, turned their faces toward the light of our advancing civilization and followed with the march of years the luminous pathway leading to a destiny beyond the reach of vision and within the providence of God. In this spirit New York nominates for President of the United States Alton B. Parker.

68. The Democratic Unit Rule

The delegates of a state at a Republican convention may vote either according to their individual preferences or the instructions received from the local and state conventions sending them, and thus a state delegation may be, and often is, divided against itself. In the Democratic party, however, a majority of the delegates of any one state may decide how the vote of the entire delegation is to be cast. The practice is illustrated by the application of the principle to an appeal of the Ohio delegation at the Democratic national convention in 1904.

Mr. Thomas McNamara, of Ohio (when the vote of Ohio was announced): I demand that the Ohio delegation be polled. The Presiding Officer: Does the gentleman question the correctness of the figures?

Mr. McNamara: I do.

The Presiding Officer: Then the gentleman from Ohio is entitled to a poll of the delegation.

The delegation was polled and the result was announced Parker 28, Hearst 6, McClellan 9, Cockrell 2, Olney 1.

Mr. E. H. Moore, of Ohio: I rise to a point of order.

Demand

for a poll of the vote

Can the

Ohio vote

The Presiding Officer: The gentleman will state his point of order.

Mr. Moore: I desire the ruling of the Chair upon the question be divided? Whether or not the vote of Ohio can be cast as a unit. The district delegates are chosen in Ohio, not as they are in New York or Indiana, by delegates elected to the State Convention, but by Congressional Conventions held prior to the time of the holding of the State Convention. My point is that the State Convention therefore had no right to instruct these delegates.

The Chair lays down the rule.

Second, the rule, as the Chair will observe, is a modified one. It does not impose upon the delegates the necessity of voting as a unit.

I desire the ruling of the Chair. The district delegates receive their credentials at the District Conventions, held at separate times, by delegates separately chosen, and in no wise hold their credentials from the State Convention. Therefore, our contention is that the State Convention had no power to impose the unit rule upon them.

The Presiding Officer: The Chair overrules the point of order. By express rule of the Democratic Convention, the delegates come from a State and not from districts. Under the call for delegates to this Convention, each State is allowed as many delegates as it has Senators and Representatives, multiplied by two; and those delegates are the delegates of the State and not the delegates of the districts, no matter how chosen. And even if the call itself did not determine the point of order, the express rule of Democratic National Conventions does determine.

The point of order is overruled, and the poll of the Ohio delegation showing that Parker has received twenty-eight of the forty-six votes to which that State is entitled in this Convention, the vote of Ohio will stand as announced by the Chairman of that delegation [i.e. forty-six for Parker].

69. The Chairman of the National Committee

The direction of the presidential campaign falls principally on the chairman of the national committee, who is selected by the presidential candidate of the party in consultation with his leading advisers. The power of this extra-legal officer in managing political affairs is thus described by Mr. Rollo Ogden in the Atlantic Monthly:

Mr. Hanna campaign of

and the

Senator Hanna has outstripped all his predecessors in making the chairmanship of the national committee a centre of political power. Happy accidents have conspired with great skill and 1896. determination on his part to bring about such a consummation. He has now [1902] held the office continuously for five years indeed practically for seven years. It was in 1893 or 1894 that Mr. Hanna, then little known outside of Ohio, set about in his long-headed and far-planning way, the election of Mr. McKinley to the presidency. He perceived the thickening signs of a political reaction and in them he saw the great opportunity for his friend Mr. McKinley, and also for himself. The history of that campaign before the campaign of 1896 has never been written; but enough of it is known to show the signal ability and resolution with which it was planned and fought. Long before the Republican convention met, old masters like Senators Chandler, Quay and Platt recognized the rise of a political manipulator greater than themselves. This is referred to at present only to make the point that Mr. Hanna was party chairman in fact two years before he became so in name.

In the course of those preliminary manoeuvres he had swept everything before him so that his accession to the chairmanship was foregone. On the heels of that came his election to the Senate. This both heightened his prestige and put him in a position to assert and extend his power as National Chairman. In the latter capacity (counting his two years or more of antecedent campaigning for the nomination of Mr. McKinley in 1896) he had made a host of pre-election pledges. His post in the Senate enabled him