REPUBLICAN PLATFORM, 1900.
The Republicans of the United States, through their chosen representatives, met in national convention, looking back upon an unsurpassed record of achievement and looking forward into a great field of duty and opportunity, and appealing to the judgment of their countrymen, make these declarations:
EXPECTATIONS FULFILLED.
The expectation in which the American people, turning from the Democratic Party, intrusted power four years ago to a Republican Chief Magistrate and Republican Congress, has been met and satisfied. When the people then assembled at the polls, after a term of Democratic legislation and administration, business was dead, industry paralyzed, and the national credit disastrously impaired. The country's capital was hidden away and its labor distressed and unemployed. The Democrats had no other plan with which to improve the ruinous condition which they had themselves produced than to coin silver at the ratio of 16 to 1.
PROMISE OF PROSPERITY REDEEMED.
The Republican Party, denouncing this plan as sure to produce conditions even worse than those from which relief was sought, promised to restore prosperity by means of two legislative measures: a protective tariff and a law making gold the standard of value. The people by great majorities issued to the Republican Party a commission to enact these laws. The commission has been executed, and the Republican promise is redeemed.
Prosperity more general and more abundant than we have ever known has followed these enactments. There is no longer controversy as to the value of any government obligations. Every American dollar is a gold dollar or its assured equivalent, and American credit stands higher than that of any nation. Capital is fully employed, and labor everywhere is profitably occupied.
GROWTH OF EXPORT TRADE.
No single fact can more strikingly tell the story of what Republican government means to the country than this, that while during the whole period of one hundred and seven years, from 1790 to 1897, there was an excess of exports over imports of only $383,028,497, there has been in the short three years of the present Republican administration an excess of exports over imports in the enormous sum of $1,483,537,094.