[22] Soon after the war the farmers in the great agricultural states had formed associations under such names as the Grange, Patrons of Husbandry, Patrons of Industry, Agricultural Wheel, Farmers' Alliance, and others. About 1886 they began to unite, and formed the National Agricultural Wheel and the Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union. In 1889 these and others were united in a convention at St. Louis into the Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union.
[23] The electoral vote was: for Cleveland, 277; Harrison, 145; Weaver, 22. The popular vote was: Democratic, 5,556,543; Republican, 5,175,582; Populist, 1,040,886; Prohibition, 255,841; Socialist Labor, 21,532.
[24] Cleveland objected to certain features of the bill, and refused to sign it; but he did not veto it. By the Constitution, if the President neither signs a bill nor returns it with his veto within ten days (Sunday excepted) after he receives it, the bill becomes a law without his signature, provided Congress has not meanwhile adjourned. If Congress adjourns before the ten-day limit expires and the President does not sign, then the bill does not become a law, but is "pocket vetoed."
[25] Because Congress had made the tax uniform—the same on incomes of the same amount everywhere—instead of fixing the total amount to be raised and dividing it among the states according to population, as required by the Constitution in the case of direct taxes.
[26] The franchise has been slightly narrowed in some Northern states by educational qualifications; but, on the other hand, in four states it has been extended to women on the same terms as men—in Wyoming (since 1869), Colorado (since 1893), Utah (since 1895), and Idaho (since 1896). In nearly half the states, women can now vote in school elections. In Kansas they vote also in municipal elections.
[27] They demanded "the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1"; that is, that out of one pound of gold should be coined as many dollars as out of sixteen pounds of silver.
[28] William McKinley was born in Ohio in 1843, attended Allegheny College for a short time, then taught a district school, and was a clerk in a country post office. When the Civil War opened, he joined the army as a private in a regiment in which Hayes was afterwards colonel, served through the war, and was brevetted major for gallantry at Cedar Creek and Fishers Hill. The war over, he became a lawyer, entered politics in Ohio, and was elected a member of seven Congresses. From 1892 to 1896 he was governor of Ohio.
[29] The Gold Democrats nominated John M. Palmer; and the Prohibitionists, the National party, and the Socialist Labor party also named candidates. But none of these parties cast so many as 150,000 popular votes or secured any electoral votes.
[30] We contended that we had jurisdiction in Bering Sea; that the seals rearing their young on our islands in that sea were our property; that even though they temporarily went far out into the Pacific Ocean they were under our protection. Our revenue cutters had therefore seized Canadian vessels taking seals in the open sea.