PENNSYLVANIA. 



621 



meets the full approval of the Kepublican party of 

 Pennsylvania. His financial policy, by which the 

 national debt is being steadily reduced ; the reduc- 

 tion in the expenditures of the Government; the 

 honest collection of the revenue ; Ms fidelity to the 

 principles of human rights, through which the liberty 

 of all is to be secured in every part of the land : his 

 loyalty to the people in having no policy to enforce 

 against their will ; and the spotless integrity of his 

 administration all point to him as the honorable 

 leader of our party now, and the proper standard- 

 bearer of the Eepublican party in 1872. 



The Democratic Convention was held one 

 \veek later, in the same place. General Wil- 

 liam L. McCandless, of Philadelphia, was 

 nominated Auditor-General, and Captain J. 

 H. Cooper, of Lawrence County, Surveyor- 

 General. A platform was adopted, of which 

 the following are the principal resolutions : 



Resolved, That the persistent refusal of the Eepub- 

 lican party in the Legislature to consent to a proper 

 modification of those provisions of the registry act 

 relating to the city of Philadelphia, by which at least 

 one-half of the electors of that city are utterly de- 

 prived of representation in the election boards, and 

 fraudulent election-returns, forgery, and murder, en- 

 couraged, must be condemned by every just man, 

 and ought to be rebuked by the ballot of every up- 

 right citizen. 



Resolved, That the force and bayonet bills recently 

 enacted by Congress are gross attacks upon the re- 

 served rights of the States, destructive of the ele- 

 mental principles of civil liberty, intolerable to a 

 free people, centralizing in tendency, and should be 

 forthwith repealed. 



Resolved, That the language of Senator Carl Schurz, 

 in his St. Louis speech wherein he says. "I con- 

 sider it one of the most pressing needs of our day 

 that we should return to the sound practice of con- 

 stitutional government. The safeguards of our com- 

 mon rights and liberties contained in the Constitu- 

 tion are too sacred and valuable a boon to be perma- 

 nently jeopardized in providing for a passing emer- 

 gency. It is time that the American people open 

 their eyes to the dangerous character of this tendency, 

 and that neither a great name nor an object appeal- 

 ing to our sympathies should be permitted to dis- 

 Euise it. As for me, I have seen the working of 

 responsible^ power and personal government in 

 other countries, and I may assure my constituents 

 that, while I am a citizen of this republic, I shall 

 struggle to the last gasp against its introduction 

 here " was but the utterance of well-known and 

 frequently-announced Democratic doctrine. 



Resolved, That the public debt is binding upon the 

 nation, and must bo paid and that we are unalter- 

 ably opposed to any and all movements looking 

 toward repudiation, direct or indirect, but, in justice 

 to the laboring and producing classes, the rate of 

 interest thereon should be reduced at the earliest 

 practicable date. 



Resolved, That the Democratic party is opposed to 

 the existing system of Federal taxation and finance, 

 ruinous as it is in its effects upon the laboring, pro- 

 ducing, mining, and manufacturing interests of the 

 people, and the fruitful source of " hard times," 

 personal indebtedness, and individual bankruptcy. 



Resolved, That labor and capital have no just 

 cause of antagonism, that we deprecate strife between 

 these two great forces, and earnestly seek to place 

 the laborer and the capitalist on such a platform as 

 will enable both to amicably adjust their differences ; 

 and we are unalterably opposed to the importation 

 of a servile race for the purpose of degrading the 

 standard and lowering the position of the laboring- 

 men of the nation. 



Resolved, That we recognize the binding obligation 

 of all the provisions of the Constitution of the 



United States as they now exist, and we deprecate 

 the discussion of issues which have been settled in 

 the manner and by the authority constitutionally 

 appointed. 



Resolved, That we are for a government rigorously 

 frugal and simple, applying all the possible saving 

 of the public revenue to the discharge of the na- 

 tional debt, and opposed to a multiplication of officers 

 and salaries, merely to make place for partisans, and 

 for increasing by every device the public debt. 



Resolved, That the continuance by a Kepublican 

 Congress of the income-tax, when the same is at 

 least of doubtful constitutionality, and the necessity 

 therefor has long since ceased to exist, is an exer- 

 cise of a power oppressive to the people, and a gross 

 violation of their rights and interests. 



Resolved, That the present tariff is, in many of its 

 features, oppressive, and should be revised, and that 

 we herewith request our Kepresentatiyes in Con- 

 gress, when the tariff shall be the subject of read- 

 justment, to _see that the immense products of the 

 State and its industries are properly cared for. 



The seventh resolution, indorsing the so- 

 called "new-departure "movement, occasioned 

 considerable discussion, and its final passage 

 was by a vote of 76 to 53. 



The election was held on the second Tues- 

 day in October. The total number of votes 

 cast for Auditor-General was 556,434 : of this 

 number David Stanton, Eepublican, received 

 284,097; William McCandless, Democratic, 

 269,151 ; and Barr Spangler, Temperance, 

 3,186. The whole number of votes cast for 

 Surveyor-General was 556,704 : of which Rob- 

 ert B. Beath, Eepublican, had 287,045 ; J. H. 

 Cooper, Democratic, 266,735 ; andE. A. Wheel- 

 er, Temperance, 2,924. The total vote for 

 Governor in 1869 was 576,508 : John W. Geary, 

 Eepublican, over Asa Packer, Democratic, 

 4,596. The Lower House of the Legislature 

 was carried by the Eepublicans. The Senate 

 stood 16 Eepublicans to 16 Democrats, with 

 one vacancy ; and the House 61 Eepublicans 

 to 38 Democrats. At the same election a 

 popular vote was taken on a proposition for a 

 convention to revise the State constitution, 

 with the following result : for a convention, 

 328,354; against, 70,205. On November 7th, 

 David Stanton, the Auditor-General elect, 

 died. By an act of 1850, the Governor has 

 power to fill the vacancy by appointment. 



The troubles in the anthracite coal-region 

 between the operators and the miners, cover- 

 ing a period of two years or more, culminated 

 in a long and bitter strike, beginning at the 

 close of 1870, and continuing until the sum- 

 mer of 1871. The strike was ordered by the 

 Working-men's Benevolent Association, a uni- 

 ted and compact organization, chartered by the 

 Legislature, and embracing nearly the entire 

 laboring population of the coal-country, and 

 formed with the contemplated object of se- 

 curing employment for all its members, and 

 preventing the reduction of wages. It began 

 in the Upper Wyoming region, where the 

 operators announced a reduction of wages, to 

 take effect December 1, 1870, from $1.31, to 

 86 cents per " diamond car," which contains 

 a ton and a half of coal ; and in January it 



