236 Presidential Addresses 



so that the old lines of political cleavage were, in 

 large part, abandoned. All other issues sank in im 

 portance when compared with the vital need of 

 keeping our financial system on the high and honor 

 able plane imperatively demanded by our position 

 as a great civilized power. As the champion of 

 such a principle President McKinley received the 

 support not only of his own party, but of hundreds 

 of thousands of those to whom he had been politi 

 cally opposed. He triumphed, and he made good 

 with scrupulous fidelity the promises upon which 

 the campaign was won. We were at the time in a 

 period of great industrial depression, and it was 

 promised for and on behalf of McKinley that if he 

 were elected our financial system should not only be 

 preserved unharmed but improved and our economic 

 system shaped in accordance with those theories 

 which have always marked our periods of greatest 

 prosperity. The promises were kept and following 

 their keeping came the prosperity which we now 

 enjoy. All that was foretold concerning the well- 

 being which would follow the election of McKinley 

 has been justified by the event. But as so often 

 happens in our history, the President was forced 

 to face questions other than those at issue at the 

 time of his election. Within a year the situa 

 tion in Cuba had become literally intolerable. 

 President McKinley had fought too well in his 

 youth, he knew too well at first hand what war 

 really was, lightly to enter into a struggle. He 

 sought by every honorable means to preserve peace, 



