Mr. McKinley chose the older and more formal plan. He received
delegations at his home in Canton and discussed the issues of the
campaign from his front porch, leaving to an army of well-organized
orators the task of reaching the people in their home towns. Parades,
processions, and monster demonstrations filled the land with politics.
Whole states were polled in advance by the Republicans and the doubtful
voters personally visited by men equipped with arguments and literature.
Manufacturers, frightened at the possibility of disordered public
credit, announced that they would close their doors if the Democrats won
the election. Men were dismissed from public and private places on
account of their political views, one eminent college president being
forced out for advocating free silver. The language employed by
impassioned and embittered speakers on both sides roused the public to a
state of frenzy, once more showing the lengths to which men could go in
personal and political abuse.

=The Republican Victory.=--The verdict of the nation was decisive.
McKinley received 271 of the 447 electoral votes, and 7,111,000 popular
votes as against Bryan's 6,509,000. The congressional elections were
equally positive although, on account of the composition of the Senate,
the "hold-over" Democrats and Populists still enjoyed a power out of
proportion to their strength as measured at the polls. Even as it was,
the Republicans got full control of both houses--a dominion of the
entire government which they were to hold for fourteen years--until the
second half of Mr. Taft's administration, when they lost possession of
the House of Representatives. The yoke of indecision was broken. The
party of sound finance and protective tariffs set out upon its lease of
power with untroubled assurance.

REPUBLICAN MEASURES AND RESULTS

=The Gold Standard and the Tariff.=--Yet strange as it may seem, the
Republicans did not at once enact legislation making the gold dollar the
standard for the national currency. Not until 1900 did they take that
positive step. In his first inaugural President McKinley, as if still
uncertain in his own mind or fearing a revival of the contest just
closed, placed the tariff, not the money question, in the forefront.
"The people have decided," he said, "that such legislation should be had
as will give ample protection and encouragement to the industries and
development of our country." Protection for American industri