o doubt wrongly, that the President's policy had in main
features been influenced by consideration for powerful financial
interests, or that at points these had in effect coerced him to courses
contrary to what he considered best. The commissariat scandal in the
Spanish War incensed many, as did the growth of army, navy, and
"militarism" incident to the new colonial policy.

[Illustration]
Parade of the Sound Money League,
New York, 1900. Passing the Reviewing Stand.

Then there was the awkwardness with which the Administration had treated
the Filipinos. In 1900 it seemed clear that these people could never be
brought under the flag otherwise than by coercion. Anti-imperialists
were not alone in the conviction that Aguinaldo's followers had been
needlessly contemned, harassed, and exasperated, and that had greater
frankness, tact, and forbearance been used toward them they would, of
their own accord, have sought the shelter of the Stars and Stripes.
Moreover, our measures toward the Filipinos had alienated Cuba, so that
the voluntary adhesion of this island to the United States, so desirable
and once so easily within reach, was no longer a possibility; while the
coercion of Cuba, in view of our profession when we took up arms for
her, would be condemned by all mankind as national perfidy.

The sympathy of official Republicanism with the British in the Boer War
tended to solidify the Irish vote as Democratic, but--and it was among
the novelties of the campaign--Republicans no longer feared to alienate
the Irish. The Government's apparent apathy toward the Boers also drove
into the Democratic ranks for the time a great number of Dutch and
German Republicans. Colored voters were in this hegira, believing that
the adoption of the "subject-races" notion into American public law and
policy would be the negro's despair. The championing of this movement by
the Republican party they regarded as a renunciation of all its
friendship for human liberty.

The Republican campaign watchword was "Protection." Press and platform
dilated on the fat years of McKinley's administration as amply
vindicating the Dingley Act. "The full dinner pail," said they, "is the
paramount issue." Trusts and monopolies they denounced, as their
opponents did, but they declared that these "had nothing to do with the
tariff." There was wide and intense hostility toward monopolistic
organizations. They were decried on all hands as depressing wages,
cr