y-first time in our history
electors of President and Vice President were chosen in 1908. Seven
parties placed candidates in the field. The Republicans nominated
William H. Taft and James S. Sherman; the Democrats named William J.
Bryan and John W. Kern. Candidates were also presented by the
Prohibition, Populist, Socialist Labor, Socialist, and Independence
parties. In many respects the Republican and Democratic platforms were
alike. Both declared for revision of the tariff, postal savings banks, a
bureau of mines and mining, protection of our citizens abroad, a better
civil service, improvement of our inland waterways, preservation of our
forests, and the admission of Arizona and New Mexico as separate states.
The Democratic platform called for an income tax, the publication of the
names of contributors to national campaign funds, legislation against
private monopolies, and full control of interstate railways. Taft and
Sherman were elected.

One of Taft's first acts as President was to call a special session of
Congress, which met March 15 to frame a new tariff act.

[Illustration: William H. Taft]

SUMMARY

1. The political issues before the country since 1880 have been of two
general classes--industrial and financial.

2. The industrial issues led to the formation of certain great
organizations, as the Farmers' Alliance, Knights of Labor, Patrons of
Industry, etc.; and to the enactment of certain important laws, as the
Interstate Commerce Acts, the Anti-Chinese laws, the Anti-Contract Labor
law, and the establishment of the Labor Bureau.

3. The financial issues were in general connected in some way with the
agitation for free coinage of silver.

4. These issues seriously affected both the old parties and produced
others, as the Anti-monopoly party, the People's party, the Silver
party, the National, the Socialist.

5. In 1893 financial questions became so serious that a panic occurred,
which forced the repeal of the purchase clause of the Sherman Act. In
1907 there was another panic.

6. Among our foreign complications during this period were the question
of the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, the Venezuela boundary
dispute, the Cuban question, which finally involved us in a war with
Spain, and the trouble with China arising from the Boxer outbreak.

7. The chief events of the war with Spain were Dewey's naval victory in
Manila Bay, May 1; the battles of El Caney and San Juan, near Santiago,
July