numerous speeches, while Mr. McKinley received a stream of delegations from all parts of the country at his home at Canton, Ohio. The attitude of the labor vote was ground for anxiety, and there were rumors of intimidation practised by large employers of labor to induce votes for the Republican candidate. The election was a triumph for the "sound money" cause. Not only did McKinley receive a clean majority of the popular vote, but he also received 271 electoral votes against 176 for Bryan. Even the South was divided, the votes of Maryland and West Virginia, with twelve of the thirteen votes of Kentucky, being given to the Republican candidate. On the other hand, Mr. Bryan had won the Republican States of Kansas and Nebraska, all but three of the southern States, and the mining and Pacific coast States, except California and Oregon. The lines of battle in 1900 were clearly to be seen as the smoke cleared from the field in 1896.

The first administration of President McKinley will always be associated with the policy of “expansion," the adoption of which by the United States marks the beginning of a new era in American history. Almost from the beginning of the government under the Constitution there had been, as we have seen, enlargement of the national boundaries and incorporation of hitherto alien soil; but not until 1898 did the United States venture to extend its jurisdiction over remote islands, or undertake the management of colonies on the other side of the globe. The anomalous situation in Cuba was the provocation. Of the few possessions remaining to Spain in the New World, Cuba was the most important. Spain, however, true to its historic policy, did little for the development of

the island, gave to its people gross misgovernment, and administered it with a view to little else than the revenue to be extracted from it. The result was a succession of revolts against the Spanish authority, maintained by guerilla warfare, and attended with destruction of life and property and grave disturbance of business interests. The latest outbreak had occurred in February, 1895, and the Cuban resistance was continued in spite of great efforts made by Spain to overcome it. The United States could not remain an indifferent spectator of events in a country so near its own shores, and with which it had intimate and important commercial dealings, while the natural feeling of sympathy for a people struggling for independence was intensified by the publication of pitiful stories of the sufferings of the Cubans under the increasing rigors of Spanish coercion, and of the devastation of the country by the operations of war.

The demand for the recognition of Cuban belligerency, increasingly urged in Congress and in the country, was for some time firmly resisted by President McKinley, as it had been by President Cleveland, partly because of uncertainty regarding the actual condition of affairs in the island, and partly because of the breach with Spain which such recognition would inevitably cause. On the night of February 15, 1898, however, the United States battle-ship Maine, lying in the harbor of Havana ostensibly on a friendly visit, was blown up and 266 of its officers and crew were killed. Boards of inquiry appointed separately by the United States and by Spain reached different conclusions as to the circumstances of the explosion; but it was apparent that, without some extraordinary change in conditions, war was inevitable. The prog