The nominees of the Prohibition party were Eugene W. Chapin, of Illinois, for President, and Aaron S. Watkins, of Ohio, for Vice-President. In the platform framed there were the usual declarations against the liquor traffic, but there were also planks demanding reforms. The election of senators by direct vote; the passage of inheritance and income taxes; the establishment of postal savings banks; the guaranty of bank deposits; the creation of a permanent tariff commission; the conservation of natural resources; an equitable and constitutional employers' liability act, and legislation basing suffrage only upon intelligence and ability to read and write the English language, were the chief planks. Beyond any doubt this platform--the shortest of all--shows that the men who constructed it were not dreamers. It is possible that the delegates may have been looked upon as visionaries, for there were few among them who could be called "practical politicians," but, as one writer of note has said, the delegates were "typical of that class of society on which the nation ever depends in a great crisis, the sort from which all moral movements spring. . . ." It has often been said that the excitement of presidential campaigns is detrimental to the nation. This could hardly be said of the campaign of 1908. To produce political excitement there must be debatable questions termed, by the politicians as "issues." Just what the issues were in the campaign few people could determine. There were no issues which involved foreign affairs. The Democratic party did not criticise the sending of the fleet around the world, the administration's policy in Cuba, the policy concerning the Panama Canal, nor even the policy pursued in the Philippines. As regards military and naval matters, pensions to veterans, the development of internal waterways, the conservation of resources, etc., there were no issues simply because the people had practically the same views about them. Consequently issues had to be made, and, generally speaking, the Republican leaders appealed to the people along the lines of the personal fitness of the candidates.