The conduct of the Senate discouraged many of the reformers in the spring of 1897. Cleveland had left in its hands a treaty of arbitration with Great Britain, but no action had been taken upon it when he left office. Arbitration had been a common international tool between Great Britain and the United States. Boundaries, fisheries, and claims had repeatedly been submitted to courts or commissions of varying structure, and even the claims affecting the honor of Great Britain had been settled by arbitration at Geneva. After the Venezuela excitement friends of peace gathered in a convention at Lake Mohonk to discuss the extension of the method of arbitration. When Great Britain had accepted the principle in the case of Venezuela, Cleveland entered into a general arbitration treaty, which was signed at Washington in February, 1897. Public opinion received it cordially, but the Senate was slow to take it up. Late in the spring it was ratified with amendments that destroyed its force and showed the reluctance of Senators to accept the principle of arbitration. International peace was thus postponed, while the rising insurrection in Cuba drove it as well as general reform from the center of public interest. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE The _American Commonwealth_ of James Bryce (1888) is the starting-point for the study of political conditions of the nineties, and is to be reinforced by W. Wilson, _Congressional Government_ (1885), T. Roosevelt, _Essays on Practical Politics_ (1888), and P.L. Ford, _The Honorable Peter Stirling_ (1894). Among the personal narratives the most useful are T. Roosevelt, _Fifty Years of My Life_ (1913); R.M. LaFollette, _A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences_ (1913; also published serially in the _American Magazine_, 1911, as "Autobiography"); Tom L. Johnson's _My Story_ (1911; edited by E.J. Hauser); C. Lloyd, _Henry Demarest Lloyd_ (2 vols., 1912); _Autobiography of Thomas Collier Platt_ (1910; edited by L.J. Lang, and highly unreliable); and Jane Addams, _Twenty Years of Hull House_ (1910). Much light is thrown upon the mechanics of tariff legislation by I.M. Tarbell, _The Tariff in Our Times_ (1911), and by the lobby investigations conducted by committees of Congress in 1913, and by the campaign fund investigations conducted by similar committees in 1912. The progress of the Australian ballot reform must be traced through the periodicals, as it has no good history. E.C. Meyer, _Nominating Systems: Direct Primaries versus Conventions in the United States_ (1902), is standard in its field, as are E.P. Oberholtzer, _The Referendum in America_ (1893), and E.C. Stanton, S.B. Anthony, and M.J. Gage, _History of Woman Suffrage_, 1848-1900(4 vols., 1881-1902). The Annual Reports of the Lake Mohonk Conferences on International Arbitration are a useful aid in tracing the principles of arbitration. CHAPTER XVI THE SPANISH WAR