This putting of the tariff in second place was the more evident as the time approached for the National Convention of 1896. Silver was the question in which the real interest lay, not the tariff. Nevertheless, the wool-growers and woollen manufacturers, the Iron and Steel Association, the high protectionists everywhere, began, months before the Convention, a determined campaign to commit the Republicans to tariff revision as a leading issue, and to name William McKinley for President. “Bill McKinley and the McKinley Bill” seemed to them a slogan sufficient in itself to win an election. They had their way. The platform declared protection to be the “bulwark of American industrial independence and the foundation of American development and prosperity.” It also declared with evident reluctance its opposition to the free coinage of silver except by international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world. The intention of the wool and the iron and steel interests and their allies to force the tariff to the front in the campaign, was frustrated at once by the extraordinary sweep to silver in the Democratic Convention and the revolt to that party of a large body of leading Republicans. If the election was to be won at all, it had got to be won by an unequivocal and whole-hearted stand for the gold standard and to that Mr. McKinley was forced, half-silverite as he was, after a few flat efforts to arouse enthusiasm for the bill of 1890. It was McKinley and the gold standard, not Mr. McKinley and prohibitive tariffs, which was opposed to Bryan and free silver, and in 1896, Mr. McKinley won by the votes of the Gold Democrats. It is probably true that many of them were given to understand that the Republicans would let the tariff alone or at least would not be in a hurry to revise it: at least that claim was made by men of character and intelligence. It was hardly Mark Hanna who could have made such a promise. Mr. Hanna knew too well what his backers in iron and steel and wool expected, and would demand for their contributions. That these contributions were large, there can be no doubt. James M. Swank, the general manager of the Iron and Steel Association, has said that more money was spent to elect Mr. McKinley than had been spent to elect Mr. Harrison, and certainly Mr. Swank was in a position to know.