“There was something sublime in the way in which he viewed his defeat in the tariff reform cyclone of 1892. I often discussed the situation with him--and then we talked of the ‘McKinley bill.’ I remember how his eyes sparkled when it was suggested that his bill was the sole cause of the Republican defeat, and how he deliberated a statement to me with an air of prophecy: “‘That may have been so, but the bill was passed so short a time prior to election that it was easy for our opponents to make charges and there was no time for us to combat them; but wait and see, Mark--wait and see. The principles and policies of that bill will yet win a greater victory for our party than we have ever had before. This misunderstanding will yet contribute to overwhelming Republican success.’ “The general conditions were such, however, that the party’s reverse could not be attributed entirely to the McKinley bill. There were other factors in the landslide of 1892. “During the early part of the campaign of 1896, the charge was made that McKinley voted for the free coinage of silver. And with his usual candour he admitted that in the earlier stages of the agitation of the money question it was to him then a proposition he had not fully investigated; he did not pretend to be a doctor of finance and had followed the popular trend of that time. After fuller discussion and practical demonstration of facts; after observing the changing conditions of the country and weighing the question in its various relations to the fundamental laws of practical finance and the true policy best for the country, his conclusions were voiced in the St. Louis platform of 1896. “The last discussion that I had with him upon the money question before he was nominated was a few days before I left for St. Louis, at my office in Cleveland. “He turned to my desk, sat down, and wrote in lead pencil an article which he handed me when finished, saying: “‘There, Mark, are my ideas of what our platform should be on the money question.’ “I carried the paper in my pocket to St. Louis some days before the convention, and that declaration of William McKinley contained in substance what was afterward drafted into the plank in the platform on that question. I mention this because in subsequent discussion a great deal has been said about the construction of that plank in the St. Louis platform on the tariff and money question. “This absolute declaration was given me by Maj. McKinley as embracing his ideas, and while the language may have been changed somewhat, the meaning of the article he wrote weeks before the convention was absolutely followed in the platform of 1896.