way Commissioner, Luke McDowell of Shelby. The platform indorsed the well-known principles of the party.
The Socialist party held its Convention at Des Moines on the 5th of September and made the following selections for State officers: for Governor, James Baxter of Monroe County; Lieutenant-Governor, W. A. Jacobs of Scott; Judge Supreme Court, A. F. Thompson, Appanoose; Superintendent of Public Instruction, E. E. Stevens, Des Moines; Railway Commissioner, H. C. Middlebrook of Lyon. The declaration of principles may be condensed as follows:
“We believe Socialism to be a scientific solution of the labor problem and that it will provide an ethical construction of society, whereby equal and exact justice will be meted out to every individual. We declare our unalterable opposition to competition for bread and to the capitalistic control of the means of production and distribution. And to secure a system whereby want, misery and poverty shall be forever eliminated, we pledge ourselves to the final and complete overthrow of the competitive and capitalistic system and the substitution therefor of the coöperative commonwealth and the collective ownership of all the means of production and distribution.”
“Our methods are peaceful and our appeal is to the reason and conscience.”
The country was shocked by the intelligence that President McKinley was assassinated on the 6th of September, 1901, while addressing the people at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, New York. An anarchist by the name of Czolgosz, an Italian by birth, approached the President and with a concealed pistol suddenly fired but a few feet from his victim, inflicting a mortal wound. The President lingered between life and death until the morning of the 14th when he passed away in the presence of the members of his Cabinet who had been summoned to Buffalo, when hope for recovery had been abandoned. Vice-President Roosevelt reached the city the afternoon of the same day and the oath of office as President was administered to him immediately. The new President issued a proclamation the same day announcing the Na-
