REMINISCENCES 99
railroads, the Governor perhaps thought that posterity might raise their own flax or do without flax. The Governor was hard of hearing and did not hear all or much of his wife's eloquent appeals for flax in his presence, but he heard enough to know that flax nearly always came in somewhere. On one occasion, when the Secretary of State and the Attorney- General were attending a dinner party with others at the Governor's house, Mrs. Lord was explaining to the guests the great advantages that flax raising would be to Oregon. The Governor did not hear what she was saying but became suspicious that she had started on her hobby. He leaned over at the table and asked the Attorney-General in a low voice: "Is Julia talking about that damn flax?"
- * * * 4
When the 18th regular session of the Legislature of Oregon met in Salem January 14, 1895, I went into office as Secretary of State, to succeed Geo. W. McBride, who had held the office two terms, eight years. I administered the oath of office to Charles B. Moores, Speaker of the House, and to the sixty Representatives. The platform on which I and all the members of the Legislature had been elected had been unanimously adopted, on motion of Rufus Mallory, by the Republican State Convention, at Portland, as follows :
"The American people, from tradition and interest, favor bimetallism, and the Republican party demands the uses of both gold and silver as standard money, with such restrictions and under such provisions, to be determined by legislation, as will secure the maintenance of the parity of values of the two metals, so that the purchasing and debt paying power of the dollar, whether of silver, gold or paper, shall be at all times equal. The interests of the producers of the country, its farm- ers and its workingmen, demand that every dollar, paper or coin, issued by the government, shall be as good as any other."
Senator Dolph had declared in a speech in Boston, or some place in the East, that he "had the temerity to oppose" this silver Republican platform. All the Republicans had been elected on this platform and nearly all were in favor of silver
