the 50th, 51st, and 52nd congresses. As a member of the House Commerce Committee, he handled all the bills dealing with bridge construction in the Northwest and stood fast against monopoly privileges. Any railroad company authorized to span a river would have to guarantee free use by every other railroad, in return for reasonable compensation. Lind offered an anti-trust bill of his own, forbidding railroads from carrying any of the so-called patent cars—those like the oil-cars that Standard Oil built, or the refrigerator cars that the meat-packers designed—that could not be furnished to all shippers at equal and fair rates. Even when he supported the McKinley protective tariff, the highest in history, he made himself conspicuous trying to cut the rates on jute-bagging for small shippers and in his fight against a seven hundred percent hike in the protection given to binding-twine manufacturers. In 1890, when the Farmers' Alliances were defeating other Minnesota Republican congressmen, Lind survived re-election challenges. Lind chose not to continue in the House. His law practice had been neglected, and, with no independent means, he found it better to announce his retirement at the end of the Fifty-Second Congress. Governor of Minnesota Lind served in the Spanish–American War in 1898. Lind also served in the United States House of Representatives from March 4, 1903, to March 3, 1905, as a Democrat. When he was elected Governor of Minnesota, he was the first non-Republican to hold that office in forty years. Lind did not withdraw from politics entirely, and was considered for the Republican nomination for governor in 1892, but was conspicuously uninterested. Four years later, however, he ran for governor as a Democrat. He lost but Minnesota remained a firmly Republican state. In 1898, Lind ran again and was elected with the endorsement of the Populists and Silver Republicans. He served as the 14th Governor of Minnesota from January 2, 1899, to January 7, 1901. Mexican Revolution On March 4, 1913, Woodrow Wilson was sworn in as President of the United States briefly after the February 22 assassination of Mexican President Francisco I. Madero and Vice President José María Pino Suárez. It soon became clear that U.S. Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson was complicit in the plot. General Victoriano Huerta was now president of Mexico, and Wilson and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan immediately sent Lind to Mexico as Envoy for Mexican Affairs. Lind had financial