e the assistant
secretary, "anxiety reigned in the office of the Treasury. Hour after
hour passed; no news from New York. Inquiry by wire showed that all was
quiet. At the close of the day this message came: '$135,000 of notes
presented for coin--$400,000 of gold for notes.' That was all.
Resumption was accomplished with no disturbance. By five o'clock the
news was all over the land, and the New York bankers were sipping their
tea in absolute safety."

=The Specie Problem--the Parity of Gold and Silver.=--Defeated in their
efforts to stop "the present suicidal and destructive policy of
contraction," the advocates of an abundant currency demanded an increase
in the volume of silver in circulation. This precipitated one of the
sharpest political battles in American history. The issue turned on
legal as well as economic points. The Constitution gave Congress the
power to coin money and it forbade the states to make anything but gold
and silver legal tender in the payment of debts. It evidently
contemplated the use of both metals in the currency system. Such, at
least, was the view of many eminent statesmen, including no less a
personage than James G. Blaine. The difficulty, however, lay in
maintaining gold and silver coins on a level which would permit them to
circulate with equal facility. Obviously, if the gold in a gold dollar
exceeds the value of the silver in a silver dollar on the open market,
men will hoard gold money and leave silver money in circulation. When,
for example, Congress in 1792 fixed the ratio of the two metals at one
to fifteen--one ounce of gold declared worth fifteen of silver--it was
soon found that gold had been undervalued. When again in 1834 the ratio
was put at one to sixteen, it was found that silver was undervalued.
Consequently the latter metal was not brought in for coinage and silver
almost dropped out of circulation. Many a silver dollar was melted down
by silverware factories.

=Silver Demonetized in 1873.=--So things stood in 1873. At that time,
Congress, in enacting a mintage law, discontinued the coinage of the
standard silver dollar, then practically out of circulation. This act
was denounced later by the friends of silver as "the crime of '73," a
conspiracy devised by the money power and secretly carried out. This
contention the debates in Congress do not seem to sustain. In the course
of the argument on the mint law it was distinctly said by one speaker at
least: "This bill provi