d thirty-one states, and
Greeley six.

In many respects this was a most interesting election. For the first
time in our history the freedmen voted for presidential electors. For
the first time since 1860 the people of all the states took part in the
election of a President of the United States, while the number of
candidates, Labor, Prohibition, Liberal Republican, Democratic, and
Republican, showed that the old issues which caused the war or were
caused by the war were dead or dying, and that new ones were
coming forward.

%507. Panic of 1873.%--Now, all these things, the immense expansion
of the railroads, and the great outlay necessary for rebuilding Chicago,
much of which had been burned in 1871, and Boston, which suffered from a
great fire in 1872, absorbed money and made it difficult to get. Just in
the midst of the stringency a quarrel arose between the farmers and the
railroads in the West, and made matters worse. It stopped the sale of
railroad bonds, and crippled the enterprises that depended on such sale
for funds. It impaired the credit of bankers concerned in railroad
building, and in September, 1873, a run on them for deposits began till
one of them, Jay Cooke & Co., failed, and at once a panic swept over the
business world. Country depositors demanded their money; the country
banks therefore withdrew their deposits with the city banks, which in
turn called in their loans, and industry of every kind stopped. In 1873
there were 5000 failures, and in 1874 there were 5800. Hours of labor
were reduced, wages were cut down, workingmen were discharged by
thousands.

%508. The Inflation Bill.%--In hope of relieving this distress by
making money easier to get, a demand was now made that Congress should
issue more greenbacks. To this Congress, in 1874, responded by passing
the "Inflation Bill," declaring that there should be $400,000,000 in
greenbacks, no more, no less. As the limit fixed in 1868 was
$356,000,000, the bill tended to "inflate" or add to the paper currency
$44,000,000. Grant vetoed the bill.

%509. Resumption of Specie Payments.%--What shall be done with the
currency? now became the question of the hour, and at the next session
of Congress (1874-75) another effort was made to answer it, and "an act
to provide for the resumption of specie payments" was passed.

1. Under this law, silver 10, 25, and 50 cent pieces were to be
exchanged through the post offices and subtreasuries for fractional
cur