"tight money"
followed. Over three hundred banks suspended or failed, manufactories
all over the country shut down, and a period of great distress set in.
People, alarmed at the condition of the banks, began to draw their
deposits and hoard them, thereby causing such a scarcity of bills of
small denominations that a "currency famine" was threatened.

%558. The Purchase of Silver stopped.%--Believing that the fear that
we should soon be "on a silver basis" had much to do with this state of
affairs, and that the compulsory purchase of silver each month had much
to do with the fear, the President assembled Congress in special
session, August 7, and asked for the repeal of that clause of the
Sherman Act of 1890 which required a monthly purchase of silver. After a
struggle in which both of the old parties were split, the compulsory
purchase clause was repealed, November 1, 1893.

%559. The Silver Movement.%--The steady fall in the bullion value of
silver was a serious blow to the prosperity of the great
silver-producing states,--Colorado, Montana, Idaho, South Dakota,
Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, and the territories of Arizona and New
Mexico,--where silver mining was "the very heart from which every other
industry receives support." In Colorado alone 15,000 miners were made
idle. To the people of this section, some 2,000,000 in number, the
silver question was of vital importance; and, alarmed at the call for
the special session of Congress and the possible repeal of the
silver-purchase clause, they held a convention at Denver, with a view to
affecting public sentiment. A few weeks after, the National Bimetallic
League met at Chicago. Both opposed the repeal, and demanded that if the
government ceased to buy silver, the mints should be opened to free
coinage. This the friends of silver in the Senate attempted in vain to
bring about.

%560. The Industrial Depression; the Wilson Bill.%--The industrial
revival which it was hoped would follow the repeal of the
silver-purchase law did not take place. Prices did not rise; failures
continued; the long-silent mills did not reopen; gold continued to leave
the country, imports fell off, and, when the year ended, the receipts of
the government were $34,000,000 behind the expenditures. With this
condition of the Treasury facing it, Congress met in December, 1893. The
Democrats were in control, and pledged to revise the tariff; and true to
the pledge, William L. Wilson of West Virginia, Cha