measure. But the bond issue--looking back upon
it now--seems the more cruelly absurd of the two. Here we were, in times
of peace, with ample funds in the national treasury, proposing to permit
the unlimited issuance of interest-bearing government bonds in order
to procure gold, for that national treasury, out of the hoards of the
banks, so that these same banks might be able to obtain the gold again
from the treasury in return for paper money. The extent to which this
sort of absurdity might be carried would depend solely upon the desire
of the confederation of finance to have interest-bearing government
bonds on which they might issue national bank notes, since the Executive
was apparently willing to yield interminably to their greed, in the
belief that he was protecting the public credit by encouraging the
financiers to attack that credit with their raids on the government
gold reserve. The whole difficulty had arisen, of course, out of the
agitation upon the money question. The banks were drawing upon the
government gold reserve; and the government was issuing bonds to recover
the gold again from the banks.

I had been, for some years, interested in the problem of our monetary
system and had studied and discussed it among our Eastern bankers and
abroad. The very fact that I was from a "silver state" had put me on my
guard, lest a local influence should lead me, into economic error. I had
grown into the belief that our system was wrong. It seemed to me that
some remedy was imperative. I saw in bimetallism a part of the remedy,
and I supported bimetallism not as a partisan of free coinage but as an
advocate of monetary reform.

The arrival of Utah's two representatives in the Senate (January 27,
1896) gave the bimetallists a majority, and when the bond-issue bill
came before us we made it into a bill to permit the free coinage of
silver. (February 1). A few days later, the Finance Committee turned
the tariff bill into a free-coinage bill also. On both measures, five
Republican Senators voted against their party--Henry M. Teller, of
Colorado; Fred T. Dubois, of Idaho; Thos. H. Carter, of Montana; Lee
Mantle, of Montana; and myself. We were subsequently joined by Richard
F. Pettigrew of South Dakota. Within two weeks of my taking the oath
in the Senate we were read out of the party by Republican leaders and
Republican organs.

All this happened so swiftly that there was no time for any
remonstrances to come to me from