cisely the result which the silver people of 1896 prophesied as
certain in case the stock of hard money were amplified. Bimetallists
could solace themselves that if they had, with all other people, erred
touching the geology of the money question, in not believing there would
ever be gold enough to stay the fall of prices, their main and essential
reasonings on the question had proved perfectly correct. Good fortune,
it might have been held, had removed the silver question from politics
and remanded it back to academic political economy.

Probably a majority of the Democrats in 1900 felt this. At any rate the
Kansas City convention would have been quite satisfied with a formal
reaffirmation of the Chicago platform had not Mr. Bryan flatly refused
to run without an explicit platform restatement of the 1896 position.
His hope, no doubt, was to hold Western Democrats, Populists, and Silver
Republicans, his anti-imperialism meanwhile attracting Gold Democrats
and Republicans, especially at the East, who emphatically agreed with
him on that paramount issue. But it appeared as if most of this,
besides much else that was quite as well worth while, could have been
accomplished by frankly acknowledging and carefully explaining that gold
alone had done or bade fair to do substantially the service for which
silver had been supposed necessary; for which, besides, it would really
have been required but for the unexpected and immense increase in the
world's gold crop through a long succession of years.

The Republican leaders gauged the situation better. Mr. McKinley, to a
superficial view inconsistent on the silver question, was on this point
fundamentally consistent throughout. With all the more conservative
monetary reformers he merely wished the fall of prices stopped, and such
increment to the hard money supply as would effect that result. The
metal, the kind of money producing the needed increase was of no
consequence. When it became practically certain that gold alone, at
least for an indefinite time, would answer the end, he was willing to
relinquish silver except for subsidiary coinage.

The law of March 14, 1900, put our paper currency, save the silver
certificates, and also all national bonds, upon a gold basis, providing
an ample gold reserve. Silver certificates were to replace the treasury
notes, and gold certificates to be issued so long as the reserve was not
under the legal minimum. If it ever fell below that the Se