tisfied classes until the last decade of
the century and more particularly after the panic of 1898.

Prior to 1874 or 1875 the "silver question" did not exist. In 1873
Congress, moved by the report of a commission it had authorized, had
demonetized silver; that is, it had provided that the gold dollar should
be the standard of value, and omitted the standard silver dollar from
the list of silver coins.* In this consisted the "Crime of '73." At the
time when this law was enacted it had not for many years been profitable
to coin silver bullion into dollars because silver was undervalued
at the established ratio of sixteen to one. In 1867 the International
Monetary Conference of Paris had pronounced itself in favor of a single
gold standard of currency, and the principal countries of Europe had
preceded the United States in demonetizing silver or in limiting its
coinage. In 1874 as a result of a revision of the statutes of the
United States, the existing silver dollars were reduced to the basis of
subsidiary coins with only limited legal tender value.

* The only reference to the dollar was to "the trade dollar"
of heavier weight, for use in the Orient.

The Act of 1873 was before Congress for four sessions; every section,
including that which made gold the sole standard of value, was
discussed even by those who later claimed that the Act had been passed
surreptitiously. Whatever opposition developed at this time was not
directed against the omission of the silver dollar from the list of
coins nor against the establishment of a single standard of value. The
situation was quickly changed, however, by the rapid decline in the
market price of silver. The bimetallists claimed that this decline was a
result of the monetary changes; the advocates of the gold standard
asserted that it was due to the great increase in the production of
silver. Whatever the cause, the result was that, shortly after silver
had been demonetized, its value in proportion to gold fell below that
expressed by the ratio of sixteen to one. Under these circumstances the
producers could have made a profit by taking their bullion to the mint
and having it coined into dollars, if it had not been for the Act of
1873. It is not strange, therefore, that the people of those Western
States whose prosperity depended largely on the silver mining industry
demanded the remonetization of this metal. At the same time the
stringency in the money market and the