"History is little more than the register of the
crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind," in the opinion of
historian Edward Gibbon. While it may be argued that there are numerous
triumphs in human affairs to write about, Gibbon's observation seems to
be true. If the typical history text were to be stripped of any mention
of war, depression, famine, coercion, tragedy, genocide, scandal,
rivalry, and mayhem, the remains could probably be reprinted in a
leaflet.
Strangely, the awesome Panic of 1893 seems to have
escaped the careful scrutiny and exhaustive research of historians.
Though it occurred only eighty-five years ago, it remains an obscure
episode in American history. It signaled the beginning of a deep
depression. Businesses collapsed by the thousands. Banks closed their
doors in record numbers. Unemployment soared and idle millions roamed
the streets and countryside seeking jobs or alms. And the country
witnessed a spectacular display of political fireworks, now all but
forgotten.
For the believer in the free economy, the story of the
Panic of 1893 offers a treasure chest of empirical support. The lessons
of this tragedy add up to a compelling indictment of government's
ability to "manage" a nation's money.
Charles Albert Collman observed that "Money trouble was
the manifest peculiarity of the long, drawn-out Panic of
'93."1 Indeed, a breakdown of the monetary system and
national bankruptcy were narrowly averted in that year. But money is
that great invention which permits the development of a modern exchange
economy. How could something so vital to commerce become so troublesome?
Everyone knows that fingerprints are a great aid in
placing a suspect at the scene of a crime. The distinguishing
characteristics of each individual's skin patterns make this possible.
In the case of the Panic of 1893, the tragedy is smothered with the
fingerprints of politicians. "I deem it proper at the outset to state,"
wrote Charles S. Smith in the October, 1893 North American Review, "that
the recent panic was not the result of over-trading, undue speculation
or the violation of business principles throughout the country. In my
judgment it is to be attributed to unwise legislation with respect to
the silver question; it will be known in history as 'the Silver Panic,'
and will constitute a reproach and an accusation against the common
sense, if not the common honesty, of our legislators who are responsible
for our present monetary laws." 2
Early Interventions
Contrary to popular impression, government in America
has never been totally aloof from the monetary scene. Article 1, Section
8, of the Constitution grants Congress the power "to coin money,
regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of
weights and measures." In the century preceding 1893, Congress
experimented with two central banks, a national banking system, paper
money issues, and fixed ratios of gold and silver.
Americans first cyclical depression occurred in 1819,
after three wild years of currency inflation caused by the Second Bank
of the United States. When that "money monster" was eliminated by hard
money man Andrew Jackson, the economy slumped into depression again and
all the mal-adjustments of the Bank era had to be liquidated. In 1857
the economy had to retrench after a decade of credit expansion on behalf
of state governments that had forced their obligations on the state
banking systems. In 1873 the post-Civil War readjustment finally
corrected the excesses of the government's rampant greenback inflation.
The background of the 1893 debacle is equally interventionist and has
some uniquely interesting features which give rise to the label, "The
Silver Panic."
Gold and silver rose to prominence as the monies of the
civilized world through a process of free and natural selection in the
marketplace of exchange. Both circulated as money, though gold was far
more valuable. The market ratio between the metals had been roughly 15
to 1 (15 ounces of silver trading for 1 ounce of gold) for centuries.
Gold was preferred for large transactions and silver for small ones. The
free market had established "parallel standards" of gold and silver,
each freely fluctuating within a narrow range in relation to market
supplies and demands. Before long, though, government decided it would
"help out" the market by interfering to "simplify" matters. The result
was another of the many well-intentioned blunders imposed on a populace
by force of law: the official "fixing" of the gold/silver ratio. This
became the policy of bimetallism.
Under the direction of Alexander Hamilton, the federal
government adopted an official ratio of 15 to 1 in 1792. If the market
ratio had been the same and had stayed the same for as long as the fixed
ratio was in effect, then the fixed ratio would have been superfluous.
But the market ratio, like all market prices, changed over time as
supply and demand conditions changed. As these changes occurred, the
fixed bimetallic ratio became obsolete and "Gresham's Law" came into
operation.
Gresham's Law
Gresham's Law holds that bad money drives out good
money when government fixes the ratio between the two circulating
monies. "Bad money" refers to the money which is artificially
over-valued by the government's ratio. "Good money" is the one which is
artificially undervalued. Gresham's Law began working soon after
Hamilton fixed the ratio at 15 to 1, as the market ratio stood at,
roughly, 15 ½ to 1. This meant that if one had an ounce of gold, one
could get 15½ ounces of silver on the bullion market, but only 15 ounces
for it at the government's mint. Conversely, if one had 15 ounces of
silver, one could get an ounce of gold at the mint but less than an
ounce on the market. So silver flowed into the mint and was coined while
gold disappeared, went into hiding, or was shipped overseas. The country
was thus put on a de facto silver standard, even though it was the
declared policy of the government to maintain both metals in
circulation.
Congress in 1834 changed the ratio to 16 to 1, but the
market ratio had not changed much, and this time gold was over-valued
and silver under-valued. Gold flowed into the mint, silver disappeared,
and the country found itself on a de facto gold standard.
With the end of the Civil War inflation, and subsequent
readjustment in the depression of 1873, the story of the Panic of 1893
begins to unfold. It opens with the inflationist agitation of the 1870s.
In 1875, the newly-formed National Greenback Party
called for currency inflation. The proposal attracted widespread support
in the West and South where many farmers joined associations to lobby
for inflation. They demanded at first that the government balloon the
paper money supply in the belief that such a policy would guarantee
prosperity. It was a demand that finds a less shrill but no less potent
voice among many economists today. An eloquent refutation of the idea
that the printing press can create economic wealth can be found in the
words of Benjamin Bristow, President Grant's Secretary of the Treasury.
In his annual message of 1874, Bristow declared:
The history of irredeemable paper currency repeats
itself whenever and wherever it is used. It increases present prices,
deludes the laborer with the idea that he is getting higher wages, and
brings a fictitious prosperity from which follow inflation of business
and credit and excess of enterprise in ever-increasing ratio, until it
is discovered that trade and commerce have become fatally diseased, when
confidence is destroyed, and then comes the shock to credit, followed by
disaster and depression, and a demand for relief by further issues....
The universal use of, and reliance on, such a currency tends to blunt
the moral sense and impair the natural self-dependence of the people,
and trains them to the belief that the Government must directly assist
their individual fortunes and business, help them in their personal
affairs, and enable them to discharge their debts by partial payment.
This inconvertible paper currency begets the delusion that the remedy
for private pecuniary distress is in legislative measures, and makes the
people unmindful of the fact that the true remedy is in greater
production and less spending, and that real prosperity comes only from
individual effort and thrift.3
The greenback inflation of the Civil War era left an
indelible impression on many Americans. They were suspicious of plans to
revive a policy of deliberate paper money expansion on behalf of any
special interest group. In 1875, Congress passed the Specie Resumption
Act, declaring it the policy of the government to redeem the Civil War
greenbacks at par in gold on January 1, 1879. It was regarded from this
point on that in order to protect the redemption of the greenbacks, the
Treasury would be obliged to maintain a minimum of $100,000,000 in gold
on reserve. The most that the inflationists got was a government pledge
not to cancel the greenbacks once redeemed, but to reissue them so that
the total number outstanding would remain the same.
Turning to Silver
The attention of the inflationists was then directed at
another medium: silver. Robert F. Hoxie, in the Journal of Political
Economy in 1893, wrote that the inflationists focussed their demands on
a silver inflation as a matter of expediency. "They had no love for
silver as such," revealed Hoxie, "but it was the cheapest and most
abundant substance for which they could gain support, its use would
result in more legal tender currency, and its metallic character would
in a measure shield the advocates from being stigmatized as
inflationist." 4
The inflationists now became "sil-verites" and their
rallying cry became "Free Silver at 16 to 1" Their influence was
sufficient to secure passage of the Bland-Allison Act in February, 1878
- the first of the acts putting the government in the business of
purchasing quantities of silver for coinage. The Act provided for the
purchase by the Treasury of not less than two, nor more than four,
million dollars' worth of silver bullion per month, to be coined into
dollars each containing 371 ¼ grains of pure silver (which coincided
with the lawful ratio of 16 to 1, since the gold dollar still contained
23.22 grains of pure gold). These dollars were to be legal tender at
their nominal value for all debts and dues, public and private. Paper
silver certificates were to be issued upon deposit of the bulky silver
dollars in the Treasury.
The free silver forces were dissatisfied with
Bland-Allison because it did not go far enough - it did not provide for
the free and unlimited government purchase and coinage of silver at 16
to 1. The only silver to be coined would be the two to four million
dollars' worth that the government purchased each month, and the
Treasury, while the law was on the books, rarely bought more than the
minimum amount.
Silver producers in particular had a vested interest in
the state of affairs, for the market price of silver had begun a
long-term decline in the 1870s. Securing a government pledge to buy
silver at a higher price than could be obtained in the free market was
an obviously lucrative arrangement. As the market ratio of silver to
gold steadily rose above 16 to 1, the profit potential became enormous.
Bland-Allison Passed Over President's Veto
Bland-Allison was passed over the veto of President
Rutherford B. Hayes. The president, in his veto message, noted that
minting silver coins at the ratio of sixteen ounces of silver to one
ounce of gold would drive gold out of circulation. The decline of the
market price of silver had raised the market ratio at the time of
passage of the act to nearly 18 ¼ to 1. If the mint offered to pay one
ounce of gold for just sixteen ounces of silver, then only silver would
be minted and the country would be on the road back to a de facto silver
standard. In Hayes' belief, "A currency worth less than it purports to
be worth will in the end defraud not only creditors, but all who are
engaged in legitimate business, and none more surely than those who are
dependent on their daily labor for their daily bread."5
When money is left to the free market, its supply is
restricted by its scarcity and costs of production. Its value is thus
preserved. The declining price of silver on the free market would have
erased the profitability of many mines and hence would have prevented a
drastic increase in silver currency. But when the government stepped in
and bought large quantities of silver bullion for coinage, and paid more
for it in gold than was offered in the market, it forced the quantity of
the white metal in circulation to exceed its true demand. The government
does much the same thing today when it subsidizes peanuts or wheat. The
result of this political interference is a chronic surplus of these
commodities.
The silverites' drive for favorable legislation
culminated in the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which replaced
the Bland-Allison Act. The Sherman Act stipulated that the Treasury had
to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver per month, or roughly twice the
amount the Treasury had been purchasing under Bland-Allison. Payment was
to be made in a new legal tender paper currency, the so-called Treasury
notes of 1890, redeemable in either gold or silver at the discretion of
the Treasury. The 4.5 million ounces of silver mandated by the law
represented almost the entire output of American silver mines. This
continuing subsidy to silver producers meant that the government was
engaged in a full-blown force-feeding of the American economy. It was
only a matter of time before the patient would suffer the pangs of
indigestion.
U.S. Out of Step
The action of the United States government in 1878 and
1890 with respect to silver was especially peculiar in light of world
monetary events. Germany, immediately after the Franco-Prussian War in
the early 1870s, had withdrawn her silver from circulation and adopted a
single gold standard. France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece
followed by first restricting the coinage of silver and then eliminating
it altogether. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden adopted the single gold
standard, making silver subsidiary by 1875. In that year, the government
of Holland closed its mints to the coinage of silver. A year later, the
Russian government suspended the coinage of silver except for use in the
Chinese trade. In 1879, Austria-Hungary ceased to coin silver for
individuals, except for a special trade coin. This rapid worldwide
transition from silver to gold prompted the United States Treasury
Department in 1879 to note that "since the monetary disturbance of
1873-78 not a mint of Europe has been open to the coinage of silver for
individuals." 6 Yet the United States government, at a time
when the value of silver was falling dramatically and when the nation's
trading partners were abandoning the white metal, stepped in to promote
silver against gold at the unrealistic ratio of 16 to 1!
One way of looking at silver's depreciation is to
consider the annual average market value of the 3711/4 grain silver
dollar. In 1878, the bullion value of that much silver was about 890; by
1890 it droppedto 810-1 by 1893, it was worth 600; and by 1895 it
plummeted to a mere 500. A climate of uncertainty pervaded the world of
finance. As Professor J. Laurence Laughlin wrote, "No one could know
that contracts entered into when a dollar stood for 100 cents in gold
might not be paid off in silver which stood for 50 cents on a dollar.
That was the predicament in which every investor found himself who had
an obligation payable only in 'coin' and not in gold." 7
In an article entitled "Thou Shalt Not Steal," Isaac L.
Rice penned an eloquent repudiation of the government's silver coinage
policy. His argument evoked the moral side of the question and eighty
years later is still a forceful indictment of monetary dishonesty:
Of the various classes of crime that come under the
category of theft none is more odious and despicable than the use of
false weights and measures. Stamping a coin containing 371 ¼ grains of
silver as of the weight of one hundred cents, while in truth it is of
the weight of fifty-three cents, is a falsification of weights morally
not distinguishable from stamping any other kind of weight as of two
pounds which in truth is only of one pound, Only the methods by which
fraud is to be made are different. The thievish individual depends upon
secret deceit, the qualities of the sneak thief, the Government on
coercion, the qualities of the highwayman. 8
In accordance with inexorable economic law, the
Bland-Allison and Sherman Acts caused a drain of gold from the Treasury
and an inflow of silver. This tampering with the fixity of the standard
threatened the Treasury's declared policy of redeeming greenbacks and
other government obligations in gold. And, the disappearance of gold
from circulation and from the reserves of the nation's banks threatened
the sanctity of all contracts made in gold. Professor Laughlin observed
that no producer "could feel so entirely sure of the standard of
payments that he could, without fear or hesitation, make his estimates a
few years ahead." 9
The Flight of Capital
The silver purchases noticeably affected the confidence
of foreigners in the American economy. Many British and French investors
expected devaluation of the dollar a the least, with complete financial
collapse predicted by some. Capita flowed out of the country as these
foreigners sold American securities Even Americans, in increasing
numbers after 1890, began exporting funds for investment in Canada,
Europe, and some of the Latin American countries, all of which seemed
stronger than the United States.
The inflationary impact of the Bland-Allison and
Sherman Acts was particularly important in paving the way for panic and
depression. A. D. Noyes, writing in Political Science Quarterly, stated
that "The coinage of over-valued silver dollars since 1878, and the
issue of Treasury notes on silver bullion since 1890, have actually
increased the country's silver and paper circulation, between 1879 and
1894, by seventy-five per cent."10
W. Jett Lauck, in his study entitled The Causes of the
Panic of 1893, found that the Sherman Act inflation produced an "absence
of the usual stringency in the New York money market" in the fall of
1891. Call loans ranged from two to four per cent, a significant decline
from earlier levels.11
In 1910 the National Monetary Commission requested O.
M. W. Sprague to report on the nation's finances since the Civil War. In
his authoritative report, History of Crises Under the National Banking
System, Sprague found that from January, 1891 to June, 1893, "there was
an increase of $68,000,000 in the estimated amount of money in
circulation." The effect on bank credit was typical of any "easy money"
policy: "During 1892 the low rates for loans were a clear indication
that the banks would have been glad to lend more than the demand of
borrowers made possible." The classic symptoms of currency inflation
were evident, a situation which Sprague found to be unsustainable. He
felt that "a situation which demands increasing credits to prevent
collapse is certain to arrive at that state in any case, and delay can
hardly be expected to improve matters." 12
End of the Boom
The economy, drugged by easy money, was showing outward
signs of prosperity. Unemployment, which had been above 5 per cent in
1890 and 1891, fell to 3.7 per cent in 1892. Crop failures in Europe
coupled with exceptional harvests here in the United States boosted
agriculture. President Harrison told Congress, "There has never been a
time in our history when work was so abundant, or when wages were as
high."13 The boom was, however, only temporary. The twin
evils of inflation and uncertainty as to the fixity of the standard were
eating at the vitals of the nation's commerce.
Late in January, 1893, prices of staples such as wheat
and iron, previously on the rise, began to recede. Price declines across
the board foreshadowed a general cyclical contraction. "General business
activity," according to Charles Hoffman, "suffered a severe check that
was recognized at once in the business journals. The stock market gave
ominous signs of falling prices before any sharp drop took place."
14 Banks became apprehensive over the Treasury's loss of gold
(as well as their own) and began to contract the pyramid of credit.
Loans declined almost 10 per cent from February to the beginning of May.
An article in the February, 1893 issue of Forum spoke of "a dangerous
state of uneasiness in financial circles," and warned that "Fear is an
element in monetary conditions which may be as serious in its effects as
reason."15
A dramatic event took place on February 20. The
Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, a chronic invalid which nonetheless
had paid its usual bond dividend the month before, collapsed into
bankruptcy. "When the end came," writes Rendigs Fels, "it had a floating
debt of $18.5 million compared to cash and bills receivable of little
more than $100,000."16 The failure of the Philadelphia and
Reading, a firm supported by powerful Wall Street financial houses,
caused many businessmen to question the conditions of other railroads
and the financial institutions behind them.
When President Harrison left office on March 4, 1893,
the Treasury's gold reserve stood at the historic low of $100,982,410-an
eyelash above the $100 million minimum deemed necessary for protecting
the redemption of greenbacks. Merchants increasingly refused to accept
silver in violation of the law and ugly threats of strikes echoed in the
nation's factories.
On April 22 the Treasury's gold reserve fell below the
$100 million minimum for the first time since the resumption of specie
payments in 1879. Bankers and investors realized that the Treasury could
not indefinitely continue drawing upon the remaining gold reserve to
redeem the Treasury notes of 1890 in the attempt to maintain their
value. Banks had to brake their easy money habits and began calling in
their loans at a frantic pace. More and more investors began to fear
that before securities could be sold and realized upon, depreciated
silver would take the place of gold as the standard of payments.
By Wednesday, May 3, tension in the commercial
community triggered a massive wave of selling on the stock market. The
New York Times recorded the events the next day:
Not since 1884 had the stock market had such a break in
prices as occurred yesterday, and few days in its history were more
exciting. In the industrial shares particularly, there was a smashing of
values almost without precedent.
In the last thirty minutes the brokers on the floor of
the Exchange found the quotations on the board of little use. Figures
posted at one moment were valueless the next. In the industrials which
were receiving the most punishment prices were dropping a point at a
time. The crowds trading in them were made up of shouting men, who
struggled about the floor like football players in a
scrimmage.17
The Panic of 1893 had begun! On May 4 a stock market
favorite, National Cordage Trust, went into receivership. Shortly before
the panic, Cordage common stock had sold for $70 per share. The plunge
was precipitous, as Charles Albert Collman vividly explains:
In the Cordage Trust circle of the New York Stock
Exchange, hats were being smashed, coats torn, cravats ruined. Here was
an agony that meant financial life or death to many. Cordage common had
gone off 18 points. The preferred had lost 22. Suddenly howls went up
from the floor. Those who could distinguish the words, heard the ominous
cry: "Nineteen for Cordage!"
The shares, a few moments later, went down to
$12.18
The Cordage Crash
The Cordage crash was taken as, in Collman's words,
"some occult signal for the halting of enterprise."19 Plants
closed their gates and went quickly into receivership. Unemployment
rocketed to 9.6 per cent before year-end, nearly three times the rate
for 1892. In 1894, an estimated 16.7 per cent of industrial wage-earners
were idle.
From January to July, 1893, mercantile failures totaled
a remarkable 3,401, with liabilities totaling $169,000,000. The bulk of
the losses came after the first week of May. O M. W. Sprague revealed
that the "failures exceeded both in number and in amount of liabilities
those which had occurred in any other period of equal length in our
history." 20
Bank failures and suspensions were the greatest on
record. Most occurred in the South and West, where the evils of a
vicious currency expansion had taken root far more extensively than in
the rest of the country.
The economy was going through the pains of liquidation.
The malinvestments fostered by the Bland-Allison Act and Sherman Act
inflation were being sloughed off. The threat to the de facto gold
standard was a factor which no doubt complicated things, heightened
uncertainty, determined the timing of the panic, and exacerbated the
depression, but the chief responsibility for the crisis rested with the
attempted force-feeding of the nation's money supply by government
policy. The Commercial and Financial Chronicle said as much on July 8,
1893:
The country is struggling with disturbed credit and the
general derangement of commercial and financial affairs which a forced
and over-valued currency has developed.... Nothing but corrective
legislation which shall remove the disturbing law, can afford any
measure of real relief.21
With the economy in depression, the necessity for
eliminating the legislation which precipitated the tragedy became
increasingly apparent. On June 30, President Grover Cleveland called for
a special session of Congress to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act
of 1890. "The present perilous condition," he declared, "is largely the
result of a financial policy which the Executive branch of the
government finds embodied in unwise laws which must be executed until
repealed by Congress." 22 The ensuing debate in the Congress
was a splendid contest, pitting the forces of sound, honest money
against the forces of inflation, in which the sound money men calmly
answered the question, "What would you put in place of the silver
purchases?" with the single, solitary word, "Nothing!"
Cockran Favors Repeal
On August 26, Congressman Bourke Cockran of New York
rose to deliver a memorable address in favor of repeal. The speech has
been called the most eloquent and scholarly of the entire debate. The
congressman advised his colleagues:
I think it safe to assert that every commercial crisis
can be traced to an unnecessary inflation of the currency, or to an
improvident expansion of credit. The operation of the Sherman Law has
been to flood this country with paper money without providing any method
whatever for its redemption. The circulating medium has-become so
redundant that the channels of commerce have overflowed and gold has
been expelled.23
Cockran proceeded to trace the history of coinage in
England and explained how debasing the currency led to recurrent
depressions. James McGurrin, Cockran's biographer, believes that the
subsequent vote in the House of Representatives in favor of repeal "was
due in no small measure to Bourke Cockran's matchless eloquence and
sagacious leadership." 24
The repeal bill passed the House on August 28 by a wide
margin. President Cleveland's forceful leadership prompted the Senate to
do likewise in October. The New York Times heralded the occasion: "The
Treasury is released from this day from the necessity of purchasing a
commodity it does not require, out of a money chest already depleted,
and at the risk of dangerous encroachment upon the gold reserve."
25
An indispensable pre-condition to recovery was
accomplished with the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. The
derangement of the nation's money was a big step close to solution,
though the road to recovery was long and hard. Not until 1897 did
depression give way to revival and prosperity. Repeal of the Sherman Act
was, by any measure, an act of congressional repentance. Indeed, it was
an open admission that the Silver Panic was the offspring of a
profligate, overbearing, and irresponsible government. Historian Ernest
Ludlow Bogart summarized the lessons of the Panic of 1893:
It must be said that the net results of this experiment
of a "managed currency," that is, one in which the government undertakes
to provide the necessary money for the people, were disastrous. For the
maintenance of a suitable supply the operation of normal economic forces
is more reliable than the judgment of a legislative body.26
At the time of the original publication, Mr. Reed was
an instructor in economics at Northwood Institute, Midland,
Michigan.
1. Charles Albert Collman, Our Mysterious Panics,
1830-1930 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), p. 88.
2. Charles S. Smith, "The Business Outlook," North
American Review, October 1893, p. 386.
3. James A. Barnes, John G. Carlisle, Financial
Statesman (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1931; reprinted, Gloucester,
Mass.: Peter Smith, 1967), pp. 32-33.
4.Robert F. Hoxie, "The Silver Debate of 1890," Journal
of Political Economy 1 (1892-1893): 561.
5. Herman E. Krooss, ed., Documentary History of
Banking and Currency in the United States, vol. 2 (New York: Chelsea
House Publishers, 1969), pp. 1921-1922.
6. Ibid., p. 1934. 7J. Laurence Laughlin, The History
of Bimetallism in the United States, 4th ed. (New York: D. Appleton and
Co., 1900), p. 274.
8. 1saac L. Rice, "Thou Shalt Not Steal," Forum 22
(September 1896-February 1897): 1.
9. Laughlin, p. 269.
10. A. D. Noyes, 'The Banks and the Panic of 1893,"
Political Science Quarterly 9 (No. 1): p. 15.
11. W. Jett Lauck, The Causes of the Panic of 1893
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1907), p. 80.
12. O. M. W. Sprague, History of Crises Under the
National Banking System (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1910; reprint ed., New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968), p. 158.
13. Robert Sobel, Panic on Wall Street: A History of
America's Financial Disasters (New York: Macmillan Co., 1968), p. 243.
14. Charles Hoffman, The Depression of the Nineties: An
Economic History, Contributions in Economics and Economic History, no. 2
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970), p. 107.
15. Geo. Fred Williams, "Imminent Danger From the
Silver Purchase Act," Forum 14 (September 1892-February 1893): 789.
16. Rendigs Fels, American Business Cycles: 1865-1897
(Raleigh: University of North Carolina Press, 1959; reprint ed.,
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973), p. 185.
17. "Industrials Were Hit Hard," New York Times, 4 May
1893, p. 1.
18. Collman, p. 164.
19. Ibid., p. 165.
20. Sprague, p. 169.
21. "Hoffman, p. 229.
22. "Congress to Meet August 7," New York Times, 1 July
1893, p. 1.
23. James McGurrin, Bourke Cockran (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1948), p. 135.
24. Ibid., p. 138.
25. "Need Buy No More Silver," New York Times, 2
November 1893, p. 1.
26. "Ernest Ludlow Bogart, Economic History of the
American People (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1937), p. 693.
Reprinted with permission from The
Freeman, a publication of the Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.,
June 1978, Vol. 28, No. 6.
Yourname@libertyhaven.com
