The Democratic party selected Grover Cleveland for the third time and chose Adlai E. Stevenson for Vice President.  The platform condemned trusts and combines, advocated the reclamation of the public lands from corporations and syndicates, the exclusion of the Chinese and of the criminals and paupers of Europe, denounced “the Sherman Act of 1890,” and called for “the coinage of both gold and silver without discriminating against either metal or charge for mintage,” with “the dollar unit of coinage of both metals” “of equal intrinsic and exchangeable value.”

The Republicans nominated Benjamin Harrison and Whitelaw Reid, expressed their sympathy with the cause of temperance, their opposition to trusts, and called for the coinage of both gold and silver in such way that “the debt-paying power of the dollar, whether silver, gold, or paper, shall be at all times equal.”

%555.  Grover Cleveland reelected.%—­The election was a complete triumph for the Democratic party.  Mr. Cleveland was again elected, and for the first time since 1861 the House, Senate, and President were all three Democratic.

Mr. Cleveland was inaugurated March 4,1893.  Never in its history had the country been seemingly more prosperous; the crops were bountiful; business was flourishing, manufactures were thriving.  But the prosperity was not real.  Business was inflated, and during the following summer an industrial and financial panic which had long been brewing swept over the business world, wrecking banks and destroying industrial and commercial establishments.

To understand what now happened, two facts must be remembered: 

1.  Under the Resumption of Specie Payment Act of 1875, the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to buy specie by the issue of bonds and keep it to redeem United States notes.

2.  In May, 1878, it was ordered that when a greenback was redeemed in specie, it should “not be retired, canceled, or destroyed, but shall be reissued and paid out again and kept in circulation.”  There were then $346,681,000 in greenbacks unredeemed.

%556.  The Gold Reserve.%—­Meantime, under the law of 1875, and before January 1, 1879, the secretary issued $95,500,000 in bonds, the proceeds of which, with other gold then in the Treasury, made a fund deemed sufficient to redeem such notes as were likely to be presented.  This has since been called our gold reserve, and has been fixed by the secretaries at $100,000,000.  January 1, 1879, the reserve was $114,000,000, and though it often rose and fell, it never went below that amount till July, 1892.  By that time there were other gold obligations.  The silver purchased under the law of 1890 was paid for with notes exchangeable for “coin”; but as the secretaries always construed “coin” to mean gold, and as by 1893 these notes amounted to $150,000,000, our gold obligations—­that is, notes exchangeable for gold—­were nearly $500,000,000 (greenbacks, $346,000,000; silver purchase