notes, $150,000,000).  This immense and steadily increasing sum caused a doubt of our ability to pay in gold, and a fear that we might be forced to pay in silver.  Now silver, since 1873, had fallen steadily in value from $1.30 an ounce to $0.81 an ounce in 1893, so that the bullion value of a silver dollar was about 67 cents.  The fear, then, that our debts might be paid in silver (1) led foreigners to cease investing money in this country, and to send our stocks and bonds home to be sold, and (2) led people in this country to draw gold out of the banks and the Treasury and hoard it, so that in April, 1893, the gold reserve, for the first time since it was created, fell below $100,000,000 (to $97,000,000).

%557.  The Panic of 1893.%—­Business depression and “tight money” followed.  Over three hundred banks suspended or failed, manufactories all over the country shut down, and a period of great distress set in.  People, alarmed at the condition of the banks, began to draw their deposits and hoard them, thereby causing such a scarcity of bills of small denominations that a “currency famine” was threatened.

%558.  The Purchase of Silver stopped.%—­Believing that the fear that we should soon be “on a silver basis” had much to do with this state of affairs, and that the compulsory purchase of silver each month had much to do with the fear, the President assembled Congress in special session, August 7, and asked for the repeal of that clause of the Sherman Act of 1890 which required a monthly purchase of silver.  After a struggle in which both of the old parties were split, the compulsory purchase clause was repealed, November 1, 1893.

%559.  The Silver Movement.%—­The steady fall in the bullion value of silver was a serious blow to the prosperity of the great silver-producing states,—­Colorado, Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, and the territories of Arizona and New Mexico,—­where silver mining was “the very heart from which every other industry receives support.”  In Colorado alone 15,000 miners were made idle.  To the people of this section, some 2,000,000 in number, the silver question was of vital importance; and, alarmed at the call for the special session of Congress and the possible repeal of the silver-purchase clause, they held a convention at Denver, with a view to affecting public sentiment.  A few weeks after, the National Bimetallic League met at Chicago.  Both opposed the repeal, and demanded that if the government ceased to buy silver, the mints should be opened to free coinage.  This the friends of silver in the Senate attempted in vain to bring about.