admitted also that their most ominous warnings were well founded, saying:  “I believe the struggle now going on in this country and in other countries for a single gold standard would, if successful, produce widespread disaster throughout the commercial world.  The destruction of silver as money and the establishment of gold as the sole unit of value must have a ruinous effect on all forms of property, except those investments which yield a fixed return.”

This was exactly the concession that the silver party wanted.  “Three-fourths of the business enterprises of this country are conducted on borrowed capital,” said Senator Jones, of Nevada.  “Three-fourths of the homes and farms that stand in the names of the actual occupants have been bought on time and a very large proportion of them are mortgaged for the payment of some part of the purchase money.  Under the operation of a shrinkage in the volume of money, this enormous mass of borrowers, at the maturity of their respective debts, though nominally paying no more than the amount borrowed, with interest, are in reality, in the amount of the principal alone, returning a percentage of value greater than they received—­more in equity than they contracted to pay....  In all discussions of the subject the creditors attempt to brush aside the equities involved by sneering at the debtors.”

=The Silver Purchase Act (1878).=—­Even before the actual resumption of specie payment, the advocates of free silver were a power to be reckoned with, particularly in the Democratic party.  They had a majority in the House of Representatives in 1878 and they carried a silver bill through that chamber.  Blocked by the Republican Senate they accepted a compromise in the Bland-Allison bill, which provided for huge monthly purchases of silver by the government for coinage into dollars.  So strong was the sentiment that a two-thirds majority was mustered after President Hayes vetoed the measure.

The effect of this act, as some had anticipated, was disappointing.  It did not stay silver on its downward course.  Thereupon the silver faction pressed through Congress in 1886 a bill providing for the issue of paper certificates based on the silver accumulated in the Treasury.  Still silver continued to fall.  Then the advocates of inflation declared that they would be content with nothing short of free coinage at the ratio of sixteen to one.  If the issue had been squarely presented in 1890, there is good reason for believing that free silver would have received a majority in both houses of Congress; but it was not presented.