=The Sherman Silver Purchase Act and the Bond Sales.=—­Republican leaders, particularly from the East, stemmed the silver tide by a diversion of forces.  They passed the Sherman Act of 1890 providing for large monthly purchases of silver and for the issue of notes redeemable in gold or silver at the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury.  In a clause of superb ambiguity they announced that it was “the established policy of the United States to maintain the two metals on a parity with each other upon the present legal ratio or such other ratio as may be provided by law.”  For a while silver was buoyed up.  Then it turned once more on its downward course.  In the meantime the Treasury was in a sad plight.  To maintain the gold reserve, President Cleveland felt compelled to sell government bonds; and to his dismay he found that as soon as the gold was brought in at the front door of the Treasury, notes were presented for redemption and the gold was quickly carried out at the back door.  Alarmed at the vicious circle thus created, he urged upon Congress the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act.  For this he was roundly condemned by many of his own followers who branded his conduct as “treason to the party”; but the Republicans, especially from the East, came to his rescue and in 1893 swept the troublesome sections of the law from the statute book.  The anger of the silver faction knew no bounds, and the leaders made ready for the approaching presidential campaign.

THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF AND TAXATION

=Fluctuation in Tariff Policy.=—­As each of the old parties was divided on the currency question, it is not surprising that there was some confusion in their ranks over the tariff.  Like the silver issue, the tariff tended to align the manufacturing East against the agricultural West and South rather than to cut directly between the two parties.  Still the Republicans on the whole stood firmly by the rates imposed during the Civil War.  If we except the reductions of 1872 which were soon offset by increases, we may say that those rates were substantially unchanged for nearly twenty years.  When a revision was brought about, however, it was initiated by Republican leaders.  Seeing a huge surplus of revenue in the Treasury in 1883, they anticipated popular clamor by revising the tariff on the theory that it ought to be reformed by its friends rather than by its enemies.  On the other hand, it was the Republicans also who enacted the McKinley tariff bill of 1890, which carried protection to its highest point up to that time.