list of failures and bankruptcies was appalling. How often one heard that iron and coal and land were worth too little and money too much, that only the bondholder could be happy, for his interest was sure and the purchasing power of his money great! In August 1878 when John Sherman went to Toledo to speak to a gathering three thousand strong, he was greeted with such cries as, "You are responsible for all the failures in the country"; "You work to the interest of the capitalist"; "Capitalists own you, John Sherman, and you rob the poor widows and orphans to make them rich."

By many the resumption of specie payments was deemed impossible. The most charitable of Sherman's opponents looked upon him as an honest but visionary enthusiast who would fail in his policy and be "the deadest man politically" in the country. Others deemed resumption possible only by driving to the wall a majority of active business men. It was this sentiment that gave strength to the majority in the House of Representatives which was opposed to any contraction of the greenback currency and in favor of the free coinage of silver and of making it likewise a full legal tender. Most of these members of Congress were sincere and thought that they were asking no more than justice for the trader, the manufacturer and the laborer. The "Ohio idea" was originally associated with an inflation of the paper currency but by extension it came to mean an abundance of cheap money, whether paper or silver. Proposed legislation with this as its aim, was very popular in Ohio, but, despite the intense feeling against the President's and Secretary's policy in their own State and generally throughout the West, Hayes and Sherman maintained

it consistently and finally brought about the resumption of specie payments.1

On May 17, 1878, the Democratic House passed a resolution for the appointment of a committee to investigate Hayes's title and aroused some alarm lest an effort might be made “to oust President Hayes and inaugurate Tilden." Although this alarm was stilled less than a month later by a decisive vote of the House, the action and investigation were somewhat disquieting."

In a refined broad nature like Hayes's, the fighting spirit is generally absent. Not so with him. His contest with Congress is best told in his diary. "The Forty-fifth Congress adjourned" [March 4, 1879] he wrote on March 9, "without making provision for the support of the army and for the payment of the civil list. I therefore immediately called a special session of the Forty-sixth Congress to meet the 18th-two weeks after the adjournment of the Forty-fifth Congress. The appropriation bills were defeated by a disagreement between the House and the Senate.3 The House insisted on the right to force its views on several questions of general legislation upon the Senate by the threat of defeating appropriations if the Senate did not yield. The Senate adhered to its own views- hence no appropriations for the purposes named. Now the question will come to me. The Senate and House in the Forty-sixth Congress being both Democratic will insist on the right to repeal the election laws and in case of my refusal will put the re

1 John Sherman's Recollections, ii.; Life of Hayes, Williams, ii.; Hepburn; Globe; Public docs. I have used freely my article on President Hayes's Administration printed in the Century Magazine for Oct. 1909 and reprinted in my volume of Historical Essays.

2 Century Magazine, Oct. 1909. The Senate was then Republican.

peal on the appropriation bills. They will stop the wheels - block the wheels of government if I do not yield my convictions in favor of the election laws. It will be a severe, perhaps a long contest. I do not fear it. I do not even dread it. The people will not allow this revolutionary cause to triumph." The "election laws" authorized the use of the army "to keep the peace at the polls" and the Democrats, having possession of the House and the Senate for the first time since 1861, objected strenuously to the whole federal supervision of elections. Their first intention was to pass the repeals as separate measures but this was abandoned and their purpose was expressed in riders to the appropriation bills.

"As to some of the measures which it is sought to repeal," wrote Hayes in his diary on March 18, 1879, "I would regard it a duty to approve separate bills, framed in the usual way for that purpose. And as to all of them I would consider with favor independent measures modifying, amending and improving them without impairing their efficiency. But presented in a way used for the purpose of coercion, I cannot even consider their merits." March 23: "The attempt to pass a measure under a menace that the government shall be stopped if the President declines to yield his convictions of duty has never yet succeeded- has never before been made. To consent to it is to make a radical change in the character of the government. The House of Representatives, in case this principle is established, becomes the government." March 27: "Every measure should stand or fall on its own merits. This should be the fundamental principle in legislation."

In the contest with Congress the President won; and his

confidence to his diary (July 3) two days after adjournment is a natural exultation. "I am now experiencing one of the 'ups' of political life. Congress adjourned on the 1st after a session of almost seventy-five days mainly taken up with a contest against me. Five vetoes, a number of special messages and oral consultations with friends and opponents have been my part of it. At no timenot even after the nomination at Cincinnati - has the stream of commendation run so full. The great newspapers and the little have been equally profuse of flattery. Of course it will not last. But I think I have the confidence of the country. When the Tribune can say, 'The President has the courtesy of a Chesterfield and the firmness of a Jackson' (!) I must be prepared for the counterblast. . . . I . . . have, I think, vindicated the power of the National government over congressional elections and the separate authority of the executive department of the government. Inasmuch as I stood firmly and successfully against the dictation of my own party leaders in the Senate, I have a feeling that the applause given to the firmness exhibited against the pretensions of the adversary as to the powers of a bare majority of Congress, is not altogether unreasonable." 1

It had really been a notable partisan fight and the country would have been excited had it not occurred contemporaneously with the revival of business as the "boom of 1879" was beginning. So far as we may judge of popular sentiment, it was with the President and the contest solidified the Republican party placing it in line with Hayes. The State elections in the autumn were

1 Life of Hayes, Williams, ii. 177, 181, 183, 206.

favorable to the Republicans; although this result may have been due to the improved business, the President naturally saw in it the approval of his policy.

The depression following the panic of 1873 was the most severe of any since the Civil War. The contemporary material and the recollections of business men give it a unique character. The years 1874, 1875, 1876 presented some alleviation. The rebound from the stringency, the actual scarcity of money in 1873 gave to 1874 a hope that the financial discipline would not long endure. During that and the following year, expectation was rife that some measure of inflation of the currency would be enacted by Congress and this expectation served to inculcate the belief that the depression was not hopeless. In 1876 the Centennial Exhibition and the presidential campaign turned men's minds from their own distress. The visitors to the Exhibition were from all parts who had scraped together enough money to take themselves and their families thither and, enjoying a wonderful display, forgot their trials. The presidential election too was absorbing. Masses of people believed that either Democratic or Republican success was necessary for the salvation of the country and, "as the country was in danger and must be saved," what mattered the temporary commercial depression? But after the presidential election and the almost contemporary closing of the world's fair in 1876, there was no mitigation of the terrible distress. Masses of laborers were out of employment being severely put to it to get bread for their wives, children and selves. Merchants and manufacturers had difficulty in making both ends meet; many failed; one failure led