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it being guided by the stubborn opposition of Speaker Reed. Finally a compromise was reached and the silver act of 1890 was passed [July 14]. This directed the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase 4,500,000 ounces of silver bullion per month and issue in payment therefor United States Treasury notes which were made a legal tender. Upon demand, the Secretary of the Treasury might redeem them "in gold or silver coin at his dis- ( cretion, it being 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 ratio as may be provided by law."

The act was a compromise measure of the Republican party. In neither House of Congress did a Republican vote against the bill or a Democrat in favor of it. One of the reasons for its passage was the supposed importance of holding the party together on the tariff issue. The Western senators cared little for the tariff, much for silver, and said to the East, Do something for silver and we will help you on the tariff. Another reason was that if this compromise bill was not passed Congress would vote for the free coinage of silver. "Unless we come to agreement with the 'silver men, wrote Senator Orville H. Platt of Connecticut, a true patriot, "a free coinage bill will be passed by both houses by a decided major

next Congress. Pettigrew of South Dakota who was absent was paired in favor of the bill.

Wyoming and Idaho were not represented in Congress until the second session of the Fifty-first Congress. The senators took their seats on Dec. 1, 29, 1890 and Jan. 5, 1891.

Forty Years of American Finance, Noyes, 151. In the House fourteen more Democrats than Republicans did not vote. Payne of Ohio was paired with Sherman but he told Sherman to vote on this bill. In the Senate the absentees were 11 Democrats, 8 Republicans.

ity.... It would probably be vetoed by the President. The tendency of such action would be to break up the Republican party and, worse than that, to array the West and Southwest against the East." The menace of a disrupted party is one that a political leader has frequently to meet and may often disregard, but to men whose memories of the Civil War were vivid, the array of one section against another appeared as a grave contingency. The West and Southwest felt bitterly toward the East, thinking that the trend of legislation was to give her a disproportionate part of the good things of life.

The Act of 1890 was commonly called the "Sherman silver law," a misnomer, as Senator Sherman had little to do with this legislation until it reached the Committee of Conference when, finding as he thought, the situation critical, he acted the part of the great compromiser. He feared that if some such legislation was not effected an act for the free coinage of silver would be passed which the President could not be depended upon to veto, his surmise of Harrison's attitude toward this question being different from that of his brother senator, Platt. "I voted for the bill," Sherman wrote, "but the day it became a law I was ready to repeal it, if repeal could be had without substituting in its place absolute free coinage.” 2

The Financial Chronicle considered it a far better bill than had been anticipated and the New York Evening Post called it a "very happy termination to a bitter controversy." The business interests applauded Sherman for his part in the transaction but, as we survey the question at our present distance, it is not difficult to see that

the tremendous strength of the silver faction had alarmed the monometallists and clouded their reasoning. Nor is it necessary to agree with the construction put upon the evidence by Alexander D. Noyes to the effect that there was little danger of free coinage1 although he is backed by a considerable public sentiment at the time." But it is more accurate to adhere to the bulk of contemporaneous opinion and the impression of all writers except Noyes with whom I am acquainted, which was that, if the Silver Purchase Act had not been passed there would have been a serious risk of free coinage. Nevertheless the act of 1890 was at variance with sound economic principle inasmuch as it was an endeavor of the United States, single-handed, to bolster up a product that was declining in value. In 1889 the price of silver was 93 per ounce; July, 1890 $1.04; on September 3, 1890 $1.21; but before Congress assembled in December, 1890 it had fallen below 98.3 In 1890 the ratio of silver to gold was 19.76 to 1; in 1891, 20.92 to 1; in 1893, 26.49 to 1.4 Naturally this great decline in value could not have been foreseen and the business interests honestly believed that the Act of 1890 would restore the waning fortune of silver. But they could not fail to see that it meant more silver than the existing legislation and practice and that any compromise tending to the increase of the Government's burden was dangerous.5

* Dewey, 228.

1 Forty Years of American Finance, 148. 2 Public Opinion, ix. passim. 3 Noyes, 153. " I answer the natural question—if justifiable to compromise with slavery in 1850 why not with silver in 1890?— by two citations. On "compromise" John Morley cited Burke: "All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent art is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights that we may enjoy others"; and added: "What

This Congress passed at this session what is known as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 [July 2]. First introduced by Senator Sherman in an explanatory speech, the bill found its way to the Judiciary Committee, whence in due time it was reported to the Senate by Edmunds, the chairman, and passed by a vote of 52:1. After conference over certain disagreements it was enacted by the House and signed by the President. "The Sherman AntiTrust Act," wrote Senator Cullom, "was one of the most important enactments ever passed by Congress. . . . .. It was never seriously enforced until the coming in of the Roosevelt administration. . . . It bears Senator Sherman's name [but] my own opinion is that Senator Edmunds had more to do with framing it than any other one Senator." 1 Consideration of the question involved by this act will come properly in a history of the Roosevelt administrations.

The election of Cleveland in 1884 proved to the Republicans that to be sure of retaining their control of the

Burke means by compromise and what every true statesman understands by it, is that it may be most inexpedient to meddle with an institution merely because it does not harmonize with 'argument and logical illation."" - On Compromise, 228, 331. General Francis A. Walker wrote in 1896: "That it was necessary to make this concession [the Silver Purchase Act of 1890] to the free coinage party, I, for one, do not believe. I am so little of a doctrinaire that I should hesitate to say that, in all matters political, flat and contemptuous resistance to unreasonable demands and evil measures is always a safe policy. But my study of financial history creates an increasing conviction that the only good policy in dealing with financial crazes is to fight them, without asking or giving quarter. The men of 1890, to whom the people had intrusted their powers of legislation, did not deal with the matter in this spirit." - Bimetallism, 224. 1 Fifty Years of Public Service, 254; MacDonald, 395; John Sherman, Rec., ii. 1071; Dewey, 198; Autobiography of George F. Hoar, ii. 22. The Senate concurred in the report of the Conference Committee on June 18, the House on June 20.

national government they ought to have a fighting chance in some of the Southern States, and this they could secure only through the negro vote. It was well known that, since the restoration of home rule at the South, the negroes had been largely prevented from voting by intimidation and force or, when they did succeed in casting their votes, they failed through fraud on the part of the white judges of election to have them fairly counted. It was estimated that through the suppression of this vote the Republicans lost twenty-four seats in the House and thirty-eight votes in the electoral college. In 1886, the five Southern States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, having 38 representatives, cast an average of 7432 votes to a district while the five Northern States, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas and Connecticut, having likewise 38 representatives, cast an average of 35,848 votes to a district. "Oregon," declared the Philadelphia Press, "casts in the election of a single representative more than twice as many votes as Georgia does in the election of ten. . . . The elections in the South are farcical, and, if we are to have a free government there must be an end put to this sort of thing as far as the National elections are concerned." 2 Harrison, in his inaugural address and in his message of December, 1889 suggested the necessity of a Federal Election law for the Congressional districts; and such a law was demanded of Congress by a majority of the Republican party.

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1 In 1886 Georgia cast for her ten representatives 27,553; Oregon for her one, 54,954.

2 Sept. 10, 1889; Dewey, 163, 166; researches made for me by D. M. Matteson.