i
Well, the United States Treasury did not hang out the bankrupt’s sign. What happened instead was that President Cleveland in his solitary strength met a mad crisis in a great way. He engaged a group of international bankers to import gold from Europe and paid them for it in government bonds. The terms were hard, but the government, owing to the fascinated stupidity of Congress, was in a helpless plight. What Cleveland had the courage to face was the fact that any terms were better than none. It was fundamentally a question of psychology. The spell had somehow to be broken. The richest and most resourceful country in the world was about to commit financial suicide for a fetich. All that was necessary to save it was to restore the notion,—merely the notion,—of gold solvency. People really did not want gold to hoard or keep. They wanted only to think they could get it if they did want it.
The news of the President’s transaction with the bankers, appearing in the morning papers, produced a profound sensation. The white money people denounced him with a fury that was indecent. Many men of his own political faith turned against him, thinking he had destroyed their party. Congress was amazed. There was talk of impeachment proceedings. Popular indignation was extreme and unreasoning. The White House had sold out the country to Wall Street. Mankind was about to be crucified upon a cross of gold. The principle of evil had at last prevailed.
Thus people reacted emotionally to an event which marked the beginning of a return of sanity. Upon the verities of the case the effect of Cleveland’s act was positive. While the nation raved the malady itself began to yield. That ophidian monster which was devouring the gold reserve began to disintegrate from the tail upward. Presently only the head was left and that disappeared with the arrival of the first consignment of gold from Europe under the government’s contract with the bankers.
The full cure of course was not immediate. But never again were people altogether mad. As the tide reverses its movement invisibly, with many apparent self-contradictions in the surf line on the sand, so it is with the course of events. Between the tail of the ebb and the first of the flood there is a time of slack with no tendency at all. That also is true in the rhythm of human activities.