THE “CROSS OF GOLD”
TWENTY-ONE years were to pass, however, before the country was to be extricated finally and absolutely from the shadow of an uncertain monetary standard. Specie resumption had not been accomplished when a bill was passed over the veto of President Hayes, on February 28, 1878, providing for the infusion of large masses of silver dollars into the circulation. This was followed by the so-called Sherman Silver Law of 1890, further increasing the amount of silver to be absorbed by the Treasury. The underlying motive for an increase in the monetary stock was the steady contraction which had been going on in the effort to restore the paper dollar to its old parity with gold; and for a time the country absorbed without apparent risk the additions made by the silver to the currency of the country. Gold exports set in, however, in heavy volume after the law of 1890; the Treasury began to lose its gold; and soon after the inauguration of President Cleveland, in 1893, the country stood face to face with the destruction of the gold standard. Panic supervened, and only at a special session of Congress in the autumn of 1893 was the further purchase of silver suspended by law.
The country lay prostrate for three years under a variety of ills, from which a young prophet from the West sought to rescue it by raising the standard of the free and unlimited coinage of silver “without the aid or consent of any other nation.” For a moment it seemed that the majority of the voters would respond to the electric thrill conveyed by this young leader, William Jennings Bryan, to the Democratic National Convention of 1896, when he wound up his famous speech with the declaration, “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!”