WHEN THE GOLD WAS THERE IT WAS NOT WANTED
MARKET conditions did not at once respond to this promise; but after the election of Hayes, a sound-money President, in 1876, and the gradual accumulation of gold, under the guiding hand of John Sherman, as Secretary of the Treasury, the same man who had managed the passage of the Resumption Act, it began to be understood that specie resumption was to be actually accomplished. The banks of New York City, which held about $125,000,000 of the $346,000,000 in legal-tender notes outstanding, abolished special gold deposits and agreed with the Treasury to receive and pay balances without discrimination between gold and notes. The news of these arrangements, completed in November, 1878, removed lingering doubts. In the gold-room of the New York Stock Exchange—the scene of so much agitation on “Black Friday” nine years before—a sale of gold was made, on December 17, 1878, at 12:29 P.M., at par. It was the first sale at par in sixteen years, but so quietly was the transaction accomplished that only three or four persons who stood near the registrar’s desk were cognizant of it. When the first of January, 1879, dawned, the banks, which might have presented millions of notes for gold, did not ask for a dollar; and the dull corridors of the New York Sub-Treasury hardly afforded an indication that the United States had reached and passed a crucial point in her history and on that day had reëntered the circle of solvent nations. Truly, the experience of that day, carefully prepared for as it had been, and attained at much cost and suffering, seemed to verify the contention of those who for many years had insisted that “The way to resume is to resume.”
BE SOUND IN MIND AND BODY
UNCLE SAM: “As long as I keep these outstanding notes on my mind, which I am well able to pay, I am violating the laws of my constitution: and how can I expect my body to recover when my mind is not at ease?”
FROM A CARTOON BY THOMAS NAST IN “HARPER’S WEEKLY,” DECEMBER 13, 1879