Congress met in pursuance of the proclamation, and on the 8th of August the President sent a message to each House, in which he depicted an alarming condition of the national finances, and attributed it to congressional legislation touching the purchase and coinage of silver by the general government. He said:
"This legislation is embodied in a statute passed on the 14th day of July, 1890, which was the culmination of much agitation on the subject involved, and which may be considered a truce, after a long struggle, between the advocates of free silver coinage and those intending to be more conservative."
He ascribed the evil of the times to the monthly purchase of 4,500,000 ounces of silver bullion, and the payment therefor with treasury notes redeemable in gold or silver coin at the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury, and to the reissue of said notes after redemption. He stated that up to the 15th of July, 1893, such notes had been issued for the purpose mentioned to the amount of more than $147,000,000. In a single year over $40,000,000 of these notes had been redeemed in gold. This threatened the reserve of gold held for the redemption of United States notes, and the whole financial system of the government. No other subject was presented in the message of the President, and Congress had to face the alternative of the single standard of silver, or the suspension of the purchase of silver bullion.
I had foreseen this inevitable result and had sought, as far as possible, to avoid it by the inserting of sundry provisions in the act of July 14, 1890. No portion of that act was objected to by the President except the clause requiring the purchase of silver bullion and the issue of treasury notes in payment for it. In this I heartily concurred with him. From the date of the passage of that law, to its final repeal, I was opposed to this compulsory clause, but yielded to its adoption in preference to the free coinage of silver, and in the hope that a brief experience under the act would dissipate the popular delusion in favor of free coinage. Joseph H. Walker, of Massachusetts, a prominent Member of the House of Representatives, who was one of the conferees with me on the bill referred to, and agreed with me in assenting to it, wrote me a letter, my reply to which was in substantial accordance with the subsequent message of the President and with the action taken by Congress. I insert it here:
"Mansfield, O., July 8, 1893.
"Hon. J. H. Walker.
"My Dear Sir:—Yours of 28th ult., inclosing a copy of your statement of the causes that led Mr. Conger, yourself and me to agree with reluctance to the silver act of 1890, is received. An answer had been delayed by my absence at Chicago. You clearly and correctly state the history of that act. The bill that passed the House provided for the purchase of $4,500,000 worth of silver at gold value. The Senate struck out this provision and provided for the free coinage of silver or the purchase of all that was offered at the rate of 129 cents an ounce. As conferees acting for the two Houses, it was our duty to bring about an agreement, if practicable, without respect to individual opinion. The result of the conference was to reject free coinage and to provide for the purchase of four million five hundred thousand ounces of silver at its gold price— a less amount than was proposed by the House, the provisions declaring the public policy of the United States to maintain the parity of the two metals or the authority to stipulate on the contracts for payments in gold, the limit of the issue of treasury notes to the actual cost of silver bullion at gold value, and the repeal of the act providing for the senseless coinage of silver dollars when we already had 300,000,000 silver dollars in the treasury we could not circulate, were all in the line of sound money.
"Another object I had in view was to secure a much needed addition to our currency, then being reduced by the compulsory retirement of national bank notes in the payment of United States bonds. This would have been more wisely provided by notes secured by both gold and silver, but such a provision could not then be secured. These reasons fully justified the compromise.
"But the great controlling reason why we agreed to it was that it was the only expedient by which we could defeat the free coinage of silver. Each of us regarded the measure proposed by the Senate as a practical repudiation of one-third of the debts of the United States, as a substantial reduction of the wages of labor, as a debasement of our currency to a single silver standard, as the demonetization of gold and a sharp disturbance of all our business relations with the great commercial nations of the world. To defeat such a policy, so pregnant with evil, I was willing to buy the entire product of American silver mines at its gold value.
"And that was what we provided, guarded as far as we could. To accomplish our object we had to get the consent of the Republican Representatives from the silver-producing states. This we could only do by buying the silver product of those states. It was a costly purchase. The silver we purchased is not worth as much as we paid for it, but this loss is insignificant compared to our gain by the defeat of the free coinage of silver. It is said there was no danger of free coinage, that the President would have vetoed it. We had no right to throw the responsibility upon him. Besides, his veto would leave the Bland act in force. We did not believe that his veto would dispel the craze that then existed for free coinage. Many people wanted the experiment tried. The result of the experiment of buying four and a half million ounces of silver a month at its market value will be the best antidote against the purchase of the silver of the world at one-third more than its market value.
"I never for a moment regretted the passage of the act of 1890, commonly called the 'Sherman act,' though, as you know, I had no more to do with it than the other conferees. There is but one provision in it that I would change and that is to strike out the compulsory purchase of a given quantity of silver and give authority to the Secretary of the Treasury to buy silver bullion at its market price when needed for subsidiary coinage. The only position we can occupy in the interests of our constituents at large is one fixed standard of value and the use of both metals at par with each other, on a ratio as near as possible to their market value.