Stimulants or Inflation only bring final collapse.
FROM CARTOONS BY THOMAS NAST IN “HARPER’S WEEKLY,” DECEMBER 20, 1873
“Immediate resumption, if practicable, would not be desirable. It would compel the debtor class to pay, beyond their contracts, the premium on gold at the date of their purchase, and would bring bankruptcy and ruin to thousands.”
RESUMPTION (?)
UNCLE SAM: “There is no circulation in that leg, and it’s swelling every day more and more. Mortification will set in, and I am sure my other leg will be affected. Now Dr. SHERMAN, something must be done, and quick, too.”
FROM A CARTOON BY THOMAS NAST IN “HARPER’S WEEKLY,” NOVEMBER 29, 1879
But Grant, like other Republican Presidents, set his face like a flint against further inflation. When he received from a Congress controlled by his own party the so-called “Inflation Bill” of 1874, authorizing the increase of the volume of greenbacks to $400,000,000, he promptly returned it with his veto. John Sherman, a leading member of the Senate Committee on Finance, who had been unwilling to follow McCulloch in 1865, became convinced by 1873 that the time had come for setting a definite date for specie resumption. His method was not to retire the greenbacks, but to provide a gold fund for their current redemption. It was not until the crushing Republican defeat in the Congressional elections of 1874, however, that the party was ready for action. In the short session of December a special committee of Republican senators was appointed, from whose labors emerged the Resumption Act of January 14, 1875. It was a vague and evasive measure, purposely avoiding questions upon which there were wide differences of opinion; but it contained the one salient declaration that “on and after the first day of January, 1879, the Secretary of the Treasury shall redeem in coin the United States legal-tender notes then outstanding, on their presentation for redemption at the office of the Assistant Treasurer of the United States in the City of New York.” It also placed power in the hands of the Secretary of the Treasury to prepare and provide for resumption.