e in the treasury.

On the 21st of April I made the final call for all outstanding 10-
40 bonds. With this call the refunding operations were practically
at an end for the time. A good deal of correspondence was had as
to priority of bids and sales of refunding certificates, but this
was closed, at the end of ninety days, by the full payment of the
called bonds, and the substitution of bonds bearing a lower rate
of interest. This was accomplished without the loss of a dollar,
or, so far as I can recall, without a lawsuit.

The aggregate amount of bonds refunded from March 4, 1877, to July
21, 1879, was $845,345,950.

The annual interest saved by this operation was $14,290,416.50.

The general approval and appreciation of these results was manifested
by the public press, and especially in Europe. Mr. Conant, in a
letter dated April 19, said:

"On yesterday morning, at the stock exchange, just after the opening
hour, a McLean's cable dispatch was posted up, stating that you
had entered into a contract with a syndicate for the sale of
$150,000,000 of four per cent. bonds, against the outstanding 10-
40 five per cent. bonds. People were astounded at the information,
and they were all the more astonished because the operation followed
so closely upon the transaction of the 4th instant. The effect of
this has been to send the price of the bonds up by three-fourths
per cent., and to create a demand for them."

From the date of these transactions the bonds of the United States
rapidly advanced in value. Many similar transactions of my successors
in office have been made at a still lower rate of interest.

Among the agreeable incidents connected with the resumption of
specie payments was the adoption of resolutions by the Chamber of
Commerce of New York, on the 2nd of July, 1879. The second resolution
was as follows:

"_Resolved_, That this Chamber tenders its congratulations to the
Honorable the Secretary of the Treasury, at once the framer and
executor of the law of 1875, upon the success which has attended
his administration of the national finances; as well in the funding
of the public debt, as in the measures he has pursued to restore
a sound currency."

I subsequently received, by the hands of William E. Dodge, late
president of the Chamber of Commerce of New York, a letter from
that body asking me to sit for my portrait to be placed on the
walls of their Chamber. On the 24th of February I sent the fol