ident Harrison demonstrated that it would
furnish ample revenue to support the government, and it should have
remained on the statute book with such slight changes as experience
might have shown to be necessary. The Democratic party, however,
was opposed to the protective features of this law, took advantage
of its defects, and, subsequently, when that party came into power,
it unwisely undertook to make a new tariff which has proven to be
insufficient to yield the needed revenue, and thus created the
necessity of using, for current expenses, the reserve of gold
specially accumulated in the treasury for the redemption of United
States notes.

I felt the deepest interest in this campaign, not from the selfish
desire to hold longer an office I had held for nearly thirty years,
but I thought that in Ohio we were to have a great financial battle,
upon the result of which might depend the monetary system of the
United States. On the 17th of August I said to a reporter:

"The people of the east do not seem to understand this campaign.
They do not appear to have any comprehension of what it means to
them as well as the country. No matter what their differences upon
the tariff question may be, every Republican who wishes the success
of his party should be made to understand that there is another
and perhaps a graver question to be settled in Ohio this year.
While our politics for the past few campaigns have hinged upon
minor questions, we are to-day brought back to the financial problem
which we all thought had been settled, in 1875, when Mr. Hayes won
the fight for an honest dollar against Governor Allen, who represented
the liberal currency idea. Then it came in the guise of greenbacks,
and now it comes in the garb of free silver. That conflict made
Mr. Hayes President of the United States. What the decision may
be this year no man can tell."

I further said the arguments that year were identically the same
as in the Hayes and Allen contest if the word "silver" were
substituted for "greenbacks." The Democrats had declared for
unlimited coinage, and we had declared against it. The Farmers'
Alliance came in as allies of the Democracy, but, while they were
an unknown quantity, they did not appear to be very dangerous. I
could not find that they made much impression on Republican farmers.
It had fallen to the lot of Ohio to be the battle ground on which
these financial question were fought, but we had never been sadd