us opposition to civil service reform on the part of the
politicians of both parties, and the indifference of the public, I
confess that I am amazed at the progress which has been made. Such a
reform is of course effected only by a number of contributing causes and
some favoring circumstances, but I feel certain that it was accelerated
by the constant and vigorous support of _The Nation_.

I owe to _The Nation_ more than to any other agency my correct ideas on
finance in two crises. The first was the "greenback craze" from 1869 to
1875. It was easy to be a hard-money man in Boston or New York, where
one might imbibe the correct doctrine as one everywhere takes in the
fundamental principles of civilization and morality. But it was not so
in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, where the severe money stringency
before and during the panic of 1873, and the depression after it, caused
many good and representative men to join in the cry for a larger issue
of greenbacks by the government. It required no moral courage for the
average citizen to resist what in 1875 seemed to be the popular move,
but it did require the correct knowledge and the forcible arguments put
forward weekly by _The Nation_. I do not forget my indebtedness to John
Sherman, Carl Schurz, and Senator Thurman, but Sherman and Thurman were
not always consistent on this question, and Schurz's voice was only
occasionally heard; but every seven days came _The Nation_ with its
unremitting iteration, and it was an iteration varied enough to be
always interesting and worthy of study. As one looks back over nearly
forty years of politics one likes to recall the occasions when one has
done the thing one's mature judgment fully approves; and I like to think
that in 1875 I refused to vote for my party's candidate for governor,
the Democratic William Allen, whose platform was "that the volume of
currency be made and kept equal to the wants of trade."

A severer ordeal was the silver question of 1878, because the argument
for silver was more weighty than that for irredeemable paper, and was
believed to be sound by business men of both parties. I remember that
many representative business men of Cleveland used to assemble around
the large luncheon table of the Union Club and discuss the pending
silver-coinage bill, which received the votes of both of the senators
from Ohio and of all her representatives except Garfield. The gold men
were in a minority also at the luncheon table, b