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n amendment to the Bland Bill, taking away its free-coinage character and substituting a requirement to buy a specified amount of silver bullion each month--from $2,000,000 to $4,000,000 worth--and coin it. Thus amended, the House concurred in the act, which Hayes vetoed in February, 1878. It became a law over his veto. The Administration was embarrassed in its financial policy, but not defeated. The Resumption Bill withstood attacks and, as the day for the resumption of specie payment approached, the price of greenbacks reflected the growing credit of the United States. It reached par two weeks before the appointed day. When that day arrived, Wednesday, January 1, 1879, John Sherman had the satisfaction of seeing the change to a coin basis effected without a shock. More gold was turned into the Treasury for exchange with greenbacks than greenbacks for redemption in gold. It appeared that Horace Greeley had been right when he had maintained that "the way to resume is to resume,"--that few would want gold if they could get it. The adherence of Hayes to the gold standard and resumption drove from his side another body of Republicans. He had now lost the reformers and the spoilsmen, the radical Republicans and the inflationists, and no one hoped or believed that he would recall his pledge for a single term and be renominated in 1880 to succeed himself. The disintegration of his party was as complete as the collapse of its issues. On no subject, between 1876 and 1880, was it possible to bring before the public a distinctive party issue. The uncertainties of the campaign of 1876 were increased during the next four years. Both parties had ceased to represent either policies or the people. The office-holders were in no sense the leaders of their communities. Industry, social life, education, and religion had parted company with politics since the decline of the Union issue, and unless a new political alignment could be found there was a prospect of continued rivalry for offices alone. Yet men were beginning to realize that a new period of growth had begun during the Hayes Administration, and that American institutions, formulated before the Civil War, had ceased to meet industrial needs. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE J.F. Rhodes terminates his great history with the election of 1876, and although he has promised sometime to continue it, he has as yet published only a few scattered essays upon the later period. A.M. Gibson,
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