on might be a menace unless
there should be some reorganization of society to meet the new problem.
Pending the arrival of that reorganization, prices fell.

A study of the prices of standard commodities shows that there was a
constant, moderate decline after the Civil War. During the war nominal
prices, expressed in depreciated greenbacks, rose far above the normal,
but when corrected to a gold basis they show little change. At the end
of the war, however, the steady decline set in; by 1880 it was
perceptible, and by 1890 it had come to be generally admitted. It
continued until 1900, when the larger production of gold and an extended
use of bank credits and checks, increased the volume and mobility of
currency and started a general rise in prices. Inflationists believed,
in the eighties, that the falling prices were due to an appreciation of
gold, and demanded more money because they so believed; but
overproduction appears to give a better explanation of the decline than
gold appreciation. In the falling prices may be seen a proof of the
enlarged production and a justification of serious study of remedial
measures.

Solutions, intended to restore good prices and to correct social evils,
became numerous as the eighties advanced. Tariff reformers claimed that
the tariff was a vexatious interference with proper freedom of trade,
without which a foreign market for American surplus could not be
obtained. The protected manufacturers retorted that only through a
higher tariff could manufactures be developed and an enlarged consuming
population of factory workers be created at home. A Western economist
brushed both these aside and found the key to the situation in the
disappearance of free land, and urged a single tax upon land as a
panacea. United labor found the cause to be unrestricted immigration.
Too much government, with its extravagance and corruption, was a cause
in the mind of extreme theoretical democrats. Too little government was
equally responsible for the discords, in the eyes of growing groups of
socialists and communists.

Before 1890 the United States was involved in an elaborate discussion of
its troubles and their causes, but in 1880 the period had only just
begun and its trend was not clear to the political leaders who were yet
quarreling over the spoils of office. Hayes was ending his term in
disfavor, and was passing into the jurisdiction of the historians, which
was much more kindly disposed toward hi