aho, Nevada, and Kansas, gained twenty-two electoral votes, and polled
over a million popular votes. Their protest, based on local hard times
and discontent, probably defeated Harrison, while their organization was
ready to receive a large following should the hard times spread.

Harrison was not unwilling to surrender the Government to Cleveland in
March, 1893, for he had been struggling for weeks to conceal the
financial weakness of the United States and to avoid a panic. The great
surplus that had been a motive for legislation for more than ten years
had nearly become a deficit. Continuous prosperity had tempted Congress
to make lavish appropriations. The McKinley Bill had reduced the revenue
through changes in the sugar schedule. The Pension Bill had used other
millions. Internal improvements had been distributed to every section.
The surplus, which had been at $105,000,000 for 1890, fell to
$37,000,000 in 1891, and in the next two years to $9,900,000 and to
$2,300,000. In the spring of 1893 the Treasury was so reduced that any
unexpected shock might cause a suspension. Cleveland's first duty was
with causes and cures.

The surplus had been affected both by increase in expenditures and by
decrease in revenues. The latter had been due in part to the hard times,
which had forced a curtailment of imports, with a resulting shrinkage in
tariff receipts. At the same time an increasing nervousness, based upon
the deterioration in quality of the assets of the United States, showed
itself. The fear of free silver was hastening the day of panic.

Silver and gold had always been traditional American coins, but since
1834 little of the former had been coined or circulated, while between
1862 and 1879 neither variety of specie was ordinarily used as money. In
1873 a codification of coinage laws had omitted from the standard list
the silver dollar, which had been unimportant for nearly forty years;
and when, shortly thereafter, the decline in the price of silver made
its coinage at the ratio of sixteen to one profitable, it was
impossible. The demand for a restoration of silver coinage began with
the silver miners who desired a stimulated market for their output. Some
believed coinage would raise the price of bullion; others thought the
Government would keep up the value of the silver coins, as it did the
greenbacks, by redemption in gold. In 1878 a Free Coinage Act, pushed by
R.P. Bland, was converted into the limited Bland-All