ring the result.

William McKinley was advertised as the "Advance Agent of Prosperity,"
and before he was inaugurated in March, 1897, prosperity was in sight.
His election had destroyed all fear that the currency would be upset by
legislative act, while the liquidation after the panic of 1893 had
nearly run its course. Business was reviving, crops were improving, and
the luckless farmers of the Western plains had abandoned their farms or
learned how to use them. After 1896 the financial danger was not silver
but gold inflation. In that year great mines were opened in Alaska,
drawing heavy immigration to the valley of the Yukon and, a little
later, to the beach at Nome. Other discoveries increased the gold output
and flooded the world with the more precious metal. By 1900 prices were
rising instead of falling, and public interest was turned upon the high
cost of living rather than the low prices of the previous period. The
average annual output of gold for the fifteen years ending in 1896 was
$132,000,000. For the fifteen years beginning in 1896, it was
$337,000,000. The election of McKinley was in name a victory for the
Republican party, but was in reality one for sound money. The
organization upon which he stood was an amalgamation of creditors and
manufacturers, reenforced by gold-standard men of all parties. Without
the aid of the last element he could hardly have been elected, on this
or any other issue. When he took office the Republican party had control
in both houses of Congress, had been elected on a money issue, but had a
permanent organization based upon the tariff propaganda. Before his
inauguration, Hanna declared that the election was a mandate for a new
protective tariff, and one of McKinley's earliest official acts was to
summon Congress to meet in special session, to fulfill that mandate, on
March 15, 1897.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The most popular document in the free-silver propaganda was W.H. Harvey,
_Coin's Financial School_ (_c._ 1894). This was replied to by Horace
White, _Coin's Financial Fool; or the Artful Dodger Exposed_ (_c._
1896); and the same author, in _Money and Banking_ (4th ed., 1911),
discusses the economics of free silver. The best economic arguments for
free silver came from the pens of Francis A. Walker and E. Benjamin
Andrews. The Reports of the International Monetary Conferences (at
Paris, 1867 and 1881, and at Brussels, 1892) are useful upon the attempt
to establish a currenc