d that the only hope for a return of prosperity lay in the
immediate repeal of the feature providing for the purchase of new
silver bullion. The clamor was eagerly repeated, and fear eagerly
believed it. At precisely the right moment the President himself made
official proclamation that the rumor was true, and summoned Congress
in extra session to obey the mandate of the bankers. Under this spell
Congress acted and the law was repealed. Thus was the country made
dependent upon gold alone for its new supplies of full-power money,
and thus, aided by similar action elsewhere, was inaugurated an era of
accelerated fall of prices more pronounced than the world has known
since the middle ages, and a precipitate decline of values more
ruinous than any other chronicled in history.

"Agitators and demagogues" indeed! Is it not monstrous that any
intelligent man should believe the present frightful condition of the
country to be due to the work of agitators and demagogues? Mr.
Cleveland of course knows better; but many people have actually been
convinced that some millions of our citizens would rather agitate than
work; that thousands of them have deliberately and by preference
forsworn business and become demagogues by trade. The thoughtful man
knows that agitation is first a result and afterward a cause. It is a
cruel as well as an ignorant thing for Mr. Cleveland and his disciples
to cast into the faces of the suffering producers and workers of the
United States, as a reproach, the fact of their discontent and
complaining. Of course our people are in distress. Of course they are
crying out against it. Of course they will endeavor to learn what
occasions it. And of course when they have ascertained what the matter
is they will agitate for relief. Substantially all men prefer to be
busy about the ordinary and interdependent offices of social life.
This is especially true of the great middle classes in the United
States. Under just and rational laws they will be so. The absence of
such a temper is ground for suspicion against the laws. Existing
conditions confess their weakness and injustice when they revile
admitted discontent. I would rather the cause I believe in sprang from
suffering than that suffering should follow my cause.

The full magnitude of this achievement for the gold standard in the
repeal of the law of 1890, will not be grasped unless we bear in mind
that it occurred at a time when the indications were unusually