is a part of the total volume of the
currency of the country. The volume of currency as a whole is the
force by which the salable value of commodities is affected.

In truth, gold plays a small part only in actual business. It is a
regulator of business rather than an active instrument for the
transaction of business. It is not an exaggeration to say that the
use of gold in business is limited to a small fraction of one per cent
of the aggregate transactions in countries where gold is the standard.

It is not improbable that in the near future the world is to meet a
surfeit of gold, as it is now meeting a surfeit of silver. Yet even
then its capacity as a standard will not be affected. History does
not carry us to a time when gold was not the recognized standard for
the measurement of every other kind of property, and that not by one
tribe or people only, but by mankind in every clime and in every stage
of savageness or of civilization.

As the Mint Bill and the demonetization of silver have occupied the
attention of the country for a third of a century, and as there may be
a revival of the controversy at a time in the future I have thought it
wise for me to make a record of the facts in the most enduring form at
my command.

At the end this is my claim for the Mint Bill of 1873: It established
the gold standard for the United States for all time. All the
subsequent legislation has rested upon the fact that the Statute of
1873 made the gold dollar the standard of value in the United States.

XXXV
BLACK FRIDAY--SEPTEMBER 24, 1869

So much time has passed since September 24, 1869, that there may be a
large public who may become interested in a review of the events of the
spring and summer of that year which culminated in Wall Street, New
York, in the transactions and experiences of the day known as "Black
Friday."

When the Forty-first Congress assembled in December of that year, the
House of Representatives directed the Committee on Banking and
Currency "to investigate the causes that led to the unusual and
extraordinary fluctuations of gold in the city of New York, from the
21st to the 27th of September, 1869." The committee made a report
which was printed under date of March 1, 1870, and which may be found
in a volume entitled "Garfield's Report on the Gold Panic
Investigation." From that report it appears that certain persons in
the city of New York entered into an arrangement, or understanding, or