Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/186

 themselves just! as inevitably against international fiat; moreover, the great nations of Europe did not heed free coinage of silver and did not wish it. While international conferences were held in 1867, 1878, 1881 and 1892, he kept hammering away at his "principles" and scored the conferences as illusions and delusions and "bait for gudgeons." On July 15, 1890, he wrote: "The United States might as well invite the nations of Europe to join in giving practical effect to the dreams of Edward Bellamy, as to ask them to join in an agreement for free coinage of silver."

When one considers,that the gold standard idea made slow progress and that the Republican Party sought to evade it as an s late as 1899, the perseverance of Mr. Scott appears the more laudable. Affirmation of the gold standard in 1896 was followed by immediate recovery of confidence and credit and by unparalleled prosperity. Immense stores of gold were released. Mr. Scott occasionally referred to the vindication of sound money doctrine in his subsequent writings. On November 3, 1907, he said: "All the prophecies of the silver propaganda were at once refuted by recovery of business and credit. But the propagandists of silver ever since have been trying to cover up their confusion by the declaration that the recovery has been due to the increased production of gold. It is as shallow an assertion as any other pretense of the silver craze. There was gold enough, had it not been driven to foreign countries and into hiding places at home by continual injection of over-valued Silver into the circulation of the country. . . . Foreign countries, free from fiat money demagogues, had money enough."

Again, on April 8, 1908: "Of this illusion it may be said that not the wildest dreams of the alchemist or of those adventurers who sailed in quest of the Eldorado, were more extraordinary instances of the human power of self-deception. This prodigious fallacy had its origin in the equivocal use of a word." (Dollar.)

Gravest crisis in the industrial history of America, in Mr. Scott's view, was presented by the silver issue in 1896. Both