Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/373

Rh At the close of his Administration in 1893, President Harrison left to his successor, Mr. Cleveland, a cash balance of less than $146,000,000, of which a little more than $103,500,000 was gold—and this would have been considerably less than $100,000,000, the traditional gold reserve held against the greenbacks, had not Mr. Foster, President Harrison's Secretary of the Treasury, obtained several millions of gold for greenbacks from New York bankers, to keep that reserve from falling below the regular mark. Thus President Harrison left to his successor, Mr. Cleveland, over $134,000,000 less in cash assets, and $93,000,000 less in gold, than he had in 1889 received from him. Indeed, Secretary Foster was so anxious lest the gold reserve sink below $100,000,000 before the Republicans went out of power that he made preparations for a sale of Government bonds. This was the legacy left to Mr. Cleveland.

When his Presidential term began the financial crisis of 1893 was well under way. The condition of the Treasury continued to grow weaker. The appropriations made by Congress had been extravagantly lavish, and the McKinley tariff failed to furnish the necessary revenue. The period of deficits, in the place of the former surpluses, set in before that tariff was changed. The resources of the Treasury dwindled as its responsibilities increased. When the small excess of the gold holdings of the Treasury above $100,000,000 threatened to disappear, the country was startled by an announcement, telegraphed from Washington as coming from the Treasury Department, which created the apprehension that when that excess was exhausted, the Treasury notes provided for in the Sherman act would no longer be redeemed in gold. This announcement started a panicky feeling in the business centers. President Cleveland promptly caused the public to be informed that the gold payments would be