Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/374

350 maintained under all circumstances. The panic was checked, but a nervous disquietude remained which made the public mind morbidly susceptible to discouraging impressions. Soon the Treasury gold actually fell below $100,000,000, and the charm of safety which in the popular imagination hung about that reserve was broken. Business failures rapidly multiplied. In May, banks began to break at a terrific rate, especially in the West. The closing of the mints in India to the free coinage of silver caused a sudden fall of twenty points in the price of that metal. No intelligent man could doubt that, if the monthly silver purchases and the issuing of paper money standing for silver continued, the disappearance of our stock of gold would go on at an accelerating pace, and the monetary system of the country would soon be on the silver basis—a catastrophe involving the ruin of our National credit and a most disastrous confusion to all our business interests. The repeal of the silver purchase law was therefore the first necessity.

It was expected that President Cleveland would call an extra session of Congress for this purpose, to meet at the earliest possible period. But he put off that extra session until August—thinking, perhaps, that the public mind was not yet prepared for the repeal of the Sherman act, or that Congress would be better prepared for it later.

When Congress met in August, 1893, Mr. Cleveland had, like many other Presidents before him, lost some of the honeymoon popularity, and even some more important elements of strength that he had possessed a few months before. His anxious desire to save the country from the dire consequences of the silver purchase law and to bring about the reformation of the tariff had seduced him into efforts to win the favor, or at least to avert the displeasure, of Members of Congress by way of meeting their wishes in making appointments to office. To use