Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/459

 but is not suited to the progressive spirit of our times, and that the shortest way from one point to another is a curve, I shall tell him: ‘You had better go to your hornbook, study your multiplication table, and look at Euclid, who may not have been born here and who died several hundred years ago, but from whom, after all, you might derive some very valuable information.

The outcome of all the discussion was, to Schurz's great disgust, a measure, patched up to secure a sufficient majority in Congress and at the same time the President's approval, providing for substantially twenty-six millions of additional “greenbacks.”

The next session of Congress opened just after the elections of 1874, in which the Republicans met with a general and overwhelming disaster. A new bill dealing with the currency situation was now promptly framed by Sherman and, by the most rigorous party pressure, was ultimately put into such shape as to insure its passage by the Republican majority. This was the famous Resumption Act, setting January 1, 1879, as the date for the payment of the greenbacks in coin. The bill was very defective in many respects, and ambiguous in others, and was at once sharply attacked by Schurz at these weak points. The ambiguities had been left by the Republican caucus because through that process alone could any agreement be reached. Schurz, always free from partisan considerations, was at liberty to expose the weaknesses of the measure, and did so without mercy. But under the pressure of party exigency that had brought the Republicans together, his opposition was overridden and the measure was passed as reported. Because it had some good and important features, he voted for it, but with the regret that he could not get amendments that would make the act more positive and rational.