160 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 



purchased. But the Silver Purchase Act failed to 

 check the downward trend in the value of the metal. 

 The bullion in a silver dollar, which had been worth 

 $1.02 in 1872, had declined to seventy-two cents in 

 1889. It rose to seventy-six in 1891 but then de- 

 clined rapidly to sixty in 1893, and during the next 

 three years the intrinsic value of a "cartwheel" 

 was just about half its legal tender value. 



Even under the Bland-Allison Act the Treasury 

 Department had experienced great difficulty in 

 keeping in circulation a reasonable proportion of 

 the silver dollars and the silver certificates which 

 were issued in lieu of part of them, and in maintain- 

 ing a sufficient gold reserve to insure the stability 

 of the currency. When the Silver Purchase Act 

 went into operation, therefore, the monetary situa- 

 tion contributed its share to conditions which pro- 

 duced the panic of 1893. Thereupon the silver is- 

 sue became more than ever a matter of nation-wide 

 discussion. 



From the Atlantic to the Pacific the country was 

 flooded with controversial writing, much of it cast 

 in a form to make an appeal to classes which had 

 neither the leisure nor the training to master this 

 very intricate economic problem. W. H. Harvey's 

 Coin's Financial School was the most widely read 



