REMINISCENCES 103
value at 16 to 1 until 1873. Then, by mistake or design, silver was dropped out in revising or codifying the coinage laws. Congressmen denied that it had been done intention- ally. A great clamor went up all over the United States, the great silver producing country of the world, for the remone- tization of silver, for "free silver" or "bimetallism," as it was variously called. The Pacific Coast and all the silver pro- ducing states and territories, which produced about $70,000,000 a year, were greatly damaged. All parties professed to be in favor of remonetizing silver, for twenty years. Suddenly the "gold bugs" took control, first of Grover Cleveland and a part of the Democratic party, and then of Wm. McKinley, who had advocated silver, and the leading faction of the Re- publican party, and changed the financial system of the United States. Now an army of financial doctors are trying to devise some scheme by which promises to pay money can take the place of money, but all the promises stipulated that they must eventually be paid in "gold coin," when the government, the banks, the corporations and the individuals who make these promises know there is not enough "gold coin" in the world and never can be, to pay ten cents on the dollar of their promises.
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The gold standard candidate for Governor and a lot of imported hired orators from the East made a whirlwind cam- paign throughout Oregon in 1898. They whooped up the war against Spain, and made it clear to themselves and to a majority of the voters that if any nominee on the Union ticket should be elected, the volunteers who were being marched around through Oregon, at large expense, for political effect, would be without food and clothing in the Philippine Islands or wherever they should be. The election of a state officer in Oregon opposed to the gold standard would paralyze the army and navy of the United States, and the sons and brothers of Oregon voters might starve and go naked while fighting for their country in foreign lands! The re-election of the Sec-
