away from what they regard as its tyrannies. A people may thus bring disaster on themselves and ruin to their fortunes, but the law remains. . . . The co-ordination of knowledge gathered from the experience of many centuries is by no means an easy thing. Dependence therefore, on great thinkers and writers becomes necessary for the masses."
Mr. Scott lived to see the silver fallacy completely abandoned and his resistance to it lauded from one end of the nation to the other. His success may be better appreciated when it is noted that his own party—Republican—in several state platforms, in Oregon, sustained the silver propaganda and other times "straddled" it. Oregon had been represented in Congress by men who supported free silver, but in 1896 they and numerous other politicians, who long had fought Mr. Scott's money "principles," were converted to the gold standard.
It need not be said that each advance of the silver propaganda was opposed by the Oregon Editor at big personal sacrifice. Circulation and earnings of the newspaper which he edited were greatly depleted. Silver adherents were numerous and aggressive and probably a big majority of the population of the State in the early contest. He attacked the Bland Silver Act of 1878 and the Sherman Silver Act of 1890; pointed out that the government was unable to circulate the silver currency provided in those acts because business would not retain it; showed that each act was depleting the gold redemption reserve; predicted disaster, collapse, and silver basis of values. These writings, covering a period of twenty years, are a marvel of literary force and reasoning power. From the first appearance of the silver delusion in 1877 he predicted the financial crisis that culminated in 1885 and 1893. On November 7, 1877, when silver advocates were pressing the issue that resulted in the Bland law, he said: "A debased and unstable silver currency will take the place of gold as fast as silver can be coined. All the talk about a double standard is merest moonshine. Gold and silver, everyone should know, will not circulate together when the former is so much more valuable.
