We shall load ourselves with silver coin and the benefit will fall to other nations, to which our gold will be exported as fast as it comes from the mints or the mines." Yet so elastic was the resource of the country that the collapse was deferred much longer than he thought possible. The force that saved the Nation was President Cleveland, who drove repeal of the silver purchase law in 1893, and maintained the gold redemption fund of the government. These acts, said Mr. Scott, earned Cleveland the lasting gratitude of the country. On the death of Cleveland in 1908, he wrote (June 25):
"A man who performed services to his country at a critical time scarcely excelled by more than two or three of our Presidents, was Grover Cleveland. He was the man for a crisis and he had at once the intelligence, the purpose and the firmness to do his work. . . . No man of clearer vision, in a peculiar crisis, or more resolute to meet the demands of an occasion, has ever appeared in our affairs. His second election was one of the fortunate incidents of the history of the United States. ... In all our history the act of no statesman has been more completely vindicated by results, and by the recognition of his countrymen, than that of Grover Cleveland in ridding the country of the financial fallacies that attended the silver fiat-money propaganda."
In contrast with Cleveland's firmness, said the Editor, was the vacillating policy of McKinley, who during years in Congress paltered with the silver question, failed to see it a dividing and uncompromising issue and, with reluctance, allied himself finally with the gold standard in 1896. 'The President's course," said the Editor December 10, 1899, "has been one of indecision and hesitation. It has been the course of a politician fearful of the effect on his own political fortunes of any open and strong utterance or decided policy." And again, September 26, 1908: "McKinley tried sorely the patience of many, who understood perfectly that gold and silver had long since and forever parted company on the old ratio."
"International bimetallism"—free silver coinage by agreement of the great nations—Mr. Scott declared as impossible as the scheme for the United States alone, because laws of value
