There was the end. The Senate voted the repeal as proposed by him without further delay. The thing which Senator Gorman had asserted could not be done, was done, because there was a man to see it done. It was a great victory. The public interest triumphed over everything, and that triumph was due to Grover Cleveland alone. The justice of history will never deny him this acknowledgment.
But while the repeal of the silver purchase act averted the most immediate peril, it could by no means stop the source of the evil. It removed one very serious cause of distrust, but it did not restore confidence. The struggle in the Senate had even increased public apprehension as to the resources, the recklessness, the desperate character of the silver movement. That movement has often been likened to the paper inflation “craze” of twenty years before. As to the ultimate ends the two are indeed alike. But the silver movement has in the mining interests of the far West a very strong and well-organized financial power behind it, which the paper inflation movement had not. By means of a well-supplied war chest it can sustain a systematic and incessant agitation, which the paper inflation movement could not. It is, therefore, much more able to take advantage of its local opportunities and to repair the effects of defeat. It dies much harder. Indeed, after the repeal of the silver purchase act it was felt to be still very much alive and capable of mischief. The anxieties it inspired were heightened by other circumstances. The revenues of the Government ran low. The apprehension that the Government would be obliged to draw upon the gold resources of the Treasury for current expenses caused many people, especially foreign investors in the United States, to anticipate this by drawing it out themselves for greenbacks, and to send it abroad. There was also not a little private hoarding of gold at home.
