THE UNITED STATES, I. UNTIL 1900 289 
the available statistical material would not suffice for establishing 
conclusive results. Here, as in the larger sweep of the trade of the 
United States, the consonance of the general course of events with 
the received doctrine is undeniable, while yet it remains uncertain 
whether the several steps took place in the precise manner 
presumed. 
In other respects also the situation in these years was perplexing. 
Monetary and credit conditions were affected by disturbing factors 
of quite an unusual kind. The silver coinage, begun in 1878, 
injected into the currency system a new constituent, which grew by 
steady accretions side by side with the irregular movements of 
gold. For a while the new silver money served in the main merely 
to displace national bank notes, but as time went on its influence 
was no longer neutralized in this way. How much of the silver 
currency (used chiefly as pocket money) was simply in proportion 
to the general increase of population and production; how much of 
it was an injection into the circulating medium greater than sufficed 
to maintain the needed increment of money of this type and effi- 
cacy; how far it should be regarded as equivalent to gold that 
would otherwise have come in — here are problems that not only 
call for painstaking inquiry into the details of financial history, but 
involve conjectures and estimates which it seems impracticable to 
test with the available statistical material. 
And in the end this very element, the silver issues, had still 
a further effect and introduced still a further complication. The 
next decade (1890-1900) was marked by the climax of the silver 
controversy, the abrupt stoppage of the silver issues in 1893, the 
defeat of the silver advocates in the presidential election of 1896, 
the currency act of 1900 and therewith the definitive acceptance of 
the gold standard. How disturbed were the events of the period, 
how extraordinary the swings from activity to depression, and then 
again from depression to activity, is familiar.! The crisis of 1893 
and the ensuing period of depression marked the middle of the 
decade. Before it, and again after it, there happened to come on 
1 Dewey, Financial History of the United States, Chs. XIX, XX; Noyes, Forty 
Years of American Finance, Chs. VI-XII.