A friend asked me to review this old book, and since it covers a period before your time, I thought you might be interested in reading this first draft.

Review of W. H. Harvey's
Coin's Financial School

The tattered and faded book from which these photostats were made awakens nostalgic memories of the last decade of the nineteenth century, when depression-inspired pursuit of the solution of the money problem made passionate partisans of all men. Those were the days when one could get at least emotional exhilaration out of an otherwise dry-as-dust subject.

The "free silver" crusade of the late eighteen-nineties marked an epoch in American history. It was the all-time high for popular interest in the money problem, approached in fervor only by the Andrew Jackson campaign against the Second United States Bank. It divided the nation not only politically, but also geographically. Had the depression continued until the end of the decade, there might have been a schism between the West and South against the East, for the latter was considered by the former as "the enemy's country”.

Josh Billings said, "The less people know, the more they suspect." The people, knowing little about the cause of the misbehavior of money, instinctively became suspicious. The demonetization of silver, called "the crime of 1873," served the need for the emotional surge. Added fuel was supplied by the suspicion that England had inspired the "crime."

The "gold bug" partisans for the gold standard against bimetallism were equally off the beam of reason, and answered their opponents with invective and diatribe. A veritable groundswell lifted all men into the air. While the free silverites were no more rational than the gold bugs, the writings of' "Coin" Harvey gave a scholastic background to the former, for they were written in pedantic style and were widely read.

The torrent of hot words reached its climax in the presidential campaign of 1896 with William McKinley, the Republican candidate, opposed by William Jennings Bryan, "the boy orator of the Platte," who stampeded the Democratic convention with his impassioned speech concluded with the peroration, "thou shalt not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns nor crucify mankind on a cross of gold." Though the campaign was a contest of passions, the race was not decided by the amount of heat generated, but by cold and brutal strategy conceived by Mark Hanna, the McKinley manager who enlisted the banks to pressure manufacturers to post ultimata on their plants. In cases where the plants were closed, a promise was made that they would open immediately after election if McKinley were elected. On the open plants, the poster carried the threat that they would close if McKinley were not elected.

But for this thrust at the breadbasket, the silverites might well have carried the election. For the force of their crusade, much if not the major credit must be given to "Coin" Harvey. His technique merits examination.

Harvey’s style of writing was popular mainly because he personalized the subject by boldly using the names of prominent Chicago businessmen and bankers and publishers as stooges to appear at his "school" to ask the questions he wished to be asked, and brought off each fictitious encounter with a personal triumph of his little hero, Coin. The tactic second in importance was his liberal use of cartoons. He artfully professed throughout the book that he appealed only to reason and abjured sentiment, but as one comes to the end of the book one discovers that he used the method of Mark Antony at the grave of Caesar, for he climaxed with the most incendiary words.

While the conspiracy theme of the "Crime of '73" is not referred to in the book proper, there are appended two chapters of his A Tale of Two Nations, wherein the fiction is given form with the arch conspirator being the English "Baron Roth." The reader can easily supply the second syllable." A certain Senator, the American co-conspirator and mercenary, is easily identified as John Sherman, author of the "infamous" Sherman Act that demonetized silver. Such were the tools with which the little master, Coin, biased the minds of his readers.

After the presidential election had put out the fire, what resulted from the great conflagration? The silverites had argued that the demonetization of silver had cut half the base from under money, thereby reducing circulation and bringing hard times. The gold bugs had maintained that "sound money" could be had only with a gold base. Silver was not remonetized, and the gold standard held full sway until another and worse depression, which overtook the nation in 1930-1933, brought forth the theory that the trouble came from trying to maintain any metallic base. In 1934 gold was demonetized, and we are today without any "redemption money.”

So it was all much ado about nothing. The partisans of one metal and the partisans of two metals were not talking about money at all. They were merely debating, in their torrid fashion, whether the government should peg the price of one metal or two. But the Turkish bath was good for the nation, because it got some poisons out of the system.

So intricate are the machinations of money and so complicated are the causes of its misbehavior, that it baffles even calm reasoning, and solution is hopeless when emotion confounds logic. The moral is that there will never be a solution of the money problem through groundswells and prairie fires.