Brent and Wharton returned the next day to New York. They prepared to coöperate with the administration for the maintenance of financial and commercial tranquillity in every possible way. Then came the assembling of Congress. Some disappointment was expressed in many quarters over the president’s message. More had been expected of the administration in the way of relief legislation than the document suggested. But if there was any lack of financial panaceas, Congress speedily supplied it. The variety of schemes and measures for accomplishing all manner of desirable ends seemed infinite. The deluge of private bills soon disappeared in committee archives, most of them attracting no attention on their rapid path to oblivion. The president proved a true prophet in the matter of propositions regarding silver. Most of the low grade silver mines of the West, which had shut down two years before owing to the demonetization of the metal and its low price, had reopened, and were producing at their utmost capacity. There had been much investment and speculative buying of the metal for a few months, in consequence of the decline or superabundance of gold. The champions of the silver interest now came forward with proposals that the free coinage of gold should be suspended, and that at least one half the production of the mints should be silver, at the reëstablished ratio of fifteen to one, which for centuries had marked the relative value of the two metals. The attitude finally taken by the Administration party, as it came to be known, was not one of direct opposition to the silver men. It was urged that the whole question was too widespread in its bearings for the American Congress, or any other single legislative authority, to attempt to give it independent solution. The world had grown too small, and all its interests were too closely interwoven for any country to be able to maintain an individual monetary policy. Unity of principle and of action had become indispensable. The United States had learned this lesson at sore expense only two years before, and to seek its repetition would be a stupendous folly. The argument prevailed. The opposition to silver on the old grounds had disappeared. The demand simply for international coöperation could not be reasonably resisted. The suggestion of an international monetary conference speedily received unanimous approval. The invitation was issued by the president to only the principal European powers late in November. It received a promptly favorable response in every case, and it was soon decided that the conference should meet in Paris on the second week in January of the following year, 1896.