Even Congress had shown some disposition to search the mystery. A booming stock market is usually considered the best proof of “good times” and general prosperity, but discordant voices raised here and there suggested that it was not altogether an unmixed blessing. So a drag-net inquiry was proposed at Washington, and it probably would have been ordered had not the day of adjournment been so near. The point most dwelt upon in Washington, and in financial circles too, was the marvelous increase in the country’s supply of gold bullion. Fully ten millions per week of what was described as new or foreign gold had passed through the New York Assay Office. The announcement had just been received that a single deposit of nearly $25,000,000 had been made within a few days. This movement of the precious metal nobody had been able to account for. There had been no importations in the ordinary way. On the contrary, the flow of gold had been in a steady though not large stream out of the country, for the most part to London. The news of the last large deposit had led the House of Representatives to ask information upon the subject from the secretary of the treasury. The answer had been that the recent unusual deposits had all been made by a single firm of brokers in New York, but the government did not know who the brokers were acting for or whence the gold came. The subject was discussed for some hours, with more or less wisdom, in both branches of Congress. Naturally it revived the by no means buried silver question. An increase of fully twenty-five per cent in the country’s supply of gold, the silver advocates argued, should be followed by a proportionate addition to the monetary use of the despised white metal. The mints were working at fullest capacity turning gold into coin under the Free Coinage of Gold Act. Surely a country with such a plethora of gold, in spite of the croakings of the monometallists less than a year ago, could afford to admit some silver to the mints to take its chance with the more valuable metal. This special pleading had no influence upon the supporters of “sound money” theories. It was solely because silver had finally been demonetized, they pointed out, that the country was able to retain its increasing supply of gold from whatever source it had come. The great increase of the precious metal was not in the government Treasury, but in private hands. It did not strengthen the government credit, which would be ruined if it should open its mints to silver. Nobody was quite able to demonstrate clearly even to his own satisfaction that either side was entirely right or altogether wrong. So the arguing convinced no one, and nothing came of it. Congress adjourned on the 4th of March without meddling seriously with a matter which it did not understand.