But from the very commencement of the war there had been felt at Washington a strong controlling influence emanating from the money centres. The issue of the demand notes of the government during the first year had furnished a portion of the revenues required, and had served to recall the teachings of the earlier statesmen and the demonstrations of history--that paper money bottomed on taxes would prove a great blessing to the people, and a just exercise of governmental functions. This was only too evident to those controlling financial operations at the great money centres. The nation was alive to the necessities of the government; the people answered the calls for troops with such promptness as to block the channels of transportation, often drilling in camp, without arms, awaiting production from the constantly running armories. Those camps represented the people. From them all eyes were bound to the source of supply of the munitions of war; in them all hearts burned for the time for action, even though that meant danger and death. There were other camps from which gray-eyed greed looked with far different motives. The issue of their own promissory notes, based upon a possibility of substituting confidence for coin, had proven in the past of vast profit to the note-issuers of the great money centres. The exercise of that power by the government would inevitably destroy one great source of their profits, and transfer it to the people. Sixty millions of the people's own notes, circulating among them as money, withstanding the effect of the suspension of specie payments by both the banks and the national Treasury, was a forceful object-lesson to all classes. To the people, it brought a strong ray of hope to brighten the darkness of the war cloud. To some among the metropolitan bankers who in after years prated so loudly of their patriotism and financial sagacity, it brought to view only the danger of curtailed profits. The government Treasury was empty; troops in the field were unpaid and uncomplaining; merchants furnishing supplies, seriously embarrassed for the lack of money in the channels of trade. The sixty millions of demand notes were absorbed by the nation's commerce like a summer storm on parched soil. Under such circumstances, at the urgent request of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives framed a bill authorizing the issue of one hundred and fifty millions of bonds, and the same amount of Treasury notes, the latter to be a full legal tender, and fundable in an interest-bearing bond at the option of the holder. The contest between the popular branch of the government and the Senate, upon this measure, forms one of the most interesting and instructive lessons of the financial legislation of the nation. In the Senate, a bitter and determined opposition to the legal-tender clause was developed. The associated banks of New York had adopted a resolution