For the disease, as they diagnosed it, they had a remedy. The government, they said, had been generous to Wall Street and financial interests at large by selling bonds at rates which made great fortunes for the narrow group of purchasers, and by distributing its deposits among the banks in need of assistance. The power of the government could also be used for the benefit of another class--namely, themselves. Gold should be brought down and the currency extended by the free coinage of silver on a basis of sixteen to one. The value of crops, when measured in money, would thus mount upwards, and it would be easier to pay the interest on mortgages and discharge their indebtedness. Furthermore, while the government was in the business of accommodating the public it might loan money to the farmers at a low rate of interest.[40] But the inflation of the currency and the increase of prices of farm products by the free coinage of silver were the leading demands of the discontented agrarians--an old remedy for an old disease. FOOTNOTES: [34] See below, p. 296. [35] See above, p. 121. [36] See above, pp. 67 ff. [37] They polled about a million votes in the congressional elections of 1878. [38] See above, p. 137. [39] See above, p. 106. [40] It is interesting to note that agricultural credit--a subject in which European countries are far advanced--is just now beginning to receive some attention in quarters where the demands of the farmers for better terms on borrowed money were once denounced as mere vagaries. CHAPTER VII THE CAMPAIGN OF 1896 It does not require that distant historical perspective, which is supposed to be necessary for final judgments, to warrant the assertion that the campaign of 1896 marks a turning point in the course of American politics. The monetary issue, on which events ostensibly revolved, was, it is true, an ancient one, but the real conflict was not over the remonetization of silver or the gold standard. Deep, underlying class feeling found its expression in the conventions of both parties, and particularly that of the Democrats, and forced upon the attention of the country, in a dramatic manner, a conflict between great wealth and the lower middle and working classes, which had hitherto been recognized only in obscure circles. The sectional or vertical cleavage of American politics was definitely cut by new lines running horizontally through society, and was also crossed at right angles by another line running north and south, representing the western protest against eastern creditors and the objectionable methods of great corporations which had been rapidly unfolded to public view by merciless criticism and many legislative investigations.