12. Early in the session a serious difficulty arose in the House of Representatives between the Democrats and the Speaker, Thomas B. Reed, of Maine. The Republican majority in the House was not large, and the minority were easily able in matters of party legislation to break the quorum by refusing to vote. In order to counteract this policy, a new system of rules was reported empowering the Speaker to count the minority as present whether voting or not, and thus to compel a quorum. These rules were violently resisted by the Democrats, and Speaker Reed was denounced by his opponents as an unjust officer. It was under the provision of the new rule that nearly all of the party measures of the fifty-first Congress were adopted. [Sidenote: =The Force Bill.=] 13. One of the most important of these was the attempt to pass through Congress what was known as the Force Bill, by which it was proposed to transfer the control of the Congressional elections in the States of the Union, from State to National authority. This measure provoked the strongest opposition, part of which arose within the Republican party. In the Senate certain Republicans refused to support the bill, and it was finally laid aside for the consideration of other business. [Sidenote: =Free Coinage of Silver.=] 14. A third measure was the attempt to restore silver to a perfect equality with gold in the coinage of the country. Since 1874 there had been an increasing difference in the purchasing power of the two money metals of the country. That is, the purchasing power of gold had, in the last fifteen years, risen about fifteen per cent., while the purchasing power of silver had fallen about five per cent. in the markets of the world. One class of theorists, assuming that gold is the only invariable standard of values, insisted that this difference in the purchasing power of the two metals had risen wholly from a depreciation in the price of silver; while the opposing class argued that the difference had arisen most largely from an increase in the purchasing power of gold, and that equal legislation and equal favor shown to the two money metals would bring them to par, the one with the other, and keep them in that relation in the markets of the world. 15. The advocates of free coinage claimed that the laws discriminating against silver and in favor of gold were impolitic, unjust, and un-American. They urged that the free coinage of silver would be of vast advantage to the financial interests of the country. This view, however, was strongly opposed by the money centers and by the fund-holding classes, to whom the payment of all debts according to the highest standard of value--that is, in gold only--was a fundamental principle. A bill for the free coinage of silver was passed by the Senate, but rejected by the House, and the question was handed over to the next Congress. [Sidenote: =Idaho and Wyoming.=]