Like all common-sense people who pray and yet do not fail to keep their powder dry, this interval was utilized by the silver-ridden countries, with the exception of the United States, in strengthening their gold basis no less than in attending the deliberations of the Monetary Conferences on the amusing plans for extending the use of silver.²³⁷, Mr. Goschen, at the Conference of 1878, had quite philosophically [pg 143] remarked that States feared to employ silver because of its depreciation, and the depreciation continued because the States feared to employ it. Now, if the first part of the diagnosis was correct, we should have found the States seriously engaged in the task of rehabilitating silver when its price was propped up by the silver legislation of the United States. On the other hand, just so far as the monthly purchases of silver, under the Bland Allison Act of 1878, or the Sherman Act of 1890, held up the price of silver, not only did they not feel anxious to take steps to restore it to its former position, but they actually took advantage of the rise to discard it.²³⁸ And it is not possible to blame them either, for with the prospect of a bimetallic union vanishing into thin air the accumulation of this dead weight would have only ended in a gratuitous embarrassment. India alone refused to profit by the squeeze which the United States took vicariously for other nations, and allowed precious time to slip by, with the result that it was thrown back upon the same remedy, the adoption of which was negatived in 1878. ²³⁷ Cf. for the variety of plans suggested at the Conferences _The Report of the American Delegates to the International Monetary Conference of_ 1892, Washington, 1893. ²³⁸ Cf. Russell, op. cit., p. 410; also Prof. F. A. Walker, “The Free Coinage of Silver,” in _The Journal of Political Economy_ (Chicago), Vol. I, p. 174.