A Democrat who favored free coinage denounced the act as "Janus-Faced," moulded so as to look like silver to the West and gold to the East. Important, also, seems to have been the attitude of the western members on the tariff. The party had returned to power on the tariff issue and it seemed necessary to pass some sort of legislation on the subject. Yet the party majority in Senate and House was slight and the westerners were understood to be ready to defeat the McKinley bill which was then pending, unless something was done for silver. Harrison seems to have been unwilling to endanger successful tariff legislation by opposing the considerable extension of the coinage of silver.[4] Contrary to the expectations of the proponents of the act, the price of silver fell gradually until the value of the bullion in a dollar was sixty cents in 1893 and forty-nine cents in 1894. They who had opposed the law saw their fears verified; as they had prophesied, silver began to replace gold in circulation; the latter was hoarded and used for foreign shipments; customs duties, which had hitherto been paid largely in gold, were now paid in paper currency; since gold was now more desired than silver, large amounts of paper were presented to the government for redemption in the more valuable metal. To be sure, the Sherman law allowed the secretary of the treasury to redeem the treasury notes of 1890 in gold or silver at his discretion, but it contained a proviso that the established policy of the United States was to maintain the two metals on a parity or equality. The secretary believed that if he refused to redeem the treasury notes in whatever coin the holder desired, that is if he insisted on redemption in silver only, a discrimination would be made in favor of gold and the equality of the two metals would be destroyed. Parity would be maintained, the government held, only when any kind of money could be exchanged for any other kind, at the option of the holder. For the redemption of the greenbacks, the government had since 1879 maintained a fund known as the gold reserve. No law fixed its amount, but custom had set $100,000,000 as the minimum. Hitherto a negligible amount of paper had been presented for redemption, but as soon as the Sherman law came into effective operation the demand for gold became increasingly great and the level of the reserve promptly fell. Between July 1, 1890, and July 15, 1893, the supply of gold in the treasury decreased more than $132,000,000, while the stock of silver increased over $147,000,000. Evidently silver was replacing gold in the treasury, and it was equally clear that a continuation of the process would result in forcing the government to pay its obligations in silver and to refuse to redeem paper in gold--in other words, go upon a silver standard.