private financial institutions were forced to close their doors. Industrial firms were affected by the uncertainty and panic and over 15,000 failures resulted, with liabilities amounting to $347,000,000 in the single year. Production of coal and iron fell sharply; railway construction nearly ceased and the value of securities shrank to a fraction of their former value. The distress among the wage-earners became extreme; unemployment was common; strikes, like that beginning in Pullman in 1894, were bitter and prolonged. "Coxey's army," composed of unemployed workmen, marched to Washington with a petition for relief. As is usually the case in our politics, the blame for the industrial disturbance was laid at the door of the party in power. The argument of an Ohio congressman in the debate over the repeal of the Sherman law typified the political use made of the crisis of 1893. Until November, 1892, the orator declared, prosperity was undimmed. "Iron furnaces throughout the country were in full blast, and their cheerful light was going up to heaven notifying the people of the United States of existing prosperity and warning them against change of conditions." Then came the election of the party "which had declared war on the system upon which our whole industrial fabric had been erected." "One by one the furnaces went out, one by one the mines closed up, one after another the factories shortened their time." Business interests, he asserted, were fearful of Democratic rule and especially of tariff reform; hence prosperity and confidence could be renewed only by leaving the Sherman law intact and by refusing to undertake any sweeping revision of the protective tariff. [Illustration: Net Gold in the Treasury, by months, Jan., 1883 to Feb., 1896, in millions of dollars]