In 1873 the vacillating and halting financial policy of the nation--which had tried and abandoned contraction, and while looking toward the resumption of specie payments had, in fact, retreated from it--bore fruit in speculative collapses, followed by a panic in business circles and widespread commercial disaster. Congress met amid the crumbling of unsound enterprise, and was called upon to meet a terrified demand for a renewed inflation of the already excessive volume of irredeemable paper. To cure the fever, men demanded more miasma. To repair the ruin, which all history proved to be the natural result of an oversupply of currency, it was proposed to still further increase that supply. Measures to this end were introduced at once, and pushed with great vehemence. They were sustained by a misled but powerful public sentiment, which was especially strong in the West and influenced the great mass of that section's representatives at Washington. Mr. Chandler never served his country better than he did in that hour. Unmoved by the clamor about him, and refusing to listen to the cries of even his own people when they demanded false leadership, he firmly resisted every measure of inflation and every suggestion that added embarrassments to the business of the future, or increased the difficulties of preserving the public faith. The pressure in favor of the inflation bill which President Grant vetoed was unusually strong. The Western Congressmen were almost a unit for its passage, but no solicitations, no force of numbers, prevented Mr. Chandler from opposing and denouncing it. His speech in opposition to this bill (on Jan. 20, 1874) commenced with one of his terse sentences, which went straight to the marrow of the situation, and furnished a motto for the cause he championed. It was, "We need one thing besides more money, and that is better money." This phrase furnished the text for many addresses and editorials, and stood upon the title-page of the weekly circular issued by the friends of a sound currency in Boston during the controversy which preceded the passage of the Resumption act of 1875. In the same speech Mr. Chandler said: