this return is only nominally effective. The habit of employing redeemable paper had grown too strong and continuous, and even the rule of the New York banking-houses, to employ Page 263 only gold in clearing-house settlements, has been formally, though not absolutely, abolished by the Act of Congress of 12th July 1882, which provided that no national bank should be a member of a clearing-house at which gold and silver certificates were not accepted in payment of balances. The Bland Bill deceived the hope of both parties, as such a compromise might be expected to do. It remained in force, notwithstanding, till August 1890, and during the twelve years, 1878-1890, the United States coined a matter of 370 million silver dollars, employing therein 9 million kilogrammes of silver—a third of the total contemporary production.
Almost yearly, up to 1887, the repeal of the silver purchase clauses of the Bland Bill and the suspension of the silver coinage was recommended to Congress by presidential message, and in the reports of the Secretary of the Treasury.
In December 1889 President Harrison and Secretary Windam definitely proposed to cease the coining of silver, and to limit the issues of silver certificates to the value of the silver bullion as deposited, reckoning that value at its then market price. From these proposals sprang, by the same peculiar process of committee gestation which had produced the Bland Act, the compromise which passed on the 14th July 1890, under the title of the Sherman Act.
This act represents a compromise not of principles but of self-seeking interests. The main regulations of