Free Silver movement: Why were Republicans opposed to it in the 1890s?
score:8
The Republicans by the 1890s were supporters of "banking" interests, and "rich people" in general.
Over time, more and more silver was discovered relative to gold. At first, it required 14 ounces of silver to equal one ounce of gold; later it required 16 ounces. (In modern times, the silver-gold parity has ranged between 50 to 100 ounces of silver for one ounce of gold).
"Bankers liked to denominate their loans in gold. So if they lent you one ounce of gold (worth 14 ounces of silver in say, 1890), by 1896 that ounce of gold was worth 16 ounces of silver. But the borrower (e.g a farmer) got only 14 ounces of silver, earlier on, and now had to repay 16 ounces of silver, plus interest.
"Bi-metallism" would mean that (poor) farmers (who mainly transacted in silver) would have the choice of repaying 14 ounces of silver or one ounce of gold for each ounce of gold they borrowed; a "gold standard" would force those farmers to pay 16 ounces of silver.That's why the farmers would want bimetallism,and the bankers wouldn't. The bankers won by electing Republican William McKinley over Democrat William Jennings Bryant President in the 1896 election.
Upvote:0
The essence of the question is that the use of silver, in the exchange ratios desired, would result in inflation and lower the cost of paying off debts as it was really a devaluation in terms of gold. It was a debt cancellation move that would benefit debt-stricken farmers at the expense of bankers and other elites. A good general discussion of debt cancellation is the book Debt: The first 5000 years.
More post
- 📝 What Evidence Do We Have For Samaritans Living In Babylon in the 6th or 5th Century BC?
- 📝 Was Nicholas II Romanov the last king of Poland?
- 📝 What was the name for the region before it was "the Balkans"?
- 📝 Why did Ethiopia not fight with Eritrea over coastal territory when giving them independence?
- 📝 Why weren't Baden, Würtemberg and Bavaria independent states ever restored, unlike Austria?
- 📝 Who created the Korean Unification Flag?
- 📝 How many vehicles were involved in Operation Gothic Serpent (Mogadishu, October 3-4, 1993)?
- 📝 Why did Pakistan choose Islamabad as its capital?
- 📝 Why did the United States issue the Monroe Doctrine when it did?
- 📝 Has being a single mother been always stigmatized?
- 📝 Why did Bavaria join Prussia/Germany instead of Austria?
- 📝 Did Portuguese fisherman visit New England prior to 1492?
- 📝 How and Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?
- 📝 How did production of grain change with Hellenistic Egypt coming under Roman rule?
- 📝 Who is responsible for the oldest known calendar?
- 📝 Can anyone find the letter of Tsar Alexander II to Rostovtsev dated October / December 25th, 1859?
- 📝 What was the life expectancy of a Medieval European monarch?
- 📝 How is the Byzantine(Eastern Roman) different from Western Roman?
- 📝 How did Napoleon evade the British fleet and return to France?
- 📝 What was the function of the walls of Jericho?
- 📝 What is the meaning of "£10 per cent" in the early 19th century in relation to a wage (30/- fortnight)
- 📝 Is there historical evidence on what might have been a maximum hair length for males in 1st century Judea?
- 📝 Has a book ever secretly been written with gold ink?
- 📝 How accurate is Belloc's version of European economic history in The Servile State, with regards to the seizing of the monastic lands?
- 📝 Why did the Capetian kings of France come into conflict with the Roman church?
- 📝 Did Industrial Revolution economic systems rely on colonies?
- 📝 How did a criminal trial in the Soviet Union work after World War 2?
- 📝 Were the doors kept open for the entire Pennsylvania Ratifying Convention?
- 📝 What were acceptance criteria/process to the Vienna Fine Arts Academy in 1906-7?
- 📝 Why didn’t the Franco-Belgian accord of 1920 lead to extending the construction of the Maginot line along the Belgium-Netherlands border?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Free Silver movement: Why were Republicans opposed to it in the 1890s?
- 📝 Why were Indians able to free themselves of the European Colonialists unlike South Africans?
- 📝 Why were the workers opposed to Hitler becoming the chancellor of Germany near the end of the Weimar republic?
- 📝 Why were the Romans unable to conquer Germania?
- 📝 Why were so many more Jewish men than Jewish women killed during the Holocaust?
- 📝 Why was the Scout movement so successful?
- 📝 Why were the Allies so much better cryptanalysts?
- 📝 Why were helmets and other body armour not commonplace in the 1800s?
- 📝 ‘Avoid sleeping on your back’ & ‘breathe in toilet smells’ were seen as precautions against the Black Death. Why did doctors think these would work?
- 📝 Why were the West African islands uninhabited?
- 📝 Why were the drawings of Colossus burnt after WW2 and why was its very existence "of course" kept secret?
- 📝 Why were Albanians the only nation in the Balkans who converted to Islam during the Ottoman occupation?
- 📝 Why were British ships not of the same quality as French and Spanish ships until the latter part of the 18th century?
- 📝 Why were nomadic tribes (like the Mongols) from the Eurasian steppes a much reduced threat from the 15th century onwards?
- 📝 Why were Civil War battle techniques so bloody, if the US had learned guerrilla fighting in the Revolutionary War?
- 📝 Why were there no agricultural, city-state forming civilizations in the Ice Age?
- 📝 Why were Royal Navy ships forbidden to attack the ARA Veinticinco de Mayo in Argentinian waters?
- 📝 Why were the losses in the Battle of Norfolk so lopsided?
- 📝 Why were the Irish exempt from conscription during WWI?
- 📝 Why were slave owners even offered compensation via the 1837 Act if they'd lost the power in parliament to stop abolition in 1833?
- 📝 Why were there so few American deaths in the Bataan Death March?
- 📝 Why were troops with bayonets often effective against enemy cavalry even though the bayonet was a "secondary" weapon?
- 📝 Why were so many of the earliest banks founded by cloth merchants?
- 📝 Why were the Germans and Russians so fixated on an unlikely "separate peace" in 1945?
- 📝 Why were kitchen work surfaces in Sweden apparently so low before the 1950s or so?
- 📝 Why were the British so reluctant to allow Jewish migration to Palestine?
- 📝 Why were battles massed until the late 1800s?
- 📝 The WWI Christmas truce of 1914 resulted in no consequences, in spite of clear warnings against such beforehand - why were there no courts-martial?
- 📝 Why did the German air force lose experienced pilots faster than the Allies, even though they were defending their home airspace?
- 📝 Why were people from the Asian Steppes able to militarily dominate Europeans on a repeated basis?