coin only.
There was a great fight over the measure in the legislature while under considera- tion ; a large minority of the members taking the position that the act was a vio- lation of the constitution of the United States, and disloyal and dishonorable in the extreme, inasmuch as the greenbacks had been used only under dire necessity by President Lincoln to support the army and put down the secession rebellion. No argument was tolerated against the last objection to the proposition, but as to its constitutionality there was reasonable difference of opinion. A similar measure had been adopted in California, and held good by the supreme court of that state. The friends of the proposed measure had procured a copy of the Cali- fornia decision and read it in support of the proposed Oregon law. It was read not only once, but by four or five members of the legislature anxious to distin- guish their speeches in that way. Finally the California argument got to be a bore, when Col. I. R. Moores of Salem, put it out of commission by rising in his seat and gravely moving that the decision of the supreme court of California be considered engrossed, read the third time and put upon final passage now. That ended the argument.
THE PANIC OF 1893.
The city of Portland has been fortunate in that it has never suffered but a single financial panic that has wrought any very great hardships to the people in general or seriously injured current business transactions. But in the panic of 1893, the city of Portland was not an exception. It suffered in common with many other business centers of the United States; showing that the underlying causes of that great disaster were not local but widespread and national. How- ever, in the case of this city there was one local influence that greatly aggravated the general disturbance. The general and national trouble was the free coinage of silver. All the great trust companies and the bondholding creditor class of every community looked upon free silver coinage with exactly the same eyes and motives as did the Oregon money lender upon depreciated greenback currency. There was a possibility that existing obligations might be paid off with silver coin intrinsically worth only half as much as gold coin. The creditor wanted all he could collect on his claim against his debtor. The silver mines of Mexico, Peru, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Idaho and other regions had been for a long time pouring out on the business world a great flood of silver. Its utility value, like that of gold, was not large. It had for hundreds of years been almost the only standard of values on account of the limited supply of gold. But finally the increased supply of gold from California, Australia and South Africa, had so far turned the scale between the two metals as to attract the world-wide at- tention of business men. The purchaser of long bonds was the first to scent the danger ahead. He was also the man most able to make trouble. He stopped buy- ing bonds. That stopped construction of public improvements. That curtailed the purchasing power of the laboring classes. That reduced the price of wheat in eastern Oregon to thirty cents a bushel. That cut off the ability of the farmer to buy the comforts of life and the means to improve his land or harvest more crops — and down went everything to a general smashup. Seven Portland banks closed their doors in one day. The foreign branch banks, the First National, Merchants' National, and Ladd & Tilton weathered the storm, and paid out gold coin until every depositor was satisfied, although not all the depositors demanded their money. J. Lowenberg was then at the head of the Merchants' National, and although its resources were ample, it did not have coin enough, but its president, with unflinching courage, put up his entire private fortune to the last dollar to get the coin — and saved his bank. The other two banks with still larger re- sources, were short of cash to meet every demand that might be made; when a friendly telegram sent to San Francisco brought a special train whizzing through seven hundred miles of space with half a million dollars in gold from the Bank of California. All day long the calm and kindly face of Henry W. Corbett stood behind his cashier witnessing the fearful drain of gold, and seeing hundreds of
