Excerpt from Forty Years of American Finance: A Short Financial History of the Government and People of the United States Since, the Civil War 1865-1907 It is gratifying to be able to say that the facts and conclusions regarding the thirty years prior to 1897, set forth eleven years ago in the first edition of this work, have stood the test of criticism. I am making, in this edition, no important revision or alteration of either. One historical assertion, however, I have found it necessary to modify. In the original edition, on page 27, I spoke of John Sherman as the author of the Resumption Act. First-hand evidence, com municated to me after publication of the book, and not, I believe, made public up to the present time, has convinced me that Mr. Sherman, although it was he who reported the Resumption bill from the com mittee, was not the author of the Act; that it was drawn by other hands than his; that its faults were due to an effort to avoid political obstacles, and that the law was passed exactly as it was originally constructed. I have therefore altered the reference to Mr. Sherman. Another point, to which some of the Treasury officers of the second Cleveland Administration have lately called my attention, is the assertion, on page 249, that the undertaking of the bankers' syndicate of 1895, to protect the Treasury gold reserve, had broken down, and that apparently, the syndicate experiment had failed. Against this view of the matter, it has been urged that, since the syndicate's contract was tech nically closed in June, by delivery of the stipulated sumsof gold to the Treasury, the undertaking could not be said to have broken down. In so far as regards per formance of the stipulated deliveries, this inference is correct; the bankers had even managed to protect the Treasury against the withdrawal of gold pending the complete performance of this contract. The belief of the day was, however, that, as a result of the protective measures, the Treasury would be put permanently on its feet and the exhausting drain of gold ended. In this respect, the experiment was a failure; the subsequent loss of gold was probably greater because of the artificial damming up of gold exports in the spring. I therefore believe it to be strictly correct, as a matter of economic history, to say that the undertaking to protect the Treasury had broken down, and I have not altered the passage. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.