About Quizzes

Cleveland and the Currency Issue

Grover Cleveland was clearly a conservative on monetary issues. He favored adherence to the gold standard and opposed schemes that would induce inflation. Since 1873, the United States had essentially been on the gold standard, but the government did purchase a minimal amount of silver under the Bland-Allison Act (1878). The discovery of new silver deposits in the American West glutted the market and forced world prices downward. American silver producers managed to profitably exchange silver for government gold, thus sharply reducing the Treasury's gold reserve. Cleveland believed that the appropriate action should be the repeal of Bland-Allison, but Congress refused to act.