page_title: Free silver
section_title: Further reading
hierarchical_section_title: Free silver / Further reading
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: The free silver highwayman at it again / Keppler. Abstract/medium: 1 print&#160;: chromolithograph.
context_page_description: Free silver was a major economic policy issue in late-19th-century America. Its advocates were in favor of an expansionary monetary policy featuring the unlimited coinage of silver into money on demand, as opposed to strict adherence to the more carefully fixed money supply implicit in the gold standard. Supporters of an important place for silver in a bimetallic money system making use of both silver and gold, called "Silverites", sought coinage of silver dollars at a fixed weight ratio of 16-to-1 against dollar coins made of gold. Because the actual price ratio of the two metals was substantially higher in favor of gold at the time, most economists warned that the less valuable silver coinage would drive the more valuable gold out of circulation.
  While all agreed that an expanded money supply would inevitably raise prices, at issue was whether or not this inflationary tendency would be beneficial. The issue peaked from 1893 to 1896, when the economy was wracked by a severe depression—remembered as the Panic of 1893—characterized by falling prices, high unemployment in industrial areas, and severe distress for farmers. It is the 11th largest decline in U.S. stock market history.
context_section_description: Coletta, Paolo E. "Greenbackers, Goldbugs, and Silverites: Currency Reform and Politics, 1860-1897,” in H. Wayne Morgan (ed.), The Gilded Age: A Reappraisal. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1963; pp. 111–139.
  Kazin, Michael. A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (2007)
  Gramm, Marshall. "The Free Silver Movement in America: A Reinterpretation," Journal of Economic History, vol. 64, no. 4 ( Dec 2004), pp. 1108–1129.
  Ritter, Gretchen. Goldbugs and Greenbacks: The Antimonopoly Tradition and the Politics of Finance in America. (1997)
  Rockoff, Hugh. "The 'Wizard of Oz' as a monetary allegory," Journal of Political Economy, vol. 98, no. 4 (Aug. 1990), pp. 739–60 in JSTOR
  Wells, Wyatt. "Rhetoric of the Standards: The Debate over Gold and Silver in the 1890s," Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, (Jan. 2015) 14#1 pp. 49–68.
  Weiss, Colin. 2019. "Contractionary Devaluation Risk: Evidence from the Free Silver Movement, 1878-1900."  The Review of Economics and Statistics
  Williams, R. Hal. Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010.
caption: "The free silver highwayman at it again" in 1896
exif: {}