Money Question (WXT, POL) (dec 31, 1875 – dec 31, 1900)

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The large question of the Gilded Age was: how much to expand the supply of money? Given the momentum of the ever growing economy in the United States, the United States had to figure out how to circulate more money within the economy to maintain this growth. This question was mainly taken upon by two perspectives between the “have” and the “have nots”. Debtors, farmers, and small business entrepreneurs, wanted “easy” and “soft” money to circulate in order to borrow money for lower interest rates and pay off loans easily with the inflated dollar. Because of the Panic of 1873, the majority of America, including many debtors, farmers, and small business start ups were blaming gold for the shortage of money supply within the United States and causing the depression. This group of advocates for soft money based their responses on precedence. Initially they supported more paper money in the economy and later began supporting the mining of silver and minting silver coins. On the contrary, bankers, creditors, investors, and established business owners, supported “hard” money, they supported a currency backed up by gold in the government vaults. Despite precedence, these relatively wealthy individuals based their argument on their professional experience with money. These individuals held an understanding as population grew with the American economy faster than the number of gold-backed dollars, each dollar would start gaining value. Just as the investors predicted, the value of the dollar increased by 300 percent in the span of 30 years.

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