And thus it developed into the more sweeping theory that wages, welfare, and prosperity were favored by a larger supply of money quite apart from the effect it would have upon debts.
In its extreme form the free-silver plan was a fiat scheme, for some of its supporters believed that by the mere passage of the law the two metals could be made to bear to each other any ratio desired.

But its most intelligent advocates recognized that the force of the law was limited by economic conditions.

The victory of the gold standard in the campaign of 1896 was, it would seem, due more to the well-founded fear that a sudden change of the money standard would cause a panic than to a popular understanding of the question.
The free-silver advocates got what they desired, a reversal of the movement of general prices, through an occurrence for which no political party could claim the credit.

In 1883 the gold production of the world was less than $100,000,000.

From that date, with the opening of newer gold-yielding territory in South Africa and in the Klondike, the annual output of gold had been increasing rapidly and almost steadily.