BEC中级阅读：StandardtoCureEconomicDownturn

　　In March of eighteen eighty-nine, Grover Cleveland left the White House after four years as president. He had been defeated by Benjamin Harrison.s
　　As they were leaving, Cleveland's wife, Caroline, spoke with a member of the White House staff. She said: "I want you to take good care of everything. I want to find it the same when we come back. And we will be back -- in four years."
　　Caroline Cleveland was right. She and her husband moved back into the White House after he became president again in eighteen ninety-three. Grover Cleveland is the only man to serve two terms separated by the administration of a different president.
　　This week in our series, Shirley Griffith and Frank Oliver begin the story of Grover Cleveland's second presidency.
　　SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Grover Cleveland did not want to be president again. But he was worried about the future of the United States. He did not think President Harrison could solve the serious economic problems the country faced.
　　President Harrison had approved very high taxes on imports. He also had approved an increase in the supply of silver money. Grover Cleveland said both actions had hurt the economy. He also feared that Harrison was not strong enough to oppose the demands of special interest groups in the Republican Party.
　　Cleveland believed he was the only Democrat who could defeat Harrison. He won his party's nomination. And he was easily elected to a second presidency.
　　FRANK OLIVER: Grover Cleveland immediately turned to the nation's economic problems. The country seemed headed for a serious depression.
Disorder on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in May 1893. The failure of a railroad and other companies started panic selling Only a few days before Cleveland's second inauguration in eighteen ninety-three, a major railroad failed. Then another big company declared failure. This set off a selling panic on the stock market.
　　In the next few months, almost eight thousand businesses failed in the United States. Four hundred banks closed. One million workers lost their jobs. The prices of farm products fell lower than ever before. And thousands of farmers -- unable to pay their debts -- had to give up their farms.
　　SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Experts offered a number of different reasons for the depression. Some said it was a plot by members of the stock market to ruin farmers and seize their land. Some said it happened because American factories were producing more goods than people could use. Still others said the problem was caused by the government's money policy.
　　For many years, the United States and other nations used both gold and silver as money. Paper money was used to represent a nation's gold and silver holdings. The value of silver was tied to the value of gold.
　　In the United States in the early eighteen hundreds, fifteen ounces of silver had the same value as one ounce of gold. This value did not change until after eighteen sixty. That was when mines in the western United States began to produce large amounts of silver. The extra silver caused the price of the metal to fall.
　　FRANK OLIVER: In eighteen seventy-one, Germany declared that it would no longer support its paper money with silver. Instead, it would use only gold. Other European countries quickly did the same thing.
A cartoon from the political magazine Puck in support of ending silver purchases which were expanding the money supply The United States did, too. In eighteen seventy-three, Congress passed a law that stopped the government from using silver as money. Western silver producers protested. They put great pressure on lawmakers to change the law. Five years later, Congress passed a compromise bill.
　　The compromise bill said the government could issue limited amounts of silver money. It said the government must buy two million dollars' worth of silver each month for that purpose.
　　SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Twelve years later, during President Benjamin Harrison's administration, Congress passed a new silver purchase bill.
　　It said the government must buy four-and-one-half million ounces of silver each month. The Treasury Department would buy the silver with new paper money that could be exchanged for silver or gold. The new law increased the amount of silver money used in the United States.