MARCH 14, 1900 – US GOLD STANDARD ACT APPROVED

1900 – US GOLD STANDARD ACT APPROVED
It established gold as the only metal standard for redeeming paper money. Populists had campaigned for several years before, culminating in the 1896 Presidential election, to include silver as a standard for redeeming paper money. Banks controlled most of the gold and thus the basis for issuing paper money. Populists wanted to expand the money supply to meet the needs of an expanding economy and country. Banks wanted to maintain control of the money supply. President William McKinley (from Canton, Ohio), strongly backed by the nation’s major corporations, signed the Act. Whether gold and/or silver, banking money with metal moved the nation further away from the Greenbacks, the debt- and interest-free currency issued as credit, of the Lincoln administration.