Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Fall 2011
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 31:4 (Fall 2011).
Abstract
In the summer of 1893 financial panic struck Colorado. The price of silver, in a protracted downward spiral since the conclusion of the Civil War, finally crashed. The British government announced that its Indian mints were ceasing the coinage of silver rupees. The news of that decision caused a torrent of selling on the international market. In a matter of hours, the price of silver plummeted from eighty cents to sixty-four cents an ounce. The collapse in value of Colorado's most important commodity precipitated runs on local banks. Twelve banks alone collapsed in Denver during the month of July. By the end of August, over 40,000 Coloradans were thrown out of work. With the question of silver all encompassing, the rest of the 1890s in the Centennial State was consumed by economic depression and political rancor. Indeed, even by 1898, the tail end of economic depression in the state, silver was, in the words of the Rocky Mountain News, "The Burning Issue."1
Comments
Copyright © 2011 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.