Coin's Financial School

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Coin's Financial School was a popular pamphlet written in 1893 that helped popularize the free silver and populist movements. The author of the text "Coin", William Hope Harvey, would later go on to aid William Jennings Bryan in his bid for the presidency and would run for the presidency himself in the 1930s.

The thesis of Coin's Financial School is that London arranged the end of the free coinage of silver in 1873 because they had gold cornered and thus the large Civil War debt became payable in gold instead of silver. The Coinage Act of 1873 demonetized silver by allowing repayment of all debts in gold or silver at the option of the holder of the debt. The deflation resulting from the immediate removal of half the nation's money supply destroyed agriculture and main street America along with it.