Financial Politics in the United States in the 1890s: The Golden Web. By Wyatt Wells. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. xii + 330 pp. ISBN 978-3-03-186764-4.

Politics in the United States in the 1890s: The Golden Web by Wyatt Wells describes the battles over monetary policy (gold vs. silver) during the Gilded Age.Although the book focuses most on the American political and economic debate during the 1890s, it also has much useful to say about the international environment and the decades leading up to the main events.Wyatt's objective is to demonstrate that the battle between gold and silver was fundamental and "constituted a referendum on social and economic change" (p.274).It presented two distinct paths for Americans: one forward into industrialization, urbanization, and globalization; the other backward to traditional agriculture.Wells documents the political and ideological movements, their perceptions and motivations, that formed around these two choices.Farmers wanted more money and credit in order to meet the financial demands of regular planting and harvesting.This was especially true for those settlers developing new lands out west.They therefore sought the addition of silver as legal tender, which would provide an enormous reservoir of financial resources.And during the 1870s, farmers found ready allies amongst the miners in the Western states who had discovered fantastic new deposits of silver and were eager to increase demand for it (and hence raise its price).On the side of gold were bankers, businessmen, and industrialists (and many ideological conservatives) who found in gold a reliable and trusted source of value.As long as the US dollar was fixed to gold, then lenders would get paid back in currency worth the same as that which they lent.Neither governments nor dodgy banks could print their way out of financial problems.Therefore, most financial institutions and investors insisted on gold.And since America's largest trade and investment partners overseas were on the gold standard, adherence to it had become a powerful symbol of trustworthiness.But given the paucity and power of American banks and their deep connections with industry, farmers viewed the two as an alliance of oppressive monopolists.For their part, the financial and business communities (and many ideological conservatives) thought silverites to be backward simpletons or irresponsible deadbeats.Thus, when all factors are combined, the choice of monetary standard (gold vs. silver) became a major political-economic inflection point for America.For his material, Wells draws upon a mix of primary source archival material and government documents, as well as contemporary reports, articles, and books.He also uses considerable secondary sources, mostly by historians, economists, and political scientists.The result is simultaneously familiar and fresh.