Upon the death of Secretary of the Treasury Charles J. Folger in September 1884, Walter Q. Gresham (1832-1895) accepted President Arthur's stopgap appointment as Secretary. Gresham, previously Arthur's Postmaster General, had been close to Folger and shared his ideas on finance. The overriding question was what to do with the Treasury's surplus, an issue unresolved during Folger's tenure. Gresham agreed with Folger's suggestion that the surplus should be reduced by a cut in customs duties. He stated that ''public credit has been so firmly established and the public debt so largely reduced that we can now safely reduce taxation within the demands of the law."
A believer in sound money, Gresham told New York businessmen that the only way to keep government currency afloat as legal tender was for the government to keep enough gold in the Treasury to meet the demand of notes presented. Gresham resigned after two months to become circuit judge of the Seventh Judicial District.
- Text Courtesy of the Office
of the Curator
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