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ASSEMBLY

MEMORIAL AND JOINT RESOLUTION

RELATIVE TO THE UNITED STATES MINT
AT CARSON CITY. NEVADA.

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Assembly Memorial and Joint Resolution.

RELATIVE TO THE UNITED STATES mNT AT CARSON

CITY, NEVADA.

To (he Senate and House of Representalives in Congress Assembled :

Your memorialists, the Lepjislature of the State of Nevada, respect-
fully show that the material interests of this State are suffering on
account of unjust and unlawful discriminations that are being enforced
against our people by the present Administration's method of con-
ducting the affairs of the Treasury Department, having special
reference to the closing of Ihe United States Mint at Carson.

One of the great industries by which the people of Nevada live is
mining for silver and gold. Whatever, therefore, burdens, dis-
courages or imposes restraints upon mining, hurts us in a vital part.

The mineral resources of the State are vast almost beyond belief ;
no region of the earth excels Nevada in richness and extent.

From Idaho to Arizona, a distance of more than four hundred
miles, from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the Utah line, the hills
are ribbed with ledges bearing precious metals.

The business of mining is expensive and precarious. The ore
must be found, broken down or blasted out, hoisted to the surface,
transported to the mills, crushed, the metals extracted, the gold and
silver parted, refined and sent to market or minted into coins.

A vast and permanent outlay of labor and capital is required before
return of profit can be hoped for.

Capital is sensitive ; it avoids precarious investments and unusual
risks. A decline in the value of the metals — real or fictitious — an
intimation that the mines have failed or the withdrawal of privileges
before enjoyed arrests development, depresses industry, and fills us
with apprehension and alarm. It is impossible to overestimate the
injury to miniiig, produced by the suspension of coinage at the
Carson Mint in April, 1885, and the final closing of that institution
in November of that year.

It gave out the intimation that the mines had failed, it discouraged
those who had made investments, arrested enterprise that had already
begun, and turned away those who were considering the advantages
of our situation. It deprived the prospectors and miners of all the
extensive region lying between the Rocky and Sierra Nevada

Mountains, of the advantage of a sub-treasury, and of a Mint to part,
refine, assay, exchange and pnrchase their silver bullion, and to coin,
exchange, or purchase their bars of gold — a loss the more serious
and irreparable because there is no other institution nearer than San
Francisco to supply the deprivation.

The bullion output of the region accommodated by the Carson
Mint was no greater when the Mint was started in 1869 than when it
was closed in 1885.

Sources of information entirely reliable verify this statement. The
tax records in the office of the State Controller show proceeds of
mines returned for taxation in 1884 valued at $6,820,912; in 1885 it
was $6,847,405, and in 1886 it was $6,585,839. These figures (as
those furnished for purposes of taxation usually are) are beheved to
be far below the actual value.

To this amount should be added the product of the great mineral
district of Bodie and Inyo county, California, tributary to the Car-
son Mint.

It is absolutely true that the bullion output of the country within
a radius of fifteeen miles of Carson is three times as much as could
possibly be handled by this Mint, though running at its fullest ca-
pacity.

When the Mint was established as now, mining for the precious
metals was of more than mere local consequence. It was of national
importance. It furnished the basis of metallic money, prevented the
contraction of the currency, arrested the decline of values, strengthened
the national credit and stimulated the industries, and promoted the
prosperity of the whole country. For these reasons, and to foster
mining, the Mint was established.

The motive that actuated Congress, undoubtedly, was to pro-
vide metallic money for the needs of business and to accommodate
the inhabitants of the Great Basin with facilities for coining or sell-
ing their bullion.

It cannot be pretended that the object was to make a profit to the
Government. For more than sixty years, from 1792 to 1853, coin-
age was at the public; expense, and without charge to the citizen.
The exaction of charges was for the sole purpose of preventing the
exporting and melting of coins when a profit could be realized and
recoining them when caprice suggested or temporary necessity
required.

The causes which prompted and the reasons which promoted the
creation of the Mint at Carson have not disappeared. They are as
cogent and controlling to-day as in 1868, or at any time since the
Mint was established.

The increased demand for silver and gold has, in fact, augmented
the importance of mining.

The bullion output of the countr}^ tributary to the Mint is almost
as great as in 1869, and five times greater than the Mint has required
during any year of its existence, being, as we have already set forth,
three times more than it could possibly convert into fine bars or coin
even under the most favorable circumstances.

When the Mint closed its doors there were 258,241 ounces of
refined silver and 24,694 ounces of gold ready for coining, and 27,563
ounces of unparted gold, and 407,017 ounces of unparted silver
ready for treatment. The supply on hand was sufficient to keep the
the Mint in operation six months. No valid cause therefore existed
for suspending operations.

However much we complain on account of the closing of the Mint,
we feel that still greater wrong is being perpetrated by the manner
of conducting it now in vogue. It has been degraded from a Mint to
an assay office, and this is done, we verily believe, in order that an
excuse may be had for entirely abandoning and dismantling it.

From the time it was established it has been run at a profit to the
Government.

The total expenses of the Carson Mint for eight years, beginning
with the resumption of silver coinage in 1878, were ^1,158,869 91,
and the total earnings during the same period, $1,149,693 01,
showing a cost in excess of gains of only $9,276 90, due entirely to
the suspension of coinage for eleven months in the years 1880, 1881
and 1882, the records disclosing that during these years the expenses
were $122,289 86 in excess of the gains.

In the years 1883, 1884 and 1885 the earnings were in excess of
the expenses more than $68,284, and in 1885 the profits were $7,147,
notwithstanding coinage was suspended in April.

We do not bring out the fact that the Mint can be operated at a
profit to the Government as a special reason for resuming its opera-
tions. We do not believe that the Mints, any more than the mails,
dockyards, arsenals or courts, were ordained for the purpose of
gaining a pecuniary profit to the Government. Such considerations
are trifling and puerile when addressed to a great Government, which
annually expends hundreds of millions of dollars to better the condi-
tion of its citizens. But it is something to the favor of a public
institution established to foster a great industry and serve the con-
venience of the people, that it has accomplished the object for which
it was created, and gained a profit besides.

But the days for operating this Mint at a profit have gone by.
They departed when this institution became an object of discrimina-
tion.

They will not return until a change in the policy of the Treasury
Department is eft'ected by laws compelling a just recognition of our
rights.

The first acts of the present Administration were inimical to
interests of the Mint and of Nevada, intending, doubtless, to add
another argument against the coinage of silver. It was therefore
deemed necessary by this hostile Administration that the Mint should
be made to show a loss in its operations. Knowing that this could
not be accomplished if it were permitted to stand upon an equal
footing with other similar institutions, harmful discriminations were
enforced jigainst it, not only by the Government, but also by certain
transportation companies. This very naturally drove the bulhon

Ufcr»r-

past the doors of our Mint to the San Francisco Mint, as well as to
private assay offices and smelting works.

Is it marvelous then, that the deposits of bullion at the Carson
Mint decreased? The only wonder is that there should have been
any deposits whatever.

The foregoing discloses a bad state of affairs, but that is not the
worst of it. Not content with making rules greatly prejudicial to
our Mint, the Treasury Department took away from it the only
possible means of showing a profit, namely, the right of coinage.

Our Mint is now merely a second-class assay office, the expenses
of which amount to more than $100 a day, while the receipts are
merely nominal.

We respectfully submit that this method of tr^tment is unfair to
the Mint at Carson, and destructive of the best interests of the people
of the entire State.

We claim that the Mint has been closed and degraded in defiance
of the law of Congress, the Treasury Department having usurped the
power of the supreme legislative body of the Nation.

Wherefore, we respectfully memorialize your Honorable Body to
venact statutes that will enforce a proper recognition of the rights of
our [leople, and secure to us the privileges guaranteed by the laws
of our country.

Resolved by the Assembly^ the Senate concurring^ That His Excel-
lency, the Governor, be requested"* to transmit a printed certified
copy of this memorial to each member of the United States Senate
and to each Representative in Congress.

Resolved^ That our Senators and Representative in Congress be
earnestly requested to use their best efforts to secure the enforcement
of existing laws relating to the United States Mint at Carson, and to
procure the passage of others that will give us the relief asked for.

State of Nevada, (

Department of State. ) '
I, John M. Dormer, Secretary of State of the State of Nevada, do hereby certify that
the annexed is a true, full and correct copy of the original "Assembly Memorial ai,d
Joint Resolution relative to the United States Mint at Carson City, Nevada," on file in my
office.

^ — ■ — -;)(: In Witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and affixed the Great Seal
i oi?AT I ^^ State. Done at office in Carson City, Nevada, this twenty-ninth day
\ ^^^^- \ of January, A. D. 1887.
*^. — * JOHN M. DORMER,

Secretary of State.