IvI HRAK V 
 
 OF THK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 OK 
 
 Deceived 
 Accessions 
 
ON THE USE OF SILVER 
 
 AS MONEY 
 
 IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE BOARD OF UNIVERSITY STUDIES 
 
 OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY FOR THE 
 
 DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ARTHUR BURNHAM WOODFORD 
 
 >r of Economics and Politics, School of Social Economics, New York 
 
 BALTIMORE, 1893 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF 
 
 THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL, AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 No. 96. 
 
 ON THE USE OF SILVER 
 
 AS MONEY 
 IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 AN HISTORICAL STUDY 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR BURNHAM WOODFORD, PH. D., 
 
 ii 
 
 Professor of Economics and Politics in the School 
 of Social Econemtcsf-New York City. 
 
 Sf , O** ,-* V 
 
 A PAPER SUBMITTED TO THE 
 AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 1893. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Introduction I 
 
 Early History of the Mint (1792-1833) .... 3 
 
 The Gold Coin Bill of 1834 17 
 
 Fractional Silver Coins (1853) 26 
 
 Reorganization of the Mint (1873) 31 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Statement A. List of American Coins .... 44 
 
 Statement B. Changes in Gold and Silver Coin . . 45 
 
 Statement C. Coinage by Periods since 1792 . . 45 
 
 Table I. Gold Coinage by Years 46 
 
 Table II. Silver Coinage by Years 49 
 
 Diagram I. Gold and Silver Coinage since 1834 . 52 
 Diagram II. Production of Gold and Silver in the 
 
 United States since 1853 53 
 
 Table III. Imports and Exports of Silver since 1843 . 54 
 
 Table IV. Imports and Exports of Gold since 1843 5^ 
 Table V. World's Production of Gold and Silver 
 
 (1492-1880) 58 
 
 Diagram III. Annual Production (1873-1891) . . 59 
 Diagram IV. Ratio of Silver to Gold (1687-1891) . 
 
 Diagram V. Value of Ounce of Silver (1833-1892) . 60 
 
TOT 
 
 tflriTlBHTY 
 
 USE OF SILVER AS MONEY IN THE 
 UNITED STATES. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The history of monetary experiences cannot be too often 
 considered. This consideration is particularly applicable at 
 the present time to silver in its relation to American coin 
 currency. Until quite recently silver has been but little 
 used by the people of the United States as money. Indeed, 
 it is still practically true that it is only used for change, as 
 no large bills are issued on the silver reserve. Under exist- 
 ing law, however, the government is obliged to purchase an 
 amount of silver nearly, if not quite, equal to the product 
 of American mines. A new experiment is thus being tried, 
 the result of which it is exceedingly difficult to predict with 
 definiteness. An historical study is therefore timely. 
 
 The silver question, moreover, is "in politics." It has 
 even come to occupy a most prominent position, and there has 
 been developed not only a keen public interest in the philos- 
 ophy of the bimetallic controversy, of which the silver 
 question in the United States is but a phase, but a strong 
 desire for accurate knowledge regarding the history of our 
 currency. 
 
 The free coinage party are practically urging still another 
 experiment. In considering it and the future currency 
 policy of the country, and of the world, too frequent refer- 
 ence cannot be made to the results of the several experiments 
 in currency legislation which former Congresses have under- 
 taken. History may afford some light to guide us in 
 selecting or in avoiding certain courses of action. 
 
 The subject has been treated by many writers in recent 
 
 (i) 
 
2 ANNAI^S OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 times, either in special treatises,* or in the systematic 
 text-books on political economy, particularly those by 
 Andrews, Ely, and Walker. Three international confer- 
 ences have been held in the vain hope of securing concerted 
 action by the principal commercial nations. The question 
 has been made the subject of investigation by Congressional 
 and by Royal Commission. Yet, in spite of books and 
 reports, of investigations, prize contests, and the rest, 
 widespread ignorance remains regarding the prominent and 
 fundamentally important facts in the history of the use made 
 of silver as money by the people of the United States ; the 
 laws which have been passed ; the conditions which gave 
 rise to these statutes ; and the effect of the various enact- 
 ments on the circulation of coin throughout the community. 
 Materials for original study are to be found in the statutes 
 themselves and in the reports of the Congressional debates 
 -connected with their enactment, in reports to Congress, in 
 petitions, and in current financial literature. The reports 
 of the Silver Commission of 1876 and of the International 
 Monetary Conferences of 1867, 1878, and 1881 are replete 
 alike with information and with argument concerning the 
 relative merits of gold and silver for use either separately or 
 conjointly as money. Abstract discussion of the advantages 
 or the dangers of ' ' bimetallism ' ' is not attempted here : it 
 is the aim of the writer to show the actual use made of silver 
 as money during the century, by the people of the United 
 States, and to explain the reasons for that use, in the hope 
 of correcting false ideas and disseminating a knowledge of the 
 necessary conditions of bimetallism. 
 
 * Sumner, "History of American Currency" (1874); Cernuschi, " Nomisma, or 
 lyegal Tender " (1877); I,inderman, " Money and I,egal Tender in the United States" 
 (1877) Weston, "The Silver Question " (1878); Walker, "Money" (1878), and "Money, 
 Trade and Industry" (1879) ; Bolles, "Financial History of the United States," 3 
 vols. (1879-1886) ; Knox, " United States Notes" (1884) (third edition 1888) ; Upton, 
 "Money in Politics" (1884); I^aughlin, "History of Bimetallism in the United 
 States " (1886) ; Nicholson, "Money and Monetary Problems" (1888); S. Dana Hor- 
 ton, "Silver in Europe" (1890); Boissevain, " The Monetary Question" (1891); 
 Cowperthwait, " Money, Silver and Finance" (1892); Ehrich, " The Silver Question" 
 (1892); Taussig, "The Silver Situation in the United States" (1892). 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 3 
 
 EARLY HISTORY OF THE MINT. 
 
 In 1783 Robert Morris presented to the ''United States, 
 in Congress Assembled, ' ' a specimen American coin. Our 
 national coinage may be said to date from the making of 
 this coin. 
 
 For several years the matter had been under discussion 
 and had been made the subject of special reports ; but Con- 
 gress repeatedly postponed definite action. The report of a 
 special committee created in 1784, of which Jefferson was a 
 member, outlined a plan, based on the report of the Super- 
 intendent of Finance. On July 6, 1785, and August 8, 
 1786, more definite regulations were made in anticipation of 
 the creation of a national currency, and finally, on October 
 1 6, 1786, there was enacted ' * An Ordinance for the estab- 
 lishment of the Mint of the United States of America and 
 for regulating the value and alloy of coin," and provision 
 was made for the employment of proper officers and workmen 
 in the Mint. This plan, however, was never carried into 
 execution, as matters of greater importance occupied the 
 government and the people of the United States. It was not 
 until after the adoption of the Constitution that the Mint was 
 established, and it was practically a generation and a half 
 before a national coin currency came into general use. 
 
 In the practical administration of affairs it is often an im- 
 perative necessity that, with or without the aid of legislation, 
 the kind of money to be received by the government in pay- 
 ment of taxes, dues, etc. , shall be determined. When income 
 does not equal expenditure, it becomes necessary for a gov- 
 ernment to borrow money. During the Revolutionary War 
 the Congress of the United States had authorized the execu- 
 tive officers to borrow dollars. But what is a "dollar?" 
 No one is disposed to ask this question when the currents of 
 industry, trade and commerce are flowing smoothly. It is 
 only in periods of sudden change and uncertain credit, or of 
 legislative interference with the representative of the money 
 of account, that doubt arises. In the years following the 
 
4 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 adoption of the Constitution the matter became one of serious 
 difficulty, requiring for its resolution the careful and disinter- 
 ested consideration of the statesmen of the period. 
 
 In a certain sense it is entirely in the power of Congress 
 to determine what shall be considered a dollar what shall 
 be the monetary unit of the country. Every industrially 
 developed community must have a money of account. It is 
 at once the evidence and the basis of commercial progress. 
 It is the condition of trade on a large scale. But the political 
 power in the State, the statutory law, determines what shall 
 be the material representative and coin equivalent of the unit 
 of account, as well as what shall be legal tender in payment 
 promises of to pay money and in settlement of obligations. By 
 the Constitution of the United States (Article I., Section 10) 
 the States are forbidden to ' ' coin money ; emit bills of credit ; 
 make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment 
 of debts." And by Article I., Sections, clauses, Congress is 
 given power " to coin money, regulate the value thereof, 
 and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and 
 measures. ' ' This power Congress has repeatedly exercised. 
 
 When, under the Articles of the Confederation, Con- 
 gress instructed the Superintendent of Finance to report 
 a table of rates at which the different species of foreign 
 coins, most likely to circulate within the United States, 
 should be received at the Treasury, Morris insisted, by 
 way of reply, that "In the present moment [1782] it is 
 by no means of such consequence to establish the relative 
 value of different coins, as to provide a standard of our own 
 by which in future to estimate them." His report* was 
 devoted to an exposition of the dangers and disadvantages 
 threatening the existing currency and to the presentation of 
 a plan for improving it. He argued that a uniform currency 
 was necessary to industrial security and development. Coins 
 of every description Spanish and English coins, coins of 
 France and coins of Portugal coins of various values and 
 
 * Diplomatic Correspondence, Vol. XII. , p. 81 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 5 
 
 of varying value all were current in different parts of the 
 country. The pound was the money of account, but most 
 diverse ideas prevailed regarding pounds, shillings, and pence. 
 The want of small coin for the common occasions of trade ; 
 the need of a legal tender to protect both the honest debtor 
 and the honest creditor ; the disappearance of the depreciated 
 medium, the Continental currency, with its infinite incon- 
 venience and danger ; all argued the wisdom of adopting an 
 American coinage system and of establishing a government 
 mint. The time appeared opportune. There was a suffi- 
 cient supply of specie in the country : it needed only to be 
 recoined into American coins, and this could be done in a 
 very short time. Above all, the public credit, which was 
 almost completely broken, would be greatly strengthened. 
 In the mind of the Superintendent, or of his Assistant, 
 Gouverneur Morris, who is probably the author of the report, 
 in the main, the opportunity imposed the duty. Still, for a 
 decade, Congress took no action. 
 
 The conclusive argument, the compelling cause, which 
 finally brought partial order out of monetary chaos, was 
 indicated by Hamilton in his report on the ' ' Establishment 
 of a Mint," January 28, 1791. ''The dollar originally con- 
 templated in the money transactions of this country, ' ' says the 
 report, ' ' by successive diminutions of its weight and fineness, 
 has sustained a depreciation of five per cent. . . . The 
 value of property . . . fluctuates with the fluctuations 
 of a foreign mint. ' ' Manifestly there was neither security, 
 convenience, nor economy in dependence upon a foreign 
 mint. Depreciation and debasement of our money by acts 
 of a distant sovereign were not to be tolerated. The Second 
 Congress, by the Act of 1792, attempted to provide the 
 means for securing a uniform, convenient, and intelligible 
 system of national coins. 
 
 Perhaps the most important feature of the act establishing 
 the mint was the provision authorizing the free coinage of both 
 gold and silver. Both metals were to be coined gratuitously 
 
6 ANNAI^S OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 for all comers, in the order of arrival. The legal step 
 tending toward bimetallism was taken in this first act regula- 
 ting the currency. The silver dollar or unit was * * to be of 
 the value of a Spanish milled dollar ' ' as the same was then 
 current, "and to contain," continues the statute, "three 
 hundred and seventy-one grains and four-sixteenths parts of a 
 grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard 
 silver."* This unit for silver coins was not that proposed 
 by Morris one-quarter of a grain of pure silver, with 1440 
 to the dollar which Jefferson had characterized as too 
 minute for ordinary use and too laborious for computation. 
 It was not the unit urged by Jefferson himself, who desired 
 a single unit both for weight and for money. It was not 
 entirely the dollar suggested by Hamilton. The pure metal 
 contained, 371^ grains, was in accordance with his proposi- 
 tion, and it is interesting, though perhaps not important, to 
 note that no change has since been made in the weight of 
 pure metal in silver dollars except for the small number 
 of trade-dollars coined in the seventies. The gross weight, 
 416 grains, was that of an average lot of Spanish coins 
 bearing the date 1761, but then no longer current. 
 
 The principles and proposals of Hamilton concerning gold 
 coins were adopted entire. The gold coins were spoken 
 of as units or dollars. ' ' A preference, ' ' he says, ' * ought 
 to be given to neither of the metals, gold or silver." He 
 was of the opinion that the money unit had virtually been 
 gold rather than silver, silver dollars having circulated by 
 tale as a mere money 'of convenience, without much regard 
 to either weight or fineness ; but he presented what seemed 
 to him strong reasons for endeavoring to make permanent 
 the concurrent circulation of both kinds of money. Both 
 alike were required for home and for foreign trade. 
 
 * This most peculiar proportion was not actually adopted by the mint authorities 
 until 1796, after Congress had repeatedly refused to modify it, and the Director of 
 the Mint was unwilling longer to disobey the statute. Why this inconvenient 
 standard, i-M 5 , was first adopted and then forced on the mint, it now seems 
 impossible to determine. 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 7 
 
 "If gold be most convenient," he said, "in large payments, silver 
 is best adapted to the more minute and ordinary circulation. . . . 
 To annul the use of either of the metals as money is to abridge the 
 quantity of circulating medium, and is liable to all the objections 
 which arise from a comparison of the benefits of a full, with the evils 
 of a scanty, circulation." 
 
 Hamilton was a practical bimetallist. He aimed to secure 
 the concurrent circulation of the two metals for commercial 
 convenience. To-day ' * free coinage ' ' is demanded on the 
 score of justice as between debtor and creditor. The con- 
 current circulation of the two kinds of coins proposed is at 
 least a matter of doubt ; it might or it might not result, by 
 raising the price of silver to $1.29 per ounce, as is 
 predicted. 
 
 Bimetallism is to be defined either as a state of the law or 
 a state of the currency. If the latter is accepted as the most 
 satisfactory definition of the term, the state of the law must 
 be regarded as merely the means to the end, and practical 
 bimetallists those who seek the end may and will differ as 
 to the law which will prove most efficacious under any exist- 
 ing circumstances. Mr. Bland asserts, and some, perhaps all, 
 of the men who act with him honestly believe, that concurrent 
 circulation would result from a law allowing the free coinage 
 of both metals at the old ratio of 16 to i. Hamilton, a 
 century since, in considering the state of the currency, 
 believed that the two kinds of coins would circulate only if 
 made at the ratio of 1 5 to i . He fully appreciated the diffi- 
 culties of successfully carrying out the policy of bimetallism, 
 and the necessary consequence which would follow any con- 
 siderable underrating of either metal " banishment of that 
 which is undervalued ; . . . diminution of the total 
 quantity of specie which a country would naturally possess ; 
 . . . greater and more frequent disturbance of the state 
 of the money unit. ' ' He therefore urged that care be taken 
 to regulate the proportion of pure metal in the two varieties 
 of coin, " with an eye to their average commercial value." 
 
8 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 Hamilton, placing this market ratio at very near 15 to i, 
 and believing that this ratio would be permanent, proposed 
 (i) gold coins, with 24^ grains, and (2) silver coins, 
 with 371^ grains of pure metal to the dollar, 
 
 " The alloy in each case to be one-twelfth of the total weight, which 
 will make the unit 27 grains of standard gold, and 405 grains of stand- 
 ard silver. The former," he continues, "is exactly agreeable to the 
 present value of gold, and the latter is within a small fraction of the 
 mean of the two last emissions of [Spanish] dollars the only ones 
 which are now found in common circulation." 
 
 The questions before Congress, as enumerated by Hamil- 
 ton in this report, were the following : 
 
 1 . As to the nature of the money unit 
 
 2. As to the proportion between gold and silver, if coins 
 of both metals were to be established 
 
 3. The amount and composition of the alloy 
 
 4. The amount of seigniorage 
 
 5. The number, denomination, sizes and devices of the 
 coins 
 
 6. The currency of foreign coins. 
 
 The answer which Hamilton gave to the first and second 
 of these questions was simply, That the law should recognize 
 and endeavor to make permanent the conditions of the cur- 
 rency existing at the time so far as the unit and the concur- 
 rent circulation of both gold and silver coins were concerned, 
 and should establish and preserve a standard dollar by the 
 substitution of national coins for a miscellaneous lot of semi- 
 international coins with constantly changing values. 
 
 These principles were practically those presented by Jef- 
 ferson in his letter of 1784. In the time intervening after 
 that report was written Jefferson had studied with care the 
 practical features of the art of coining as practiced in Kurope, 
 and had acquainted himself with workers in metal and the 
 possibilities of securing officials for the Mint. When the 
 Mint was established, in 1792, it was placed under his 
 charge in the Department of State. We may conclude 
 
USE OF SII/VER IN THE UNITED STATES. 9 
 
 then that, while the outline of our system of currency 
 was determined by the conditions of colonial trade, its 
 distinguishing characteristics may be ascribed in about equal 
 measure to the influence of these three men Morris, Jefferson 
 and Hamilton. 
 
 In the discussion regarding the Mint and the currency 
 during this early period one seeks in vain for any evidence 
 of a bimetallic controversy like that of recent times. As a 
 state of the currency in every way desirable and convenient, 
 bimetallism was an acknowledged fact. It was accepted not 
 only as practicable but necessary, and the law which laid 
 the foundation of our national coinage system was conceived 
 for the purpose of providing the legal conditions necessary 
 to its continuance. It had been, and for a long time it 
 continued to be, an open question whether the expenditure 
 necessary for the establishment of a government mint would 
 be a good investment. But when it was determined to 
 undertake this work discussion seems to have become limited 
 to the purely practical considerations of convenience in 
 the coins. Indeed, little more interest was manifested in 
 the subject, at the time, than during the days of the Con- 
 tinental Congress. Though the bill was before the Senate 
 several times between December 21 and January 9, the only 
 reference to it in the Annals of Congress regards the em- 
 ployment of officers, the keeping of accounts, and the emblems 
 to be borne by the coins. The latter subject occasioned 
 an interesting and an amusing discussion in the House, 
 and even resulted in a difference between the two Houses. 
 The Senate had proposed a representation of the head of the 
 President for the time being, with his name, etc. , but it was 
 objected that to do this was to incur the danger * ' of imitating 
 the flattery and almost idolatrous practices of monarchies." 
 Despite the popular ridicule of the idea of "the people's 
 being enslaved by their President, and much less by his 
 image on their coin," the House of Representatives, by a 
 vote of 24 to 32, refused to recede from its amendment in 
 
io ANNAI^S OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 favor of a design ' ' Emblematic of Liberty . ' ' The Senate 
 ultimately accepted the amendment, but the character of the 
 emblem was left entirely to the discretion of the administra- 
 tion. 
 
 April 2, 1792, the Act was approved by President 
 Washington, who had been authorized the year previous to 
 engage artists and procure apparatus, and the work of 
 minting began at once. But the making of coin was a new 
 industry in this country. The initial difficulties to be 
 overcome were many and great. Workmen were to be 
 obtained, and the plant, and the raw material furnished ; 
 suitable buildings, furnaces, delicate machinery, dies, rollers, 
 presses, drawing and milling machines were wanted ; and 
 both materials and tools were lacking, and machinists and 
 skilled workmen were not easily found. Finally, when the 
 Mint was ready for work, there was little work to be done. 
 Coin and bullion were sent in small quantities only, and the 
 treasury did not provide means for the purchase of bullion. 
 The expense of refining, much greater then than now, was 
 at first borne entirely by the government. Again there 
 were no laws which properly protected the government in 
 the monopoly of coinage. In the report for 1795, the 
 Director of the Mint states that mints were erected at Balti- 
 more and elsewhere, professedly to imitate the coins of 
 foreign countries and to furnish a debased gold coin for the 
 West India market. How much minting they did is not 
 stated. 
 
 The minor and technical difficulties relating to methods 
 of manufacture and management were gradually overcome, 
 partly with, partly without, the aid of legislation. But the 
 major difficulty remained : neither coin nor bullion was 
 offered at the mint with any regularity or in sufficient quan- 
 tities* to employ the mint officials or to affect appreciably 
 the coin currency of the country. This lack of material 
 was at once a cause and an effect of the difficulties 
 
 * See American State Papers, Finance, I., pp. 476 and 504. 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. n 
 
 encountered. Neither gold nor silver was produced in the 
 country ; no private interest existed anxious to avail itself 
 of the privilege of having its product gratuitously manu- 
 factured by the government ; v neither was there any induce- 
 ment for individuals to offer foreign money for recoinage 
 while the foreign coins were convenient and were full legal 
 tender. 
 
 Worst of all, the treasury entirely failed to co-operate 
 with the mint in the effort to provide a system of national 
 coins. Even after inquiry on the part of a House Com- 
 mittee, the secretaries refused compliance with a very 
 definite provision of the statute, according to which all coin 
 received by the government officials in the treasury depart- 
 ment was to be sent to the mint and recoined into American 
 money before being allowed to pass into circulation again. 
 It is true that the governmental transactions of receipt and 
 in many instances expenditure of moneys took place at 
 distant points. The officials in charge apparently deemed it 
 unwise to entail the expense of transportation in both 
 directions. Even the money received in Philadelphia was 
 not sent to the mint. As late as 1803, the Director of the 
 Mint reports that no precious metal had been coined on 
 account of the Government of the United States. 
 
 Hamilton had considered three years an ample time for 
 the conversion of the coin currency of the country. The 
 average annual net ' ' ordinary ' ' receipts of the government 
 from 1796 to 1800 were over $8,000,000 an amount cer- 
 tainly equal to one-half the total alnount of coin in the 
 country at the time. That the conversion of the coin was 
 possible within three years is conclusively shown by these 
 figures ; still the average annual coinage at the mint for the 
 decade 1795-1805 was only $500,000. If the treasury 
 department, which had recommended it, would not conform 
 to the law seeking to substitute a national for a foreign coin, 
 it was not to be expected that individuals would do so, or 
 would voluntarily undertake the task. 
 
12 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 The few coins that were made were soon exported. The 
 cheaper coins those invariably chosen when preference is 
 offered were the worn and depreciated foreign coins. New 
 American coins could not " drive them out." English, 
 French, Spanish and Portuguese coins circulated freely, and 
 from time to time certain of them were made legal tender, 
 at specified rates, by tale or weight. The American dollars 
 and eagles were exported, because worth more as commodi- 
 ties in other markets than as a circulating medium or a 
 means of paying debts in the United States. Gold coins 
 were not issued until the latter part of 1795, and as early as 
 1798 it was stated in Congress that a large quantity had 
 been seen in a goldsmith's window in Kngland. "Thus 
 easily do our eagles take their flight."* 
 
 In the first years of the century the drain of silver dollars 
 was so great that the government ceased making them after 
 March, 1804, none being issued thereafter until 1836. It is 
 worthy of note that this policy was originally adopted by 
 the administration as a means of preventing the exportation 
 of coins, and was followed by the mint authorities without 
 any specific law authorizing them to refuse to coin silver 
 dollars. 
 
 During all this time the mint occupied a precarious posi- 
 tion ; even its continuance became a matter of dispute. By 
 many it was regarded as an expensive luxury, a needless 
 burden, which ought not to be borne longer. It was urged 
 that it cost $1.00 to coin $10.00. In 1802 a bill to close the 
 mint passed the House, but failed in the Senate. After 
 extended discussions, the acts were passed providing for the 
 continuance of the mint at Philadelphia for a period of from 
 one to five years. It was not until 1828 that the bill passed 
 Congress providing for its permanent establishment. In 
 1782, in the report of the superintendent of finance, it 
 was urged that the coins put into circulation should be few 
 and simple, in order that they might * * become familiar to 
 
 L_ * " Annals of Congress," 5th Cong., Vol. I., p. 750. 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 13 
 
 all ranks and degrees of men." Nearly two generations 
 passed away before the first American coins, the very coins 
 of gold which Morris had held we should never need, 
 became thus familiar to the people ; and the third genera- 
 tion was well advanced before a general national coin 
 currency was secured by the subsidiary coinage law of 1853 
 and the laws of 1864, 1865 and 1866 authorizing the smaller 
 token coins. 
 
 Bank-notes were more successful in the competition with 
 foreign coins. After 1800 the bank circulation became an 
 important factor in the currency of the country. Prior to 
 that time the currency of the country was composed almost 
 entirely of gold and silver money. Subsequently banks 
 came into existence in rapid succession. The Bank of the 
 United States (1791-1811) afforded a reasonably satisfactory 
 credit currency; but its dissolution in 1811 occasioned an 
 enormous increase in the credit currency of the country. 
 In 1815 the domestic paper which the treasury felt obliged 
 to receive was of every degree of unsoundness. Specie 
 payments had been generally suspended in 1814. The 
 latter part of the war had been conducted almost entirely 
 on treasury notes instead of long loans and bonds. In his 
 report of December 6, 1815, Dallas stated that it was im- 
 possible to estimate the working value of the income of the 
 government. ' ' The possession of funds in one part no 
 longer affords evidence of a fiscal capacity to discharge a 
 public debt in another part of the Union. ' ' The differing 
 values of the foreign coins used established at least seven 
 different standards of value in the current money. The 
 situation was as serious as in the days before the adoption 
 of the Constitution. 
 
 The period from 1815 to the panic of 1819 was one 
 marked by extreme fluctuations, prices and credits changing 
 with war-time rapidity. There were no uniform and con- 
 venient instruments of credit ; no medium existed for cir- 
 culating obligations and facilitating transfers of the 
 
14 ANNAI^ OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 evidences of debt ; no money of constant value was 
 circulated throughout the length and breadth of the land ; 
 there was no secure basis for any portion of the vast amount 
 of credit currency ; no standard or ' ' common denominator ' ' 
 of value. All things were measured in the primitive unit 
 a day's labor. Net imports rose and fell as follows, in 
 millions of dollars: 1814, 12.8; 1815, 106.5; 1816, 130; 
 1817, 79.9 ; 1818, 102.3 J I 8i9, 68. The net ordinary receipts 
 of the government were 15.7 million dollars in 1815, 47.7 in 
 1816, 33 millions in 1817, 21.6 in 1818, and $24,600,000 in 
 1819. Exchange on London, which had fallen to twenty 
 per cent discount on the nominal par ($4.44$) in 1812, 
 was twenty per cent premium in 1816. The depreciation 
 of the paper currency was an important element in the 
 situation, and a direct cause of the deranged state of industry 
 and commerce. 
 
 The evil effects of unsound currency and the necessity for 
 a mint and a national system of coinage were felt even more 
 strongly after the panic of 1819 and the resumption of specie 
 payments by the Bank of England after a suspension of 
 twenty-six years. As between individuals, it is contrast 
 with others that develops economic wants among nations. 
 In international intercourse, trade and competition, it makes 
 but little difference how poor the currency of a country may 
 be, and indeed its deficiencies are not realized, until other 
 nations secure a money of a higher industrial grade. In 
 1814 a deranged currency and the suspension of specie pay- 
 ments operated as an expelling force. In 1819 organization 
 and system abroad, the resumption of specie payment in the 
 English currency, added an impulse attracting the better 
 part of our currency to other countries. 
 
 As a means of relief from currency difficulties Congress 
 chartered the (Second) Bank of the United States in 1816, 
 with right to establish branches and with privileges of issue, 
 and revived for three years an act making certain foreign 
 coins legal tender. Again a bank-note circulation, with 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 15 
 
 foreign coins as a basis, was accepted as our national cur- 
 rency. This secured neither soundness for the credit currency 
 of large transactions, nor convenient fractional money for 
 retail trade. 
 
 In his report on the banks and the currency in 1820, the 
 Secretary of the Treasury, Crawford, stated that small notes 
 circulated in a majority of the States to the exclusion of 
 silver. Small change was not abundant anywhere except in 
 Philadelphia, the seat of the mint. Tickets of 6^ , io, 1 2 j , 
 25 and 50 cents, issued by mayors and corporation officers, 
 and dollar bills torn in two pieces for the purposes of change, 
 were everywhere used. * ' The fractional parts of a dollar, ' ' 
 he said, * ' are so indispensable in the transactions of indi- 
 viduals that anything which assumes that character will be 
 employed."* 
 
 Two other plans were proposed in 1816 and 1819 for 
 securing a better currency, but neither was adopted. First 
 it was proposed to prohibit the exportation of coin ; for the 
 new coins were regularly exported, particularly to India. 
 Both the Secretary of the Treasury and the Senate Commit- 
 tee reported against the bill proposing the old remedy of a 
 prohibition on the exportation. Such a law, they claimed, 
 could not possibly be made effectual in any country, least 
 of all in the United States ; and so far as it was actually 
 operative it would be in favor of the more corrupt and dis- 
 honest portion of the business community. Congress did 
 not commit the folly of enacting this law : the testimony of 
 history to the inefficiency of the means was too great. 
 Neither did it then adopt the second plan proposed that of 
 reducing the weight of the monetary un!t and thus making a 
 given amount of metal in the shape of an American coin worth 
 more in domestic trade and for the payment of debts at home 
 than for export. This plan had been strongly urged in 
 1816, and was favorably reported on by a House Committee 
 in 1819. In the latter instance it was recommended 
 
 * Report of February 12, 1820. American State Papers, Finance, in., p. 494. 
 
1 6 ANNAIvS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 that a charge of 14.85 grains be made for seigniorage 
 on fractional silver coins, their legal tender quality being 
 limited to the payment of debts of five (5) dollars or less, and 
 that the weight of the gold coins be reduced about four per 
 cent. 
 
 By this time gold had disappeared entirely from circulation 
 and even in goodly measure from the vaults of the banks. 
 Their reserve was largely fractional silver. Foreign coins 
 circulated in seaport towns and on the frontiers, where bank 
 paper was not received. But again, the only action taken 
 by Congress in 1819, was to extend the life of the mint for 
 another period of five years, and to continue the legal tender 
 quality of certain foreign coins Spanish coins indefinitely 
 and French silver coins for four years. 
 
 The amount of gold and silver coins issued by the mint 
 of the United States in each quinquennial period, from 1792 
 to 1834, is as follows, in millions of dollars : 
 
 Gold. Silver. 
 
 1794-5 to 1800 i. 1.4 
 
 1801 " 1805 1.5 .5 
 
 1806 " 1810 1.7 3.1 
 
 1811 " 1815 1.4 2.6 
 
 1816 " 1820 1.8 3.4 
 
 1821 " 1825 .6 5.9 
 
 1826 " 1830 1.3 ii. 
 
 1831 " 1833 2.5 8.5 
 
 This period has been called the . silver period by the his- 
 torian of bimetallism in the United States.* It is much 
 more distinctively the period of bank notes and of foreign 
 coins. Indeed it can hardly be said to have been a period 
 of American coinage. In describing it, Professor McMaster 
 says :f 
 
 " The coinage, though national in name, was not national in value. 
 The old stockings of the people were full of coins bearing the stamps 
 of many foreign mints, called by all manner of names, and possessing 
 different values in different places. . . . They had been in circu- 
 lation long before the war for independence, had seen much service, 
 
 * Professor J. L,aurence I,aughlin, of Chicago University. 
 
 + " History of the People of the United States," Vol. I., p. 189. 
 
USK OF SILVER IN THK UNITED STATES. 17 
 
 and were none the better for the wear and tear they had sustained. 
 The four pence pieces passed for six and a quarter cents if the inscrip- 
 tion was legible, but only for five if smooth and ' crossed. ' The nine 
 pence passed for twelve and a half cents. The pistareen was worth 
 twenty cents. The picayune went for six and a quarter cents. . . . 
 Some shilling pieces and six pence pieces were to be found in circu- 
 lation down even to the Civil War, and were, with the rips, the levies 
 and the pistareens, the last relics of a time happily passed away." 
 
 THE GOLD COIN BILL OF 1834. 
 
 The first important change in the laws relating to our 
 coinage system was made in 1834. Its purpose, according 
 to the advocates of the measure, was to resuscitate the gold 
 currency. The administration had been successful in its 
 prolonged contest with the bank. This fact, together with 
 the increasing importance of gold mining in the Southern 
 States, seems to have been the direct occasion of the law 
 and to have determined its character. It was approved by 
 President Jackson on June 28. By it the weight of the gold 
 coins thereafter issued was to be about six and a quarter- per 
 cent less than under the law of 1792. This, says Mr. 
 L,aughlin,* debased the gold coins of the United States 6.26 
 per cent, and to that extent the law gave gold a less legal- 
 tender value than it had possessed before 1834. (The italics 
 are my own.) 
 
 But is this debasement f It would seem rather to be a 
 provision for the manufacture of another kind of com- 
 modity. Debasement of a coin implies its being called in by 
 the government, in a more or less despotic manner, and the 
 enforced substitution of one of less value. It is a deprecia- 
 tion of the monetary unit under forms of law, an arbitrary 
 political attempt to get something for nothing. In the 
 present instance, however, there were very few coins which 
 could be called in, nine- tenths of all those issued having been 
 exported or melted, and provision was made in the law for 
 rating such as still existed and were presented at the Mint 
 
 * " History of Bimetallism in the United States," p. 70. 
 
1 8 ANNAI^ OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 in proportion to the pure metal they contained. Before 1834 
 an amount of gold worth 103 or 104 cents had been legal 
 tender for $i. But certainly this was not a very valuable 
 privilege of which owners of gold were deprived. The old 
 gold coins had not served as money in America for twenty 
 years and more. 
 
 But it was now desired for two reasons to secure a gold cur- 
 rency. For twenty years the currency question had been 
 under discussion. It had been made the subject of special 
 investigations by, and lengthy reports to, Congress. Secre- 
 taries of the Treasury, notably Crawford in 1820 and Ingham 
 in 1830, had vied with Chairmen of Congressional Committees 
 L,owndes in 1819, Sanford in 1830, and C. P. White in 
 several reports from 1831 to 1834; secretaries had vied 
 with chairmen, in preparing extended treatises on the nature 
 and character of currency and in devising plans for improv- 
 ing the condition of American currency. But Congress 
 paid little heed to reports and petitions. The paper currency 
 of the country and foreign silver coin continued to serve as 
 the money of the community. It was in the interest of 
 those who supplied the former to maintain as strong a 
 demand and as complete a monopoly as possible. The 
 Secretary of the Treasury said in a letter to the Committee 
 of Ways and Means that the great evil of the currency was 
 the disproportion between the paper in circulation and the 
 coin prepared to redeem it, and urged that the first step 
 toward a sound currency was to reform the coinage of gold.* 
 Only a gold currency, it was claimed, could compete with, 
 or form a proper basis for, a paper currency. The fancied 
 special interest of a particular class, the owners of gold 
 mines, added the impulse needed to secure legislation. 
 
 Some sort of currency a community must have. Indus- 
 trial and commercial needs compel its creation. The law 
 only regulates it or invites the creation of a particular kind. 
 The general public accept foreign coins and a voluminous 
 
 * Quoted in the Debates in Congress, Vol. X., p. 4644. 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 19 
 
 paper currency based on them, despite the disadvantages 
 and dangers, until a stronger interest is enlisted in supply- 
 ing a better currency. The first requisite of the currency 
 for ordinary transactions is that it be simple, convenient and 
 uniform. A great variety of bank-notes and of foreign 
 coins, of different values in different portions of the trading 
 community, cannot constitute a good currency. The first 
 improvement to seek is uniformity, and thus familiarity. 
 Fips and tuppenny bits will circulate till worn smooth as 
 glass, and paper dollars until badly torn, patched and dirty, 
 simply because they are familiarly known. It had been 
 expected that the Bank would secure the desired end. But 
 in his first message to Congress, in December, 1829, Jackson 
 stated that the bank had entirely failed in the effort to 
 establish a uniform and sound currency. Certainly this 
 statement, and the subsequent policy of the administration 
 in the contest with the bank, was not calculated to secure 
 to the currency either uniformity or soundness. There was 
 thus apparently another reason for currency legislation. 
 
 In the early period the question had been, Shall we have 
 American coins? The issue was entirely between the 
 acceptance of the system of foreign coins left over from 
 colonial days and the substitution of domestic or home-made, 
 national, coins. The foreign coins and a paper currency 
 won the day. The question now was, Shall we have coin 
 or paper, hard or soft money ? The practical question 
 before Congress concerned the legal restrictions and regula- 
 tions necessary to secure the chief requisite of a credit cur- 
 rency soundness. The great desideratum in money is 
 stability. That the dollar, the monetary unit, should be 
 invariable becomes increasingly important as the use of 
 credit instruments is extended. A measure, or standard, 
 cannot be good if variable. 
 
 In 1834 the basis of our credit currency was made up of 
 foreign coins and the fractional silver coins. Foreign gold 
 coins had ceased to be legal tender in 1819. L,ittle gold of 
 
20 ANNAI^ OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 any kind, native or foreign, remained in circulation after 
 1820. The silver coins were old and worn. The larger 
 part were Spanish the only foreign coins which were legal 
 tender from 1827 to 1834. They had been in circulation 
 from twenty to one hundred years. The bulk of the cur- 
 rency was paper the notes of a great number of banks. 
 These banks were of every degree of solvency, but the 
 government received their notes until the issuance of the 
 famous specie circular in 1836. American coins were few. 
 The old Spanish coins were the nearest existing approxima- 
 tion to a standard of value. The currency was neither 
 uniform, convenient nor simple, and it was maintained that 
 this coinage system was allowed to continue in order to 
 promote the use of bank-paper and preserve the unsatisfac- 
 tory condition of the currency in the interest of gamblers 
 I and dishonest speculators. 
 
 A new mint had been built in 1831, and a bill to revise 
 the coinage system passed in the Senate. From the stand- 
 point of the government, there was evident folly in main- 
 taining this mint in the comparative idleness entailed by the 
 law as it then existed, or in using it to manufacture gold 
 
 I and silver for export. The capacity of the mint was double, 
 
 possibly treble, the amount issued in the years immediately 
 preceding 1834. It was used, moreover, as it was again 
 later when the quantity of gold greatly increased, simply as 
 an inexpensive means of getting metal into a convenient 
 form for exportation. It was clear that the coinage of gold 
 should be entirely abandoned, or means provided for secur- 
 ing the circulation at home of the coins which were made at 
 government expense. Gold had never been an important 
 factor in our currency. The premium in New York from 
 1827 to 1834 was from three to ten per cent. To retain the 
 gold coin and make it the chief component of our currency, 
 it must be made so as not to be more expensive than the 
 silver coin, and together with silver it must also meet the 
 conditions of competition with paper. To accomplish these 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 21 
 
 ends was the avowed purpose of the supporters of the Gold 
 Coin Bill of 1834. 
 
 On March 29, 1834, Benton introduced in the Senate a 
 resolution for a joint committee to report what alterations, 
 if any, were necessary to be made : 
 
 First, in the value of the gold coined at the mint, ' ' so as 
 to check the exportation of that coin, and to restore it to 
 circulation. ' ' 
 
 Second, ' ' in the laws relative to foreign coins, so as to re- 
 store the gold and silver coins of foreign nations to their 
 former circulation within the United States. ' ' 
 
 Third, in the regulations for the collection of the revenue, 
 with a view to making the revenue system instrumental in 
 ' ' the introduction of gold and silver for the common currency 
 of the country." 
 
 From this presentation of the subject it would appear that 
 the ultimate object and the practical difficulties were the same 
 in 1834 that they had been in 1792. little, if anything, had 
 been accomplished in the effort to provide the country with 
 a sound and uniform currency. The important questions as 
 to the nature of the money-unit and the proper legal ratio 
 between the two kinds of coin were still unanswered. 
 
 As finally passed, the law made no change in the silver 
 coins, but reduced the weight of the gold eagle to 232 
 grains of pure metal, thereby raising the ratio to a trifle 
 over 16 to i 371^ to 23^, or 16.002. This ratio had been 
 proposed by Secretary Crawford ten years earlier. Mr. 
 lyowndes had recommended 15.6 to i in 1819, though the 
 Director of the Mint had at that time reported the ratio of 
 1 6 to i as the market rate prevailing in some parts of 
 Europe. A select ccmmittee of the Senate, in 1830, had 
 proposed 15.9 to i, a mean between different legal rates 
 established by the various countries of Europe and the com- 
 mercial rate prevailing in South America the country 
 whence came our supply of silver. These various recom- 
 mendations would indicate honest differences of opinion. 
 
22 ANNAI^ OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 The market rate is a matter of fact ; but a matter of fact diffi- 
 cult to determine with accuracy. As now stated in the 
 report of the Director of the Mint, the average rate for the 
 year 1833 was 15.93. ^ n 1808, 1812, and 1813 it was above 
 1 6, and prior to 1834 it was frequently above 15.8. Mr. 
 Jones, of Georgia, insisted in debate that the divergence of 
 the proposed legal rate from the existing market rate was 
 only 24 of one P er cent, and he justified the mint rate of 16 
 to i on the ground of a probable further advance in the ratio. 
 Mr. Gorham replied that the rate here was 15.63 ; that in 
 France it was 15.68, and in England 15.77. He conse- 
 quently maintained that the contemplated regulation con- 
 cerning gold coins would add two and one-half per cent to 
 the value of gold coins. Assuming the correctness of his 
 figures this makes evident not only the impossibility of 
 bimetallism under the new law, but the fact that in passing 
 it Congress would be responsible for a perceptible lowering of 
 the standard of value " the greatest wrong charged against 
 the tyrants of the Middle Ages, and one which no modern 
 despot has dared to repeat."* 
 
 From these statements made in debate, it would appear 
 that a bimetallic controversy took place in the Twenty-third 
 Congress. Stronger interests had developed on each side. 
 Monometallism (of silver money) was the acknowledged 
 fact in our coin currency. The standard of value, in so far 
 as there was one, was in silver, though it must remain a 
 matter of doubt whether the standard was the ideal unit of 
 two half dollars, which contained 371^ grains, or the worn 
 Spanish coins, which when issued contained, some of them, 
 365, and others 374, grains to the dollar. Silver monometal- 
 lism was not, however, so generally accepted in 1830, as the 
 permanent policy of the country, as bimetallism had been 
 in 1792. It was by many deemed advisable to resuscitate 
 the gold currency. If this was to be attempted, the practi- 
 cal question of ratio would become the point of issue. 
 
 * Sumner, " History of American Currency," p. in. 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 23 
 
 Should it be less than, equal to, or greater than the 
 commercial rate? And what was the real commercial 
 rate? The (silver) monometallists who were anxious 
 to preserve the standard unchanged, and fearful lest gold 
 should be overvalued in the coins, and thus the standard be 
 lowered, sought to place the mint rate lower than the market 
 rate, and insisted on the ratio of 15.625 to i as the highest 
 which could safely be adopted. In the House this was voted 
 too low, the vote standing 52 to 127. Bimetallists those 
 who desired joint circulation of both kinds of coins, the gold 
 for the large, the silver for the small, transactions urged 
 that the mint rate for gold might be slightly higher than the 
 market rate. Silver being a heavier metal and the coin 
 larger, it would circulate in retail trade though undervalued. 
 The ratio of 16 to i was approved in the House by a vote 
 of 145 to 36, the compromise rate of 15.865 having been 
 voted down 69 to 112. 
 
 It would thus appear that an honest difference of opinion 
 existed both as to what was the commercial value of gold in 
 terms of silver and as to how far the legal rate could prac- 
 tically diverge therefrom, under the circumstances then 
 existing, without expelling silver or gold from circulation. 
 The metal market was not active and settled. The original 
 unit had not been exactly defined, and the ratio formerly 
 adopted, 15 to i, was founded on information which was 
 more or less vague and incorrect. The conditions had not 
 greatly changed in 1834. The situation is made difficult, 
 and the making of any dogmatic statement as to the inten- 
 tion of the law-makers is prevented by the impossibility of 
 ascertaining the facts regarding the market price of metals. .. 
 The result is not clearly proved. Certainly, no active 
 business could be conducted in buying up dollars which had 
 not been coined.* It seems doubtful whether the standard 
 was appreciably reduced, even through the psychological 
 influence of the new statute. Neither the movement of the 
 
 * Andrews, " Institutes of Economics," p. 204. 
 
24 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 coin nor the change in the standard of value in the com- 
 munity would appear to have been automatic to the degree 
 implied by the statements of extreme monometallists. 
 
 While the injustice of actual debasement is unquestion- 
 able, a doubt may be fairly entertained as to the fact in any 
 particular instance. The commercial rate varied from year 
 to year* and was different in the different markets with which 
 we had direct commercial intercourse ; 16 to i appears to have 
 been the average market rate. The excess of imports over 
 exports of coin and bullion for the years 1834 to 1839 was : 
 gold, $23,542,326.00 ; silver, $26,801,954.00. In the years 
 1834 to 1 842 silver was coined to the value of $22,295,339.60, 
 while only $19,207,810 worth of gold was coined. It is 
 at least doubtful what actually constituted the standard 
 of value in the minds of the people in 1834 the American 
 coins not in use, the paper currency, or the current Spanish 
 coins of which the value as silver was so various. That the 
 experiment cost every creditor two and a half cents on every 
 dollar, as Mr. Sumner states, is hardly to be believed, in the 
 light of the above figures taken in connection with the 
 mania for bank circulation and the enormous speculation of 
 the 'years 1835, 1836 and 1837. 
 
 It is true the ratio adopted proved too high. Silver did 
 not fall so low again until 1874.* But how far its adoption 
 was due to an error of judgment on the part of sincere 
 bimetallists and how far to the desire to ' ' encourage and 
 protect ' ' gold mining in the Southern States, or how far it 
 resulted from a dishonest intent to indirectly scale down 
 debts by lowering the value of the monetary unit, cannot be 
 determined. Consideration of the political situation leads to 
 the inference that it was the intention of the majority of 
 those in power to overrate gold slightly. The desire of the 
 administration party to secure a specie circulation was pre- 
 sumably a prevailing force in the minds of many. Gold 
 coins were necessary to the success of their plan. To gold coin 
 
 * See Diagrams IV. and V. 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 25 
 
 should consequently be given the benefit of any doubt. It 
 was desired also to extend the market for gold. Small 
 amounts had been coming to the mint from North Carolina 
 ever since 1804. In 1824 one-fifth and in 1826 one-fourth 
 of the total amount coined was " native." In 1832 there 
 came to the mint from the Southern Alleghanies $678,000 
 value in gold, and in 1833, $868,000.* 
 
 As early as 1829 a committee had been appointed to con- 
 sider the advisability of establishing a branch mint in North 
 Carolina. One was organized in 1838. The gold-mining 
 interests called for congressional action to provide a market 
 for gold, and thus raise its price. Finally, a few votes or parts 
 of votes came from the political influence of those who were 
 in pecuniary difficulties, and were seeking legislative relief. 
 
 But the charge of sinister motives is based quite as 
 properly on the manner in which the act was passed as upon 
 the speculations on its possible, or knowledge of its actual, 
 effects. The bill which had been under discussion during 
 the session, and been passed in committee of the whole, 
 proposed a ratio of 15.625 to i, and the fractional parts 
 alike of the eagle and the dollar were to be depreciated from 
 three to five per cent of the standard weight and to be made 
 legal tender for $10.00 only. This bill was dropped at the 
 close of the session and an entirely new one substituted 
 one differing in principle and establishing the 16 to i ratio. 
 This was discussed in a somewhat slimly attended House 
 only a week before adjournment, and received but scant 
 attention in the Senate on the final Saturday morning. The 
 vote in its favor in the latter body was 35 to 7. 
 
 Large amounts of gold were immediately coined, and by 
 1840 began that excess of exports over imports of silver 
 which has been interrupted only three times since then.f 
 
 After 1843 the amount of gold coined exceeded that of 
 silver. The discovery of gold in 1848 somewhat reduced its 
 
 * Sumner, "Andrew Jackson," p. 333. 
 t 1843. 1846-47, 1861. 
 
26 ANNAI^S OF THK AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 value in the years following, and thus greatly increased the 
 divergence between the mint rate and the market rate of the 
 metals. In 1850 it became difficult to keep fractional silver 
 in circulation. The small coins even were worth more as 
 silver than as change, and their worth increased in 1851 and 
 1852. Silver was thus gradually demonetized under the 
 action of the law of 1834. The monetary standard of the 
 United States since 1837 has been 23.22 grains of gold. 
 
 FRACTIONAL SILVER COINS. 
 
 The second change of importance which was made in our 
 coinage system was the reduction made in the weight of the 
 fractional silver coins under the Act of February 21, 1853. 
 By the law of 1792 they had contained proportional parts of 
 a dollar 412^ grains gross weight, after 1837. By the 
 statute of 1853 they were reduced in weight to parts of 384 
 grains to the dollar and coined only on Government account. 
 The provision for free coinage of the silver dollar was not 
 changed, but after the act went into effect no deposits of 
 silver bullion were received for the purpose of coinage into 
 fractional coins, except from the treasurer of the mint. The 
 coins were to be sold in exchange for gold in amounts of 
 $100 worth or more, face value, and the amount of quarter- 
 dollars, dimes and half-dimes to be manufactured was left to 
 the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury, the treasurer 
 of the mint being authorized to purchase the necessary 
 amount of bullion. The smaller silver coins, parts of a 
 dollar, were thus made subsidiary and put on the same basis 
 as the minor or token coins, the profit on their coinage being 
 from time to time turned to the account of the Treasurer of 
 the United States. By this act they were made legal tender 
 only in payment of debts for sums not exceeding $5.00. 
 This amount was increased to $10.00 by the Act of June 9, 
 1879. 
 
 This Act of 1853 was tne logical outcome of the increase 
 in the production of gold after 1848 and the consequent fall 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 27 
 
 in its value as compared to silver. Soon after the discovery 
 of new mines of gold the silver coins rose to a premium of 
 five per cent and quite rapidly disappeared from circulation. 
 The coinage at the mint fell from $2,558,580.00 in 1846 to 
 only $774,397.00 in 1851. Small change became very 
 scarce. The demand for it is clearly shown in the mintage 
 of the depreciated three cent piece which was only ^ fine.* 
 The demand is also shown to have been urgent by a con- 
 sideration of the amount of the smaller silver coins sold after 
 1853 an average of over $5,000,000 worth annually for the 
 five years 1853-58. 
 
 Gold and silver coins were now again unequal in value. 
 Unless the variation was to be of temporary duration an 
 hypothesis which did not appear reasonable at the time ; 
 unless the equilibrium was soon to be restored by natural or 
 industrial causes and conditions, it was a matter of necessity 
 that some alteration be made. The every day convenience 
 of trade and industry demanded it. The alternatives were 
 an increase of four or five per cent in the weight of gold in 
 the gold coins, or a corresponding decrease of the silver in 
 the silver coins. To the former remedy Mr. Skelton offered 
 the objectionf that increase in the weight of the gold cur- 
 rency of the country would compel a man possessing a 
 quantity of gold coin to receive less than a dollar for that 
 piece of money stamped with one dollar upon its face. To 
 prevent this injustice the government might redeem the old 
 coins at their face value in the new ones to be issued, at an 
 expense of $15,000,000 or $20,000,000. The one alterna- 
 tive government could not afford ; the other was virtual 
 robbery of the individual by Act of Congress. ' ' We should 
 meet that difficulty when we return home to our constitu- 
 encies," remarked Mr. Skelton. Mr. Dunham added : "It 
 is using the power of the government for the benefit of 
 
 * It" amounted to nearly $1,100,000.00 in the years 1851 to 1853, while only $200,- 
 ooo worth was issued between 1853, when the coin was reduced (or rather raised) 
 to the standard of nine-tenths fine and 1873, when its coinage was discontinued. 
 
 t Congressional Globe, Vol. XXVI p. 492. 
 
28 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 capital at the expense of labor of the rich at the expense 
 of the poor."* 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that the average Congressman 
 should choose rather to reduce the fractional silver than to 
 raise the value of the gold coin, although it was clearly recog- 
 nized that the disparity in the coins existed because of a fall 
 in the value of gold and that so-called theoretical justice de- 
 manded an increase in the weight of the gold coin as a means 
 at once of equalizing the coins and maintaining the standard. 
 
 That the act could or would depreciate the standard of 
 value, or that it did so, is not apparent. True, fractional 
 silver coins are debased coins. They are token coins, and 
 the government makes a profit at present prices of about 
 forty f cents on every dollar's worth sold. But they are 
 worth their face value by reason of the fact of the limitation 
 of the supply. There is a government monopoly. The 
 only way to obtain two half-dollars is to pay their nominal 
 value to the government in legal tender. Thus, the stand- 
 ard of value cannot be affected. People are not deprived 
 of their rights, laborers are not robbed of their hire, by being 
 paid in the debased silver coins. 
 
 It was a condition and not a theory which presented itself 
 in 1850. It was a practical difficulty under which the coun- 
 try was laboring. The small paper tickets of an earlier 
 generation were again coming into use. The object of the 
 law was simply to supply small silver change a much 
 more convenient form of currency. As stated in a petition 
 from the New Jersey Legislature, "It could not in the 
 slightest degree disturb the monetary affairs of the nation, 
 or infringe existing rights in contracts." It might with 
 some propriety be urged, as was stated by Mr. Jones, of 
 Tennessee, that ' ' making gold the standard was something 
 like making standards of tobacco, rice, cotton, or any other 
 of the staple productions of the country. ' ' Gold at the time 
 
 * Appendix, Congressional Globe, Vol. XXVII., p. 191. 
 t Estimating silver at 85 cents per ounce. 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 2 9 
 
 seemed almost as unstable a measure as silver became in the 
 years following 1873. But depreciation does not necessarily 
 follow debasement, and in the instance in question was cer- 
 tain not to follow. Debasement of the fractional silver coins 
 had no more effect than the debasement of the copper coins 
 on the fluctuation of the money unit. They were not 
 allowed to decline in value. 
 
 Despite the evident public need for a simple and conven- 
 ient retail currency, but little interest was taken in the 
 bill. It was first introduced by the Finance Committee in 
 the Senate, March 8, 1852. On the twenty-ninth Mr. Hun- 
 ter asked the Senate to take it up, remarking : "I believe 
 there is no objection to it. We can pass it this evening." 
 There appeared to be no objection, and it was ordered en- 
 grossed for the third reading, and passed without discussion 
 on the day following. For some reason it did not appear in 
 the House until May 3. It was then referred to the Com- 
 mittee of Ways and Means, but was not brought up for dis- 
 cussion until February i, 1853. On that day it was 
 introduced with a speech by Mr. Dunham, explaining its 
 provisions and the reasons for some four or five proposed 
 amendments. It was discussed on the two following days, 
 but only during the morning hour, and was not again 
 brought up until February 15, when the amendments were 
 voted down by large majorities, and the bill passed as it 
 came from the Senate " Ayes, 94 ; noes, not counted." 
 
 The opposition to the bill in the House came almost 
 entirely from those who insisted that, in spite of the limita- 
 tion as to the amount to be coined, the bill depreciated the 
 standard and provided for the issuance of a new kind of coin 
 which would complicate rather than simplify the monetary 
 system. The reverse proved to be the case. The coin intro- 
 duced increased the uniformity in our coinage system and 
 met the wants of the trading community. 
 
 There seems to have been no opposition on the part of 
 bimetallists. 
 
30 ANNAI^S OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 The discussion of the bill does not indicate the existence 
 of any firm conviction of the desirability or the feasibility 
 of securing concurrent circulation by making the mint ratio 
 the same as the market ratio. The usual charges were 
 made that the government was * ' tinkering ' ' with the 
 currency and that the act was mere legislative quackery, 
 and inaction was declared to be the best remedy for the ex- 
 isting trouble. But no serious effort was made to obtain 
 bimetallism. For a number of years gold had been unmis- 
 takably the standard and the supporters of the measure 
 distinctly avowed their intention to let it remain so ; to cause 
 legal recognition of the fact, and in part to adapt silver to 
 this standard by reducing the weight of the coins most 
 needed in retail trade so that they would be below par as 
 merchandise. Nothing is said in the act about the dollar 
 the coin which practically had never been coined ; but in his 
 speech introducing the bill in the House, Mr. Dunham 
 expressed the desire of the committee to have the standard 
 currency consist of gold only, and stated that the effect of 
 the bill would be to make the proposed silver coins entirely 
 subordinate by reason of the degree of their debasement ; 
 that they would be used rather as token than as standard 
 currency, ' ' applicable and convenient, not for large but for 
 small transactions. ' ' 
 
 It is indicative alike of the small amount of interest 
 manifested in the subject and of the carelessness of legisla- 
 tors that the first section of the bill stated that it was to go 
 into effect in June, 1852. It was the expectation of the 
 Senate Committee that it would be passed the first ses- 
 sion, but it was delayed until near the end of the second 
 session and passed in the House as it came from the Senate ; 
 this provision of the first section, therefore, required the 
 impossible, and it was necessary to rectify the blunder by a 
 clause in the Deficiency Bill. The Act went into effect 
 April i, 1853. 
 
 In the light of the current discussion of the currency 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 31 
 
 question it is interesting to note that the protective argu- 
 ment was used in 1853 i n behalf of a single gold standard 
 and a gold currency just as it is now urged in favor of the 
 free coinage of the silver dollar. Gold is the production of 
 our own country : silver is not. L,et us, therefore, it was 
 urged, use our own productions and in so far increase their 
 value. It is another instance of attempt to make private 
 interest appear public blessing, if not to substitute private 
 for public benefits. 
 
 After 1848 the amount of gold coined each year at the 
 mints of the United States increased as follows, in millions 
 of dollars: 1849, 9; 1850, 32; 1851, 62.6; 1852, 56.8. 
 No one could suppose that such a quantity of coin would be at 
 once introduced into the circulation of the country. Putting 
 the metal through the mint was simply an easy way of getting 
 it manufactured into a marketable form. Provision was 
 consequently made in this Act for the manufacture of bars 
 or ingots, either of pure or standard metal, at a charge, not 
 above cost, to be fixed' by the Secretary of the Treasury. 
 By this provision it becomes possible, in part at least, to 
 separate the metal designed for use in the arts from that 
 which is to go into circulation as coin and to place the 
 expense for manufacture of the latter only on the government 
 and thus on the general public. 
 
 REORGANIZATION OF THE MINT. 
 
 The act of February 12, 1873, was at once a codification 
 and a revision of the laws relating to the coinage system of 
 the United States and to the business of minting. It is 
 entitled : ' ' An Act revising and amending the Laws relative 
 to the Mints, Assay-offices, and Coinage of the United 
 States. " By it our coinage system was somewhat extended 
 and the work of making coins more carefully systematized. 
 The many provisions of the sixty and more different laws 
 regarding the mint and its branches, the assay offices, and 
 the coinage of the United States, which had been enacted in 
 
32 ANNALS OF THE: AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 the eighty years preceding and were still in force, were 
 incorporated into a single statute. Inconsistencies were 
 removed ; discrepancies rectified ; and the whole body of 
 enactments simplified as far as possible. It was spoken of 
 in debate* as ' ' a code for the government of the whole 
 subject, carefully drawn, after months of thorough prepara- 
 tion, as the result of the best judgment of the department 
 and the country. ' ' 
 
 The Bureau of the Mint was established in the treasury 
 department, for purposes of supervision over the various 
 branches of the service, and for the collection of statistics. 
 Further changes in the law were adopted, but they relate 
 chiefly to the business methods employed, or to be employed, 
 in the mints and the assay offices. The law principally con- 
 cerns administration, specifying the manner in which govern- 
 ment officers shall perform their duties. It had been drafted 
 by the Deputy Comptroller of the Currency, Mr. John Jay 
 Knox, and was designed to facilitate public business and to 
 promote the efficiency of the government service. 
 
 Three changes were made in the kinds of coin to be issued. 
 One copper coin, the two-cent piece, was omitted from the 
 list of coins the Director of the Mint was authorized to have 
 coined. The coinage of three silver coins, the half-dime, 
 the three-cent piece and the dollar, was also discontinued. 
 The manufacture of a trade dollar was authorized. But no 
 change whatever was made in regard to the gold coins to be 
 manufactured . 
 
 Purely practical reasons were given for each of these 
 changes in the list of coins. The two-cent piece had not 
 found a ready market. The public did not care for it, 
 though it might make use of a two-and-a-half-cent piece. 
 The half-dime and three-cent piece in silver were incon- 
 venient coins, like the gold dollar, which has since been 
 discon tinned, f 
 
 * By Mr. Casserly, in the Senate, January 9, 1871. Congressional Globe, 3d Sess., 
 Forty-first Cong. p. 372. 
 t Act of September 26, 1890. See Statement A in the Appendix. 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 33 
 
 The silver dollar for some years had been worth about 
 $1.03 in gold; since the passage of the Gold Coin Bill of 
 1834 the nne s il ver m a silver dollar (371^ grains) had 
 been worth somewhat more than 23.22 grains of fine gold, 
 and as a consequence the silver dollar had not circulated in 
 the country. It was used chiefly " as a convenient portion 
 of silver in the laboratory of the metallurgist, or was hoarded 
 as an object of curiosity."* The average amount annually 
 issued from 1839 to 1869 was only a little over 100,000, and 
 of the total 8,031,238 issued between 1792 and 1873, nearly 
 one-half were made in the years following 1865, and were 
 manufactured almost exclusively for export. In 1804, when 
 it became apparent that these coins were not used to form 
 part of the currency of the country, but were exported to 
 the West Indies, the administration saw fit, without the 
 sanction of the law, to discontinue their issue. In 1873 the 
 officers of the government recommended simply that 
 authority to manufacture be withdrawn, and it was so 
 enacted. 
 
 Quite other reasons have since been assigned by some, 
 both for the recommendation and for its acceptance by Con- 
 gress. The anticipated decline in the value of silver, it has 
 been claimed, led to the demonetization of silver in 1873. 
 Some feared and many fully expected a change in the rela- 
 tion of the two metals, and hence secured a revision of the 
 law in order to insure themselves against loss or to prepare 
 the way for reaping immense harvests through the fluctuation 
 in prices and the fall in values. On the other hand, it is 
 maintained that the great decline in the value of silver was 
 as little foreseen, and could have been as little foreseen, in 
 1873, as was the earlier decline in the value of gold. Cer- 
 tainly, accusation of the legislators of either period is, to 
 say the least, uncalled for. 
 
 The debates of 1873, as of 1853, have record of no 
 bimetallic controversy. In each instance, more particularly 
 
 * Report of the Comptroller of the Currency, 1876, p. 168. 
 
34 ANNANS OF THE; AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 the latter, its occasion had been lacking. Between 1862 
 and 1876 we had a paper currency. Both gold and silver 
 coins of every kind and description, and in a measure even 
 copper coins, were driven from circulation by the notes of 
 the treasury, of the national banks, and of individuals. 
 They had ceased to be part of the circulating medium of the 
 country. They would be returned only upon the with- 
 drawal of the depreciated paper. It was even questioned in 
 debate why the government should consider the relative 
 merits of two kinds of coin neither of which the country 
 possessed. As between the two, there was apparently no 
 thought of so changing the mint rate as to insure their joint 
 circulation, except on the part of those who opposed any 
 debased currency whatsoever even the fractional. No one 
 proposed to attempt the re-establishment of bimetallism. 
 For that purpose, the depreciation of the silver dollar three 
 per cent or more would have been necessary, and some plan 
 for forcing the depreciated paper to par and maintaining it 
 in a state of convertibility must have been adopted. 
 
 How far coming events cast their shadows before is ever a 
 difficult matter to determine, but that the changes of the 
 years from 1871 to 1876 could have been anticipated by Mr. 
 Knox in preparing his report in 1869 hardly seems probable. 
 It is certain that the average Congressman in 1873 would not 
 have found it possible to make the most vague approxima- 
 tion to the rate which was necessary to secure bimetallism 
 throughout the decade that followed. That the victor in the 
 Franco- Prussian war would be able to compel the payment 
 of a gigantic war indemnity of $1,000,000,000, and would 
 make use of the opportunity to change the currency of 
 Germany from silver to gold, as a means of aiding industrial 
 development ; that between 1871 and 1874 nearly every 
 country in Europe would close its mint to the coinage of 
 silver and keep it closed ; and that the demand for silver in 
 the countries of the East, India and China, would greatly 
 decline ; that the production of silver would double, treble 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 35 
 
 and quadruple even between 1868 and 1878 ; that an almost 
 unprecedented industrial depression would follow the panic 
 of 1873 ; that these, or any such fortuitous concatenation of 
 events could have been foreseen, and the fall in the value of 
 silver, as measured in gold, been predicted with any accuracy, 
 is highly improbable. In any case the very best policy, the 
 one which most completely protected the interests of the whole 
 community was, perhaps, the one adopted in the Act of 
 
 1873- 
 
 The fall in silver, coming as it did so shortly after the 
 failure of the Greenback party in 1874, gave rise to bitter 
 feelings against those who secured the enactment of the 
 Mint L,aw of 1873. Extremists even went so far as to say 
 that silver had been demonetized by clandestine legislation. 
 Nor has this belief disappeared with the progress of time ; it 
 is still current, though quite unwarranted, as shown by the 
 history of the bill in its passage from drafting to final enact- 
 ment. It was practically before Congress and before the 
 country for about four years. In his report in 1869 the 
 Director of the Mint urged the restoration of a silver cur- 
 rency ' ' for change, ' ' in lieu of the postal and small-note 
 currency, as the first step toward and " an important adju- 
 vant to a general resumption of specie payments. ' ' A year 
 later he stated that a number of our leading commercial 
 newspapers had emphatically endorsed the plan and he ex- 
 pressed the belief (1870) that the product of silver in Nevada 
 and Colorado would be sufficient to meet the demand. His 
 proposition was for a very much more debased kind of coin 
 than those formerly in use, and in defence of the system he 
 quoted the following significant language : * ' This is not a 
 scheme for debasing the standard of value. Its only object 
 is to restore silver on such a basis, under legal sanctions, as 
 will enable it to keep its subsidiary place, whether the chief 
 currency be paper, as it now is, or gold, as we hope it will 
 soon be."* 
 
 * Finance Report, 1870, p. 422. 
 
36 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 The draft of a bill in which the plan was systematically 
 worked out had been sent, during the year 1869, to promi- 
 nent financiers and the important government officials, for 
 suggestion and comment. In its perfected form it was in- 
 troduced into the Senate by Mr. Sherman, April 28, 1870, 
 and referred to the Finance Committee. The letter from 
 the Secretary of the Treasury and the report by Mr. Knox 
 explaining the provisions of the bill were printed with the 
 bill. 
 
 After a careful investigation the bill was reported in 
 December following. It was discussed during the morning 
 hours of January 9 and January 10, 1871, and passed on the 
 second day by a vote of 36 to 14, 22 being absent. Just a 
 year later, January 9 and 10, 1872, the bill was discussed 
 in the House,* and recommitted. On February 9 it was 
 again introduced. Mr. Hooper, of Massachusetts, who then 
 had the bill in charge, explained in his speech opening the 
 discussion that Section 16 provided for a dollar coin of 384 
 grains of silver T % fine, ' ' making it a subsidiary coin in har- 
 mony with the silver coins of less denomination, to secure 
 its concurrent circulation with them."f He was followed 
 by Mr. Stoughton, of Michigan, who continued the expla- 
 nation of the bill. In the course of his speech he made the 
 following perfectly plain statement : J * ' The office of the 
 silver or ' subsidiary ' coins is to supply the public want 
 for small change. They are made the tokens of value, not 
 the value itself, and are designed only for exchange and 
 circulation at home, up to but never in excess of the require- 
 ments of trade." 
 
 It would thus appear that the Committee of Coinage, 
 Weights and Measures was not endeavoring to conceal its 
 intentions. They proposed to carry out the recommendation 
 of the Director of the Mint and provide for the restoration 
 of silver to its place as a subsidiary coin in our currency,. 
 
 * Mr. Kelly had introduced the bill (H. R. No. 5) in the new Congress, 
 t Congressional Globe, Second Session Forty-second Congress, p. 2306. 
 I Congressional Globe, Second Session Forty-second Congress, p. 2309. 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 37 
 
 making this the first step toward a resumption of specie pay- 
 ments and a complete restoration of the currency of ante- 
 bellum days. The final vote in the House was taken under 
 a suspension of the rules, when a substitute bill was passed 
 May 27, 1872, by a vote of no to 13. 
 
 Nearly another year elapsed before the bill was passed in 
 the Senate, on January 17, 1873. It had received twenty 
 amendments on its journey through the latter body. The 
 House did not concur. The Senate insisted. Conference 
 became necessary to pass the bill. The report of the Con- 
 ference Committee was agreed to, the House receding from 
 its opposition to the amendments of the Senate numbered 
 i, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, n, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 20, and the 
 wording of the other amendments being so changed as to be 
 acceptable to both Houses. The exact character of the bill 
 was thus finally determined in conference committee, but its 
 main features, so far as a change of the coinage is concerned, 
 had been under contemplation for nearly four years. If the 
 charge of clandestine legislation is preferred against the 
 legislators of 1873 it must be urged with equal force at the 
 bar of public opinion against many another Congress whose 
 most important acts have been shaped by a Conference Com- 
 mittee chosen to remove the points of disagreement between 
 Senate and House. 
 
 As late as the beginning of the year 1872 it appears to 
 have been a matter of doubt whether the silver coins were 
 sufficiently debased under the Act of 1853, to keep them in 
 circulation. On January 8 Mr. Kelly introduced a resolution 
 ' * which was read, considered, and adopted by the House, ' ' 
 instructing the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures 
 " to inquire and report whether the intrinsic value of the 
 silver coinage is not above that of other nations and greater 
 than is necessary in coins designed for subsidiary purposes 
 only, and to be retained permanently in the country. ' ' 
 
 The difference in European systems of coinage was five 
 per cent, whereas in ours the smaller silver coins were then 
 
38 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 worth only about four per cent less than the standard gold 
 coins. To-day they are worth about forty per cent less, and 
 the inducement to counterfeit has become correspondingly 
 great. 
 
 Moreover, the recommendations of the mint authorities 
 and the action of Congress were quite in harmony with 
 another attempt which was making at this time that in 
 favor of an international coinage system. 
 
 On February 8, 1870, Mr. Sherman introduced the fol- 
 lowing resolution in the Senate : 
 
 ' ' Resolved, That the President be requested, if not incom- 
 patible with the public interests, to invite a correspondence 
 with Great Britain and other foreign Powers, with a view to 
 promote the adoption by the Legislatures of the several 
 Powers of a common unit and standard of an international 
 gold coinage, and that such correspondence be submitted to 
 Congress for its information and action." 
 
 The Forty-first Congress was at least consistent. It did 
 not attempt, as did a later one, to secure an international 
 agreement for a common unit and by its own act put another 
 barrier in the way. It rather undertook to bring the currency 
 system of the United States into accord with that of the most 
 completely developed of her sisters in the family of nations. 
 
 Finally, as if to remove the last shadow of doubt as to the 
 definite intentions of the administration, we have the recom- 
 mendation of the Secretary of the Treasury in his report for 
 1872, issued when the bill was in its last days. Silver had 
 already begun to depreciate. Its use as currency had been 
 discontinued by Germany and some other countries. The 
 amount mined was at the same time increasing. Believing 
 that the depreciation of silver was likely to continue, 
 the Secretary urged such alterations in the Mint Bill as 
 would ' ' prohibit the coinage of silver for circulation 
 in this country." He fceld that no attempt should be 
 made to introduce the use of silver as currency, but "that 
 the coinage should be limited to commercial purposes, 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 39 
 
 and designed exclusively for commercial uses with other 
 nations. ' ' 
 
 It was in carrying out the policy, recommended by the 
 Secretary of the Treasury, that authority was given to manu- 
 facture the ''Trade-dollar." In attempting to determine 
 the motives which led to the discontinuance of the silver 
 dollar due consideration must be given to this fact, that 
 the same act grants the right to have the more valuable 
 trade-dollar manufactured at the mint. The history of the 
 trade-dollar also offers an exceedingly interesting lesson in 
 the operation of currency laws.* 
 
 Section 21 of the Act of 1873 provided that any owner 
 of silver bullion might ' ' deposit the same at any mint to be 
 formed into bars, or into dollars of the weight of four 
 hundred and twenty grains Troy, designated in this act as 
 trade dollars, and no deposit of silver for other coinage shall 
 be received, . . . the charges for converting standard 
 silver into trade dollars shall equal but not exceed . . . 
 the actual average cost to each mint and assay office of the 
 material, labor, wastage and use of machinery employed," 
 these to be determined by the Secretary of the Treasury. 
 Under this provision the amounts issued in millions of dollars 
 were: in 1873, 1.2; in 1874, 4.9; in 1875, 6.3; in 1876, 
 6.2; in 1877, 13.1. The coinage was partially suspended 
 in October, 1877, an< ^ finally discontinued by the act of 
 February 22, 1878. 
 
 The legal tender quality of the trade-dollar, limited to- 
 amounts not exceeding five dollars in any one payment, was 
 entirely removed by the act of July 26, 1876; yet as many of 
 these coins were made after this date as before, and they 
 remained in circulation for a number of years after their coin- 
 age had been entirely disallowed. That is to say, the Ameri- 
 can people persisted for several years in having manufactured 
 and in using a coin to which Congress gave no sanction 
 
 * A detailed account of the life of this coin is given in the report of the Director 
 of the Mint for 1887, pp. 96-100. 
 
4O ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 other than the guarantee of an honest and efficient mint. 
 From 1873 to 1875 these coins cost somewhat more than a 
 dollar each in the United States, and hence no one could 
 afford to use them as money, either in paying debts or 
 buying goods. It was only by exporting them to China 
 and the Hast that the expenses of their coinage could be 
 met. In 1876 and 1877, however, they cost less than a 
 dollar apiece to manufacture,* and as the public generally con- 
 tinued to receive them at their face value, holders of bullion 
 found it profitable to send it to the mint for coinage, as pre- 
 scribed by the Act of 1873, into a 42o-grain trade-dollar. 
 
 Of the total amount coined, f one-fifth (7,689,036) was 
 redeemed at face value, in exchange for standard silver 
 dollars or subsidiary silver coins, under the act of March 3, 
 1887. Nearly all the remainder have been permanently 
 exported. So far as our currency is concerned, therefore, 
 the trade-dollar has become a thing of the past. 
 
 The Act of 1873 thus appears to have been an attempt to 
 ranonetize rather than to demonetize silver. By the Act 
 of 1834 silver, as compared with gold, had been undervalued 
 in our coinage. From about 1840 down to 1875 the 371^ 
 grains of fine silver in a dollar had been worth more than 
 the 23.22 grains of fine gold in a dollar from one to ten 
 cents more. During all this time Congress had failed to 
 rectify the mistake, if mistake it was, that had been made 
 in 1834, and as a consequence the American people had 
 used a gold currency. Silver had not been monetized ; 
 indeed, it was demonetized by the public during this period. 
 The only monetization took place under the Act of 1853, 
 debasing the fractional silver currency and limiting the 
 right of manufacture by abolishing ' ' free coinage ' ' and 
 creating the government monopoly. 
 
 The Act of 1873 was supplementary to the Act of 1853 
 and conceived with the same intent. The circulation of 
 
 * See Diagram, 
 t 35,965,924- 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 41 
 
 postal currency had driven silver coins out of circulation 
 during the Civil War and the years subsequent thereto. 
 The proposition was made in 1869 to restore silver to its 
 position as a subsidiary com, the supply from Nevada and 
 Colorado, it was believed, making this feasible. Any excess 
 in the silver product for export was to be in the form of a 
 ' ' trade-dollar. ' ' An American silver coin had never been 
 the chief component of American currency, and there was 
 at that time no apparent reason for attempting to introduce 
 it. For a generation silver had been used as the metal of 
 our subsidiary coins. It remained, then, to bring the dollar 
 into harmony with the fractional coins or to retire it from 
 the circulation. The latter alternative was chosen, although 
 the former had been recommended. Provision was made at 
 the same time for the manufacture of coins of a convenient 
 form, with quality and quantity of metal marked upon each, 
 which could be used in trade with countries having a silver 
 currency. 
 
 The important effect of this law, and of the provision of 
 the revised statutes (1874) which deprived the silver dollar 
 of legal tender quality, was that they prevented a use of sil- 
 ver which, under laws previously in force, would inevitably 
 have followed the fall in the value of silver (1876) and the 
 failure of the Greenback movement. Whether or not this 
 was a desirable result is a much disputed question. The 
 belief that it was not has led to the persistent effort of the 
 last fifteen years to extend the use of silver. It is with the 
 passage of the Act of January 14, 1875, providing for the 
 resumption of specie that is, gold payments on the out- 
 standing obligations of the government, that the real bi- 
 metallic controversy in this country begins. It has been carried 
 on alike by those personally interested, as they believe, in 
 maintaining the stability of our measure of value and stand- 
 ard of payments and by those who are anxious for the general 
 welfare and believe that industrial growth and prosperity, as 
 well as political justice, demand a composite unit of value. 
 
42 ANNAI^S OF THK AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 Thus far this movement for bimetallism has resulted in 
 three apparently quite fruitless attempts to secure inter- 
 national agreement regarding the coinage of gold and 
 silver,* and in the two acts requiring the United States Gov- 
 ernment to purchase silver as the basis of a paper currency. 
 
 By the Act of February 28, 1878, the coinage of the stand- 
 ard silver dollar was authorized and its legal tender quality 
 restored. But the coinage was fixed within definite limits 
 and to be made on government account only. The Secretary 
 of the Treasury was instructed to purchase not less than two 
 nor more than four million dollars' worth of silver per month 
 and have it coined into standard dollars. He was also author- 
 ized to issue certificates for the deposit of these coins, which 
 should be receivable for customs, taxes and all public dues, 
 and when so received might be reissued. Nearly 400,000,- 
 ooo were coined under this act, of which about 60,000,000 
 remain in circulation ; the remainder are covered by certifi- 
 cates, or are lying idle in the vaults of the government. 
 
 The Act of July 14, 1890, known as the Sherman Act, 
 directs the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase four and 
 one-half million (4,500,000) ounces of silver per month, or 
 such part thereof as may be offered for sale at prices below 
 $1.29 per ounce, and to issue Treasury Notes in payment. 
 These notes are a legal tender at their face value * ' in pay- 
 ment of all debts, public and private, except when otherwise 
 expressly stipulated in the contract." They are redeemable 
 in either gold or silver coin at the option of the secretary. 
 The government is thus made a regular purchaser of silver, 
 which it uses as the basis of a paper currency that increases 
 from $40,000,000 to $60,000,000 a year, according as the 
 price of silver rises or falls. Thus far the administration, 
 Democratic as well as Republican, has been able to redeem 
 
 the Treasury Notes in gold. 
 
 ARTHUR B. WOODFORD. 
 
 School of Social Economics. 
 
 * Held at Paris in 1878 and 1881, and at Brussels in 18^2. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 (43) 
 
44 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 STATEMENT A. 
 
 Showing the various coins issued from the mints of the United 
 States, the date at which they were authorized and discontinued, and 
 the legal tender quality of each. 
 
 Authorized. Discontinued. Legal Tender. 
 GOLD (6, 2 discontinued). 
 
 Double-eagle, . . Mch. 3, 1849, For any amount. 
 
 Eagle, Apr. 2, 1792, " 
 
 Half-eagle 
 
 Quarter-eagle, . . " " 
 
 Dollar, Mch. 3, 1 849, Sept. 26, 1 890, " 
 
 Three-dollar piece, Feb. 2 1, 1 853, " " 
 
 SILVER (8, 4 discontinued). 
 
 Dollar, ..... Apr. 2, 1792, ...... (Except 1874-1878;. 
 
 f For any amount until 
 Half dollar " Feb. 
 
 since then. 
 Three-cent piece, Mch. 3, 1851, 3oc. 
 
 Twenty-centpiece, Mch. 3, i8 75 ,Ma y 2, .878, { "* 
 
 Trade-doHar, . . F*.i 2 ,i8 73 . Feb. 22 , l87 8, 
 
 COPPER (2, discontinued). 
 
 Cent, Apr. 2, 1792, Feb. 21,1857, 
 
 Half-cent, .... " 
 
 BRONZE (2, i discontinued). 
 Two-cent piece, . Apr.22,i864, Feb. 12,1873, { 2 Jj 
 
 {" loc. till Mch. 3, 1865. 
 4c. till Feb. 12, 1873 
 25C. thereafter. 
 
 NICKEL (3, 2 discontinued). 
 
 Cent, Feb.2i, 1857, Apr.22, 1864, 
 
 Three-cent piece, . Mch. 3, i865,Sept. 2 6,,89o, { % ^J^' '"' 
 Five-cent piece, .Ma yI 6, l8 66 { f l 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 45 
 
 STATEMENT B. 
 
 Showing the weight and fineness of the gold and silver coins under 
 the various statutes, the number of grains to the dollar being given 
 in each case. 
 
 April 2, 1792. 
 
 Gross Pure 
 
 weight. Standard, metal. 
 
 Gold coins, .... 27 
 Silver coins, ... 416 
 Ratio of pure metal, 
 
 Jf-ff 
 
 24! 
 371 
 
 Gross 
 weight. 
 
 25.8 
 
 June 28, 1834. 
 
 Standard. 
 .899225 
 
 or 
 
 Pure 
 metal. 
 
 23.2 
 : 16.002 
 
 January 18, 1837. 
 Gross Pure 
 
 weight. Standard, metal. 
 
 Gold coins, 25.8 T 9 5 23.22 
 
 Silver coins, 412^ T 9 7 37i 
 
 Ratio of pure metal, i : 15.998 
 
 February 21, 1853. 
 Gross Pure 
 
 weight. Standard, metal. 
 
 Fractional silver coins, 384 T 9 <j* 345^ 
 Trade-dollar, .... 
 
 February 12, 1873. 
 
 Gross Pure 
 
 weight. Standard, metal. 
 
 385-8f rk 347-22 
 420 & 378 
 
 STATEMENT C. 
 
 Showing the coinage of gold and silver at the mints of the United 
 States by periods, together with the total production from the mines 
 of the country since 1792. 
 
 Silver 
 to the value of 
 
 $36,275,07790 
 42,966,776.60 
 578,126,532.60 
 
 Gold 
 to the value of 
 
 1792-1833, $11,825,890.00 
 
 1834-1852, 224,962,920.00 
 
 1853-1892, 1,345,578,425.50 
 
 1792-1892, $1,582,367,235.50 $657,368,387.10 
 
 Production, $1,904,881,769.00 $1,073,172,000.00 
 
 1792-1833, 
 
 1834-1852, 
 
 1853-1873, 
 
 1853-1892, 
 
 1878-1892, 
 
 1873-1878 (Trade-dollars), 
 
 Silver Dollars. 
 
 $1,439,517 
 1,067,373 
 5,524,328 
 
 413,988,735 
 35,965,924 
 
 Fractional Silver 
 to the value of 
 
 134,835,560.90 
 41,899,403.60 
 
 122,647,525.60 
 
 * Except the three-cent piece (March 3, 1851), which was f fine ; weight changed 
 to standard March 3 1853. 
 f Equals 25 grams 
 
46 
 
 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
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 g 
 
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 <1 
 
 
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 GOLD COINAGE. 
 
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 QUARTER- 
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 B8S 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 fgS- 
 
 
 
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 HALF- 
 EAGLES. 
 
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 EAGLES. 
 
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 Illslli 
 
 
 
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 DOUBLE- 
 EAGLES. 
 
 
 
 
 
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 : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 i ! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 1 i 
 
 
 
 CALENDAR YEARS. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 : : : 
 : : : 
 
 ] 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 j 
 j 
 
 : j 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 : 
 
 
 : j 
 
 j 
 
 
 
 
 j 1 
 
 i i 
 
 : : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 : 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 : 
 
 
 
 : : : : 
 
 : : : : 
 III!! 
 
 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 47 
 
 BBS 
 
 -^ i < O 
 
 ^ o o co o **i* i 
 
 ?5 TT iC '>O CC 5 ' 
 
 -co cc_o_c^oib r- vo^ i-iio 
 
 I^SIslli^Si" 
 
 "^ *^ ^ "^ 
 
4 8 
 
 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 < O 
 
 W-J 
 63 
 
 O*J2iOil7CNCOiOC^C^COCOCOC^C^C'J^^C4COCO*O^ 
 <*! CC 6^ O^ l"^ r ^ C^l if5_ & CO Cft tO f*4 QQ ^1 (N O> O W 4O CD O 
 
 COCCCOCO^r-T 
 
 8888S88S8g8888888888888gS888SS88 
 
 irf CS 
 
 M 
 
 
 
 
 
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 r-i i^ (N M t><N I-H rH 
 
 ^ccc^co^ 
 
 CO T}< 1C < 
 - 1^ t^- l^- I 
 
 OOOO OO C 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 49 
 
 TABLE II. 
 COINAGE OF THE MINTS OF THE UNITED STATES FROM THEIR ORGANIZATION, BY CALENDAR 
 YEARS AND BY DENOMINATION OF PIECES 
 
 SILVER COINAGE. 
 
 THREE 
 
 CENTS. 
 
 : : : :::::: 
 
 i i : : : ? 1 J 
 
 
 ; 
 
 
 :::.;: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 S| 
 
 S 
 
 F 
 
 c- 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 ef 
 
 
 8S8S IS 
 
 
 
 : 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 : 
 
 
 lill jl 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ill 
 
 j 
 
 1 
 
 S 
 
 
 oo o 
 
 88S8S8 
 
 8 
 
 8S8 
 
 is 
 
 
 
 
 
 SS8S 
 
 s i 
 
 CO '-O i-O 
 
 sag 
 
 SiliSl 
 
 1 
 
 511 
 
 ; 
 
 
 
 
 
 111! 
 
 lj 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 TWENTY 
 
 CENTS. 
 
 
 i i 
 
 
 
 j j 
 
 
 
 : : i i 
 
 ' : 
 
 
 
 
 
 : : 
 
 
 : 1 
 
 
 
 : : 
 
 i 
 
 
 j 
 
 
 
 
 
 i : : 
 
 I 
 
 QUARTER- 
 DOLLARS. 
 
 
 S8 
 
 
 
 oc 
 
 'Si^ 
 
 
 i ss 
 
 SSSSS8 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 SSfl! 
 
 "<^ 
 
 
 
 ^oo .p 
 
 
 
 : | 
 
 8ii^l 
 
 I 
 
 : ^ 
 
 
 8^SSS^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 j 
 
 HALF- 
 DOLLARS. 
 
 i 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 SSSSi 
 
 888888SSS 
 
 8S888SS88S8 
 
 Illllllii 
 
 
 iiIS 
 
 
 
 
 M.^, 
 
 
 
 < 
 I 
 
 \\ 
 
 
 
 j 
 
 
 
 : ; ; ; ; 
 
 
 
 
 : i : 
 
 i i i i i 
 
 : 
 
 i : i : : 
 
 
 
 
 j 
 
 lj!|| 
 
 ! : 
 
 1 
 
 CALENDAR YEARS. 
 TR 
 
 DOLI 
 
 i i j i ! i i ! i i i 
 
 
 j 
 
 
 
 
 
 : : 
 
 
 
 
 j 
 
 
 
 !::::: 
 
 : : : 
 
 
 
 
 
 ; 
 
 : 
 
 : 
 
 : : : : : 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
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 j 
 
 
 : : : i : 
 
 j 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 : : : : : 
 
 
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 j 
 
 
 1 1 ill I ! 
 
 ^ 
 
 oon 
 
 
 111 
 
 o6^c^c6<*io<br^Gc' 
 
 
 SSSJSjSSSS 00 ^ 
 
ANNAI^S OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 joSSSSSSS 
 
 8388338888^888888838888833888 
 
 8333838|8883g888888333838S883883 
 
 w 
 
 S3 
 
 I 
 
 38 
 
 OiO 
 
 888 
 
 83S8S83838888S838883S338883 
 
 ||^I|si|||gi 
 
 
 S8388SS833888888888883388388 
 
 : ""' ' 
 
 :2883gSS 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 5i 
 
 - X, 
 
 3 
 
 8SS38S8888888S8 
 
 Wo 
 
 888S8S,8888888S8 
 
 '' 
 
 
 Hill I 
 
 yf : 
 
 'Trccof to i- 
 
 t^t^Ooi t>"iC CO ic --O iC 
 
 t^- oc i/^ T - -c * ~ >^ 
 oo ^t-^S^tc o c~- cc -v rf 
 
 ' 
 
 IS 
 
 Sf: 
 
 o 
 
ANNAI^S OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 DIAGRAM I. Gold and Silver Coinage of the Mints of the 
 United States (1834-1892). 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 53 
 
 DIAGRAM II. Coining Value of the Gold and Silver Produced 
 from the Mines of the United States (1853-1891; 
 
 I 
 
 ^N P ^* 
 
 ^* ^Nft *^* ^ 
 
54 
 
 ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 o -* 
 Q 
 
 C". ~t 
 CO CO 
 
 : ci" 50 o ,-TTH co 
 
 I CT-KO ( 
 
 I5SSS! 
 
 *o 
 
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 ooccT 'Otoci^oc^ocot^r- 'Oico^H 
 
 rH g) ?5 CO CC ^ Xl O LO S ^ CO <M OO O 1C 
 
 
 
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 o3 O * ** " 
 
 rHrHCC^J 1 
 
 S O C iC 00 
 
 ' 
 
 ig co aoe^ oo jc 
 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 55 
 
 fe w 
 
 
 i i i ! i : i ; i 1 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 leg 
 
 I MM! 
 
 r i * I * I i I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - - ? 
 
 'o * * * * 
 
 . r ...* 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 W *" "** 
 
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 : : :::::::: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ass 
 
 a *t 
 i (r-t^H 
 
 'o i^TjT^i^of 
 
 S S S S" S S3 a ^SSSSSS^sSSgf 88 S S8"S5 S 
 
 * 1 slj.ss a aJjAfe*g||**J s ^ 
 
 o o> = otf,^QO^o^^^r. 
 
 . T -' 
 
 * i 1 
 
 
ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 at 
 
 fe ><n 
 
 is! 
 
 9K 
 
 ll 
 
 & * 
 
 t^^O^ 
 
 
 :ig^gg&gSsfe5i^Jj2S 
 
 "r-Tco'ofcfof r-T <rf i-Tc<f c4* c^f co~irf i-Ttd'odr^cc ^ 
 
 r-( ^ rH rH 11 rH 
 
 ^ 
 
 S S 00 2 ?J 1^ S j 2 (^ ~ ~ p. " ,'-' I^ cv 
 
 S eci:H?Jtbo3eooiC?-y5oo^'r4xt-i.o 
 O TH"c<fr-r oo'i4'cri'ol 1 4'efi-4 
 
 S 00 C5 C-l 
 
 Ss 
 
 Tr-^ 00"r4(N"^<N 1 TH'cir4' VO t> COV-Tc 
 
 
 ^>^.-^^iTj*'rhTyti:^itr~ ;*~ ;^ ."riHiOu^i.^cc^C^C^O- 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 57 
 
 fc 5 . 
 
 11 
 
 ! 
 
 '* < c 
 ceo 
 
 -- 
 
 _r^ co 
 
 s 
 
 Mecsouooioi^i.caicoeoi.ocoQcoCTiTj'Q 
 
 t C". I ^ X T I 'J' 7 I i 7 I - i ~ Ct TS X i.t i* u^ T-^ G 
 ? ^S C<1 D O S-. CC C>4 31 t^ CO i-H CO 1-1 O5 00 -^ 5 
 
 ? -" . - ... . -i - - -.* .-*xw - - . 
 
 S5 ^ 
 
 
ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 TABLE V. 
 
 AVERAGE ANNUAL PRODUCTION OF GOLD AND SILVER IN THE 
 WORLD BY PERIODS FROM 1492 to 1880. 
 
 From Soetbeer, as quoted in Laughlirfs "History of Bimetallism in 
 the United States," pp. 217-219. 
 
 
 SILVER. 
 
 GOLD. 
 
 
 SILVER. 
 
 GOLD. 
 
 14931520.. 
 
 82,115,000 
 
 $4,045,500 
 
 17611780... 
 
 $29,383,250 
 
 $14,441,750 
 
 15211544.. 
 
 4,059,000 
 
 4,994,000 
 
 17811800. 
 
 39,557,750 
 
 12,408,500 
 
 15451560.. 
 
 14,022,000 
 
 5,935,400 
 
 1801-1810. 
 
 40,236,750 
 
 12,400,000 
 
 15611580.. 
 
 13,477,500 
 
 4,770,750 
 
 1811-1820. 
 
 2 .',334,750 
 
 7,983,000 
 
 15811600.. 
 
 18,850,500 
 
 5,147,500 
 
 18211830. 
 
 20,725,250 
 
 9,915,750 
 
 16011620.. 
 
 19,030,500 
 
 5.942,750 
 
 18311840. 
 
 26,840,250 
 
 14,151,500 
 
 16211640 . 
 
 17,712,000 
 
 5,789,250 
 
 18411850. 
 
 35,118,750 
 
 38,194,250 
 
 16411660.. 
 
 16,483,500 
 
 6,117,000 
 
 1851 1855. 
 
 39,875,000 
 
 137,775,000 
 
 16611680.. 
 
 15,165,000 
 
 6,458,750 
 
 18561860. 
 
 40,725,000 
 
 143,725,000 
 
 16811700.. 
 
 15,385,500 
 
 7,508,500 
 
 18611865. 
 
 49,550,000 
 
 129,125,000 
 
 17011720.. 
 
 16,002,000 
 
 8,42.000 
 
 18661870. 
 
 60,250,000 
 
 133,850,000 
 
 1721-1740.. 
 
 19,404,000 
 
 13,308,250,. 
 
 
 88,625,000 
 
 119,050,000 
 
 17411760.. 
 
 23,991,500 
 
 17,165,500 
 
 1576-lbSO.:. 
 
 .^12,500,000 
 
 119,975,000 
 
 TJHI7ERSIT7 
 
DIAGRAM IV. Commercial Rati 
 
 /f 
 
 It,.* 
 
 (7 
 
Silver to Gold each year since 1687. 
 
 'r 
 
 17 
 
 /I 
 
 S^^;^>^^^ 
 
USE OF SILVER IN THE UNITED STATES. 59 
 
 DIAGRAM III. Annual Production of Gold and Silver in the 
 World (coining value), for the calendar years 1873-1891. 
 
 $180,040.100 f 
 
 / 
 
6o 
 
 ANNALS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
 
 DIAGRAM V. Value of an Ounce of fine Silver at 
 average quotation (1833-1892). 
 
 Coining Value 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 APR 15 1933 
 
 12 1959 
 
 SEP 2 6 196Z 
 
 REC'D LD 
 
 OCT6 1362 
 
 J t' 
 REC'D L 
 
 OCT21196Z 
 
 REC'D LD 
 
 OCT24'63-8PM 
 
 V 
 
 PC'D LD 
 
 25'65-12M 
 
 6 2009 
 
 LD 21-50m-l,'33 
 
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