CURIOSITIES OF AMERICAN COINAGE. 



607 





$10 gold piece. Pike's Peak gold. Clark, Gruber 

 & Co., Denver, 1860. 



In tlie director's rejDort for the year 1880 I find the following: 

 " In Great Britain the gold coinage consists almost wholly of sover- 

 eigns and half-sovereigns ; 

 in France, of twenty and ..-rfOTHDite^ 



ten franc pieces; and in 

 Germany, of ten - mark 

 pieces, all of these coins be- 

 ing of less value than five 

 dollars. The absorption by 

 France of $1,100,000,000 

 of gold imports into her 

 circulation during the thir- 

 ty years from 1850 to 1880 may in part be accounted for by the 

 coinage of nearly all this gold into denominations of less than two- 

 and four dollars value." 



The average coinage value of double eagles during the past four 

 years has been over $44,000,000 a year, as compared with a yearly 

 average value during the same period of about $10,000,000 in 

 eagles, $4,000,000 in half eagles, and $30,000 in quarter eagles! 

 It thus appears that we are still coining two thirds of our gold into 

 double eagles that never pass into circulation and disappear imme- 

 diately.* If, instead of pursuing this short-sighted policy for so 

 many years, the people had been encouraged, by the issue of small 

 denominations, on the return to specie payments in 1879, to circu- 

 late gold instead of paper, the gold could not have been so readily 

 drained away from this country to foreign lands as has unfor- 

 tunately happened on a great scale during the past few years. 



If these words shall produce any impression upon those in au- 

 thority, and thus lead to a modification of our coinage laws or cus- 

 toms in this regard, the attempt I have here made to combine with 

 an academical discussion of the curiosities of American coinage some- 

 practical suggestions for improvement therein may not prove alto- 

 gether futile. 



For nearly fifty years we have been coining double eagles (not to 



* The following table shows the gold coinage executed at the mints of the United States 

 during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1897 : 



