202 



CONGRESS. (LAND-GBANT RAILROADS.) 



conference committee was appointed, and rec- 

 ommended the following measure as a substi- 

 tute : 



" That for a period of six months after the passage 

 of this act, United States trade-dollars, if not defaced, 

 mutilated or stamped, shall be received at the office 

 of the Treasurer or any assistant treasurer of the 

 United States in exchange for a like amount, dollar 

 for dollar, of standard silver dollars or of subsidiary 

 coins of the United States. 



"SEC. 2. That the trade-dollars received by, paid 

 to, or deposited with the Treasurer or any assistant 

 treasurer or national depositary of the United States, 

 shall not be paid out or in any other manner issued, 

 but, at the expense of the United States, shall be 

 transmitted to the coinage mints, and recoined into 

 standard silver dollars or subsidiary coin, at the dis- 

 cretion of the Secretary of the Treasury : Providtd. 

 That the trade-dollars recoined under this act shall 

 not be counted as part of the silver bullion required to 

 be purchased and coined into standard dollars as re- 

 quired by the act of Feb. 28, 1878." 



February 19, both Senate and House agreed 

 to the report of the conference committee, and 

 the measure became a law without the ap- 

 proval of the President. In recommending 

 the passage of this bill, Senator Beck, of Ken- 

 tucky, introduced a statement of the merits of 

 the question, from Dexter A. Hawkins, the 

 following passages of which give a summary 

 of the history and claims of the trade-dollars: 



By Chapter CXXXI of the laws of 1873, page 424, 

 Congress enacted as follows : ' SEC. 15. That me sil- 

 ver coins of the United States shall be a trade-dollar, 

 a half-dollar or fifty-cent piece, a quarter-dollar or 

 twenty-five-cent piece, a dime or ten-cent piece, and 

 said coins shall be legal tender at their nominal value 

 for any amount not exceeding $5 in any one pay- 

 ment.' The act of which this is a part was approved 

 by the President, and became a law of the United 

 States, Feb. 12,1873. There is not a word in the stat- 

 ute to indicate any other or difl'erent use than that of 

 the fifty- cent, twenty-five-cent, and ten-cent silver 

 coins ; hence the statement often made that they 

 were coined only for export has no justification in the 

 statute." 



" Under said section 15 of said act, the United 

 States Mint, between July 12, 1873, and Aug. 1, 1876, 

 coined ] 5,631,000 of these trade-dollars. JSverv one 

 of these 15,631,000 trade-dollars was 'a legal ten- 

 der for any amount not exceeding $5 in any one pay- 

 ment,' and, like the small silver coins described in 

 section 15, could be used to the extent of not exceed- 

 ing $5 as a legal tender in any payment, public or 

 private, in the United States." 



" Under the act of 1873 the coinage of trade-dol- 

 lars was, like the coinage of g_old and the coinage of 

 the standard dollar before said act, free and unlimit- 

 ed. Anybody was at liberty to bring to the mint 

 any amount of silver bullion, and, on paying the 

 coinage charge, have it, like gold bullion, coined into 

 trade-dollars, and delivered to him for use as lawful 

 money. If the Government can honestly repudiate 

 these trade-dollars, it can repudiate every coin it is- 

 sues. 



"No statute has ever been enacted that in terms 

 or by just implication takes away from the 15,631,000 

 trade-dollars coined before August, 1876, the legal- 

 tender quality given to them by said section 15 of 

 the act of July 12, 1873. 



" But what has been done as to the trade-dollar, is, 

 that on July 22, 1876, after said 15,631,000 trade-dol- 

 lars had been coined and issued, Congress passed a 

 joint resolution, the second section of which is as fol- 

 lows : ' SEC. 2. That the trade-dollar shall not here- 

 after be a legal tender, and the Secretary of the Treas- 

 ury is hereby authorized to limit from time to time 



the coinage thereof to such an amount as he may 

 deem sufficient to meet the export demand for the 

 same.' 



u This is a joint resolution, not a statute. It in 

 terms, though awkwardly, seems to limit itself to the 

 hereafter-issued trade- dollars, not the theretofore- 

 issued trade-dollars. If the intention of the resolu- 

 tion was to repudiate the trade-dollars theretofore is- 

 sued, to demonetize them, and to reduce them from 

 money with limited legal-tender quality to mer- 

 chandise with no legal-tender quality whatever, it 

 would have omitted the word ' hereafter.' The 

 word ' hereafter ' has no p_roper function or meaning 

 in the resolution, except to indicate that Congress did 

 not intend to affect or to change anything already 

 done, or the trade-dollar already issued. When this 

 section was inserted by the Senate, had any Senator 

 suggested that it would cause repudiation, the Senate 

 would probably have either withdrawn it, or so modi- 

 fied it as to preclude such a construction. 



" The plain intention of the resolution of July 22. 

 1876, was that none should be coined after that date 

 except for export. But right here the Government 

 failed of its duty to the people. It paid no attention 

 to the last clause of the resolution as to coining only 

 for export, but let unlimited coinage of trade-dollars 



fs on for fifteen months, or until October, 1877. 

 rom July, 1876, to and including October, 1877, it 

 coined $15,079,400. This is as nearly as many as in 

 the previous three years and five months. 



"Then it did not stop the coinage. All it did was, 

 on Oct. 15, 1877, to order at the Philadelphia Mint 

 and the New York Assay-Office, and four days later 

 at the other mints, ' That the receipt of deposits for 

 silver for coinage into trade-dollars should be discon- 

 tinued.' 



" But twenty days later, Nov. 5, 1877, this order 

 was modified so as 'to authorize deposits of silver 

 bullion at the mint in San Francisco for returns in 

 trade-dollars.' 



" Under this modification, unlimited coinage of 

 trade-dollars went on for seven months more, until 

 May, 1878, when for the first time the coinage was 

 actually and finally stopped. During this seven 

 months 5,248,960 more trade-dollars were coined, 

 making a total of 35,950,360. 



" The official returns of exports of trade-dollars 

 from the beginning of their coinage up to Oct. 31, 

 1879, show $27,089,817 ; and according to the state- 

 ment of experts these no longer exist, but have in the 

 Asiatic countries to which they were exported, been 

 converted into their coin. (See statement of Director 

 of Mint, 1879.) This would leave in this country 

 $8,869,543, but the bullion dealers say that at least 

 $2,000,000 have been melted up in this country for 

 manufacturing purposes. That would leave about 

 $7,000,000 still in existence. Of this $7,000 000 all 

 that bear date previous to 1877 were legal-tender coin 

 in this country, and common honesty and the prac- 

 tice of nations require the Government to redeem 

 them. It must either do that or repudiate." 



Land-Grant Railroads. Feb. 28, 1887, the Sen- 

 ate took up the House bill to provide for the 

 adjustment of land-grants made by Congress 

 to aid in the construction of railroads within 

 the State of Kansas, and for the forfeiture of 

 unearned lands and for other purposes, and 

 passed it with amendments, making also a 

 change in its title. The result was a confer- 

 ence committee, which agreed upon the fol- 

 lowing measure : 



SECTION 1. That the Secretary of the Interior "be, 

 and is hereby, authorized and directed to immediately 

 adjust in accordance with the decisions of the Supreme 

 Court each of the railroad land-grants made by Con- 

 gress to aid in the construction of railroads and here- 

 tofore unadjusted. 



