88 BULLETIN OF THE 



rated, and, of course, they quickly went into the melting pots. 

 The object of debasing the fractional coins was to keep them in 

 the couuti7 as monfiy — to prevent their being exported or melted, 

 and avoid the expense of coining more to replace those which 

 might be thus treated. A necessary part of this plan was to 

 limit their legal tender to small sums, and that the government 

 should reserve to itself the right to have them struck and monop- 

 olize the profits arising from the debasement. 



The effect of the law of 1853 was simply to establish and in- 

 troduce a very good fractional currency in the place of a bad one. 

 It had no other effect, and it does not appear that any other was 

 contemplated. Probably the real reason for leaving the silver 

 dollar in statu quo was that the higher and more inexorable laws 

 of trade had already taken care of it. These laws had expelled 

 it, and the legislators of 1853 did not see fit to attempt to recall 

 it. The logic of the Act may be summed up in a very few words. 

 Silver money — both dollars and fractions — had substantially gone' 

 out of coinage, and Congressmen knew perfectly well the reason 

 why. They recalled the fractional coins, because they wanted 

 them. They omitted to recall the silver dollars because they did 

 not want them. 



The coinage of silver dollars from 1840 to 1873 was only 

 $6,595,021, and from 1793 to 1873 the total number coined was 

 $8,045,838. Of these nearly the whole were exported to the 

 silver using countries, and it may be said with exactitude that 

 the silver dollar never formed any appreciable part of our domes- 

 tic circulation. Its enumeration in the list of coins of unlimited 

 tender was practically a dead letter subsequent to 1834, and 

 probably from a still older date. Gold had completely supplanted 

 it, and silver had logically and by the force of circumstances, 

 taken the place of a subsidiary currency with a limited legal 

 tender. 



In 1873, when the prospect of specie payments seemed to take 

 definite shape in the not distant future, the subject of a revision 

 of the coinage laws came up as an essential step in the gradual 

 progress towards that consummation. For eleven years the sole- 

 money of the country in use for domestic purposes was made of 

 paper, except in California, Oregon, and Nevada. But for for- 

 eign exchanges, for interest on the public debt, and for duties on 

 imports, coin had been used, and, it is needless to say, gold coin 

 only or bullion. Silver had disappeared entirely from use, except 

 for change in those limited transactions. To whatsoever extent, 

 coin was used, the only coin was of gold. Premiums were gold 

 premiums. The measure of foreign exchange was a golden 

 measure. Silver had dropped so completely out of sight that 

 it is probable that not one person in a thousand in the country 

 knew certainly that a silver dollar was a legal possibility with 

 unlimited legal tender. Probably not one person in a hundred 

 then living had ever seen one within twenty or thirty years. 



