276 



The Standard of Value. 



whole of which time the mints were open to the free coinage of both 

 gold and silver to all comers, we had coined of legal tender silver, 

 $84,752,319, and of gold, $983,159,695. 



Of the above amount of silver, only $8,045,838, of the dollar coin were 

 struck, and nearly one-half of this number (exactly $3,827,268) were 

 coined during the suspension of specie payments, 1862 to 1873, when 

 nobody in our own country used the silver dollar, except as a curiosity to 

 be stowed away in coin cabinets. Nearly six millions also of this total 

 of legal tender silver coins (exactly $5,877,077) consisted of five and 

 ten-cent pieces, which, notwithstanding their insignificance as single 

 coin, were chiefly sent to Europe at a premium, for re-coinage. The 

 curious fact stands on the pages of our statistics, that down to 1853, 

 when the coinage of fractional coin, as aliquot parts of the dollar 

 ceased, our mints had coined more than double in value of five and 

 ten-cent coins to the value coined of the vaunted silver dollar; the 

 exact relation of the two being, of five and ten-cent pieces, $5,877,077; 

 and of the dollar coin, only $2,506,890. Thus it will be seen that, 

 during the first sixty years of the working of our mints, only two and 

 a half millions of the standard silver dollar were coined; and only 

 $4,218,670 in the total of the dollar coin were struck before the sus- 

 pension of specie payments on account of the war in 1862. It will 

 readily be seen from this narration how misleading is the accusation 

 of the present advocates of the free coinage of the silver dollar, that 

 this dollar was the cherished " dollar of the fathers." The truth 

 is that the Spanish pillar dollar was the "dollar of the fathers," as 

 all of us whose recollection goes back into the first half of the century, 

 will readily remember. And none of us will remember the United 

 States dollar in circulation before the late civil war. In fact this 

 dollar had never been a coin of circulation down to 1873.* 



In 1873, when it was decided by long considered act of Congress to 

 drop the silver dollar from our coinage laws, this dollar bore a pre- 

 mium of more than three per cent for shipment to the European 

 mints. Meantime Germany had decided to change her money stand- 

 ard from silver to gold. France and the Latin union, finding that 

 Germany would dismiss four or five hundred million dollars silver 

 from her circulation, closed their mints to silver coinage; and Germany 

 was compelled to resort to the London market to find vent for her 

 useless silver. Then began the depreciation in its market value. Not 

 until three or four years after the act dropping the further coinage of 



