***Excerpt from Annual Report of the Director of the Mint to the
Secretary of the Treasury***

***Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1883***

Washington: Government Printing Office, 1883, 5448 M, Page 16-17. --
Historical Reference Collection, United States Mint

LEGISLATION RECOMMENDED.

I would respectfully recommend the passage of an act authorizing and
directing:

First. The discontinuance of the coinage of the gold dollar, which has
been found too small for ordinary monetary use, and is virtually out of
circulation. The only calls for many years upon the mints for gold
dollars have been numismatists, for cabinet specimens, and from jewelers
for conversion into personal ornaments. If the issue not only of gold
coins but of United States notes in denominations less than five dollars
were prohibited, their places for ordinary trade and change purposes
could be amply supplied from the silver dollars and fractional silver
coin now idle in the Treasury.

Second. The discontinuance of the coinage of the three-cent
copper-nickel piece. This coin has also been found inconvenient on
account of its size and in other respects, and although the Philadelphia
Mint paid the expenses of transmission, a large number remained for some
years at that institution in excess of the demand, while the number of
pieces in the offices of the Treasurer and Assistant Treasurers has
increased from year to year, and the accumulation in the Treasury on the
30^th^ of September, 1882, amounted to over five million pieces, being
nearly one-fifth of its entire coinage.

The coinage of this denomination was originally authorized in the act of
1851 reducing the rate of letter postage to three cents, and the purpose
appears to have been to furnish a convenient coin for paying letter
postage. If the issue of a coin for such purposes is desirable, as the
rate for letter postage is now but two cents, a two-cent bronze or
copper-nickel coin of suitable size would be convenient, not only for
this object, but in paying small sums and making change. The advantages
and reasons for issuing this denomination I presented in my report for
1880.

Third. The repeal of the act authorizing the coinage of the trade
dollar.

Although, its coinage is now discretionary with the Secretary of the
Treasury and has been suspended by him, the issue of this coin in any
contingency should no longer be authorized or permitted at any of the
United States Mints. Originally made in the coinage act of 1873 a legal
tender, to the same extent as the other designated silver coins, a
considerable number had probably, before its demonetization in 1876,
gone into circulation in this country. The statistics of coinage and
exports show that at the latter date the number of pieces coined
exceeded the exportations by over two million dollars. Probably from
five to seven millions of these coins are now held in the country,
mostly in the mining and manufacturing regions of Pennsylvania and
contiguous States, and in the vicinity of New York, where they have been
paid to workmen and laborers, and by them paid to and received from
tradesmen in those localities.

While the United States has incurred no legal liability, yet by the act
of the Government the coins were at first put into circulation and given
compulsory currency, and have fallen into the hands of those who can ill
afford to suffer from the depreciation, and it would seem but an act of
justice that the United States should permit these coins to be sent to
the mints and exchanged for other silver coins, into which they could be
profitably recoined.

I doubt not that action of this kind would have long since been taken,
but for the apprehension that a large number of exported trade dollars
would be returned to this country. My own investigations and inquiries
have satisfied me that the trade dollars sent to China have gone to the
melting pots and become sycee silver or disappeared in the interior of
that country; for, although their value as silver bullion would be only
about eighty-seven cents, yet their commercial market value in New York
City has, prior to the late movement to depress their price, fallen
below ninety-eight cents but once, and that for a short period, and has
usually ranged for several years above ninety-nine cents, and had it
been possible to secure trade dollars for import from China to this
country, the profits on the operation would have brought them here long
since.

Compiled and transcribed by the United States Mint, Office of the
Historian.