The Portland daily press., 1893-08-14


fixed at 25S grains The coinage of both
gold and silver dollars continued free,
excepting a mint charge of one half
per cent.
For the 81 years from 1899 to 1878
the silver dollar had been under the law
precisely like the gold dollar in all re-
spects. Onssaccount of this historic equal
ity the campaign orators of later day
have affectionately spoken of it as the
dollar of our fathers" phrase of
endearment tending to show that our
fathers delighted much in the silver
dollar. But the facts are curiously
different. A large proportion of our
fathers saw few and used still fewer
silver dollars. Only eight millions
were coined in the whole eighty years.
| For when the California discoveries
cheapened gold our silver dollars be-
came worth. more than 100 cents as bull
| ion, and disappeared, as has already
been related. Then in 1861 came the
war, when specie payments were sus-
pended, hot to be resumed until 1878.
During that time all coin disappeared
/ abroad or into private boards
! So for nearly quarter of a century be-
fore 1878 our fathers had practically
known nothing of the silver dollar, al
though in the coinage laws it existed with
all the power and rights of the gold
dollar. This explains how it happened
that no one raised the voice of complaint
when in the revision of the coinage laws
made in 1878 all mention of the silver
dollar was dropped out except the provis-
ion for trade dollar" of 400 grains for
trade with China The gold dollar
was in this revision made the unit
of value" with sthe mint charge
for free coinage reduced to one
fifth of one per cent But thesss sill
yer dollar of the preceding 81 years was
dropped. For it there was no longer
free coinge, it was no longer legal
tender, it no longer existed in theory,
as years before it had virtually ceased
to exist in fact.
| This the famous striking down of sill
yer" of which the silver orators say so
much. John Sherman has been accused
of doing it surreptitiously, in collision
with the "goId bugs" of Europe. These
accusations are undoubtedly false. No
| one cared much about the silver dollar of
our fathers until the mine owners of the
West found the price of silver falling,
condition which began soon after 1873.
Five years passed by, andSthere was
by that time great movement in the
land to restore the ancient dollar. In
1878 there was great conflict in Con-
gress which resulted in the creation of
| the BLAND dollar" 1t was much
like the old dollar. Like it its weight
was made 412 10 grains, including the
ALLOW, 81 371 IA grains of pure silver. 1t
was also legal tender. But in one i'm
gportant respect it differed from the old
dollar. When the old dollar passed off
the stage in the booming days of the
Fifties it went to the melting pots of
artisans or to the boards of Orientals,
where it was warmly greeted because it
was worth three cents more than it pur-
ported to be on it's face. But the new
dollar, although of the same weight, was
worth in gold only bout 90 cents, or CON-
siderably less than it's face. The reason
of this was simply that the ounce of sill
ver which brought 90 pence in the Lon
| don market in the days of the Fifties,
now brought only about IS pence.
| This act made another great differ
ences with the new dollar. Under the
law ordaining the old dollar, any man
who had 412 1-2 grains of silver could
carry it to the mint and have it struck
into a dollar. But to allow him to
profit of about seven cents on every
dollar so coined. Congress could not
allow this to the mine owners. So Con-
gress ordained that every month the
| Secretary of the Treasury should purchase
| in the market enough silver to coin not
| less than two million dollars and not
more than four millions So the govern
ment began buying silver worth about
| SO cents and turning it into dollars of
| 100 cents. The profit of course went to
| the government Thus the old silver
dollar came back; but the free coinage
of silver did not come back.
The question here arises: Why, if
AiAeoAAS ~
dollar did not the authors of the Bland
dollar put in enough grains to bring it's
value up to par? The answer is quite
simple. To have put in more than
| 42 10 grains would have been to disturb
the old ratio of to Is. IS and to depart
widely from the ratio of to Is 1-2, on
which basis the silver of the Latin Union
had been-.coined. Itswas urged in 1878
that an agreement might be obtained
with the nations of Europe for the res
toration Of the free coinage of silver, in
| which case silver was expected to rise SO
that the old ratio would be about right
So our Congress passed the Bland law
and then called the nations of Europe to
gether.. 1t would have been wiser to
have assembled the nations first, for
when they did come together they did
not fall in with American ideas at all.
Some of their learned men declared that
silver was only fit for half civilized peo-
| n1es and that gold was the money for