The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1894-01-09
OUR FIRST DOLLS
A Review of the History of the Silver
Dollar from I7oz to 1873.

bankers and Wall street financiers are
elucidating the silver question in be-
half of workingmen. Bankers who are
responsible for every financial enact
ment since the death of the great Lin
coin, and who have brought the pres
ent misery upon wealth producers, are
now showing how utterly unjust our
present silver law is, and are determ-
ined to extricate laboring men from
the woeful pitfan into which they have
fallen, by digging deeper and nastier
pit beneath. They claim that our pres
ent silver dollar, so soon as our little
gold is run out OF the treasury, will
have only the purchasing power of "a
cents, and that the poor, fellow who
thinks he is receiving two dollars
day is really only receiving one dollar
and twenty eight cents.
1t is fact that very many bankers
never study finance in connection with
political economy. It does not require
a phenomenal brain nor a profound
education to stand behind counter
and discount notes. That is as far as
the financial education of some bankers
goes. Those of them who have made
finance study have made their wealth
by the use of such knowledge. They
have learned to transfer wealth to their
pockets from the producers by legal
methods, and they have no desire to
kill the goose which is constantly de-
posting golden nuggets in their well
feathered nests.
The great people are now studying
finance. knowledge thus gained il
destined to do incalculable injury to
the schemes of those great financiers
unless they can 30 mystify the subject
of finance that majority of the people
will again PROSTATE themselves before
the self constituted financial guardians
of the people.
People are being constantly hood
winked by agents of the great money
monopoly. That arch demon, John
Sherman, had frequently given evi
dence OF being wholly soulless in con-
cocting schemes TO rob the people.
When he brought forth the so-called
Sherman silver law the people were de-
ceived in him and believed he had at
last bill in the interest of the people
His bill more than doubled the amount
of silver to be coined, and it looked
we'll on it's face, but so soon as we
could fully realize the spirit of the bill
we saw that it was framed with the
full intent to debase silver and create
premium on gold. 1t gave to Wall
street agents secretaries of the treas
ury) legal right to stop coinage en-
tirely, and that is what they did. Our
miAts are virtually idle, while the peo-
pie are suffering loss of property and
courage for want of money. Limiting
silver coinage had the effect the schem-
ers knew it would-of reducing the
price of bullion. Unlimited coinage
would restore the original price of sill
yer, which was higher than the price
of gold, till Wall street got hold of the
machine.
It may be interesting here to briefly
review the position silver has occupied
since the adoption of our National Con
stitution. An act esta blishing a mint
became law, April IL, 1892. It pro
vided for the coinage of eagles, halves
and quarters of gold; dollars, halves,
quarters, dimes and half dimes of sill
yer; cents Gand half cents of copper.
The eagle contained 2471 grains of pure
gold, which is equal to 244 grains of
pure gold to the dollar. The dollar
contained 3714 grains of pure silver
and Az grains of alloy, making the
dollar of our dads weigh 416 grains Of
the then standard silver. Fractional
parts of the dollar contained their full
proportion of silver. There was at that
time no short weight in our fractional
silver. The coinage at that time was
at the rate of fifteen of silver to one of
gold.
The reason for adopting S714 grains
of silver for the dollar was because pre-
vious to our own coinage the Spanish
milled dollar was the standard cur
rency of this country. Alexander
Hamilton was secretary of the treas
ury. He had those Spanish milled
dollars assayed and they we're found
to contain just that amount of silver;
hence that amount was adopted for
our own dollar. The act above men
toned provided for the free and un-
limited coinage of both gold and silver
In 1903 France esta blished by law
the ratio of silver to gold at 151 to 1.
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