Marietta daily leader. (Marietta, Ohio) 1895-1906, 1896-08-07
STORY OF CRIME
What Senator Sherman Has to
Say About 1t.
BAD MONEY DROVE OUT THE GOOD

over which the people with whiskers
grow eloquent, as in England the be-
heading of Charles First in France the
coup d. etat of the Third Napoleon in
the United States the mutilation of the
coinage act of 1878. That dreadful
deed over which the patriots in st.
Louis have been yelling till they could
be heard to the coasts of both oceans, is
said by one of them to have been COM
mitted while the bill was in conference,
and by it silver was demonetized. Presi-
dent Grant is reported to have said that
he would have cut off his right hand
rather than have signed the bill had he
known that it was mutilated Senator
Sherman is one of the men declared
guilty of the crime. and it is worth
while to hear what he has to say about
it in his memoirs
#&
After the passage of the act to
strengthen the public credit, in March
of 1859, George S. Boutwell,. secretary
of the treasury, thought it would be
well to revise and codify the coinage
laws and a bill for that purpose was
drawn up by experts under the super
vision of Deputy Controller Knox. The
bill was submitted to Senator Sherman
as chairman of the committee on finance
April 25, 1870. By the act of l193 for
eign coins were made a full legal
tender in this country, and in Mexico
and the West Indies our silver dollar,
whether a legal tender there or not,
was willingly exchanged for theirs. In
their dollar there were three grains of
silver more than in ours, and men made
business of collecting those foreign
dollars and turning them over to the
mint to be recoined
There was profit in that, but none to
the government, and accordingly in
in 1905, to put a stop to the business,
President jefferson, through Madison,
secretary of state, wrote to the director
of the mint that as considerable pur-
chases of dollars had been made there
and more probably would be, for the
purpose of exporting them, that there
after ''all the silver to be coined at the
mint shall be of small denominations,
so that the value of the largest pieces
shall not exceed half dollar" No
more silver dollars were coined until
1896. In 1887 the old ratio of IL to
was changed to l6 to but as 16 ounces
of silver were worth tritle more than
| ounce of gold the silver coins disap-
peared-that is, all except the depre-
ciated ones of other countries. which
remained legal tender. The bad money
drove out the good. To correct this
evil congress in February of 1858 pro-
yided that the government buy silver
bullion and coin it instead of simply
coming it for the owners There is no
mention of the silver dollar in that act
That dollar "had fallen into disuse and
when coined was exported, being more
valuable as bullion than as coin" The
men who framed and passed that law
surely did not intend evil to silver by
ignoring the silver dollar in it; they
were all strong bimetallists.
**
Let us proceed at once to the crime of
'73. In the report accompanying the
bill referred to, under date of May so,
1870, Mr.. Knox said as plainly as he
could, ''The coinage of the silver dol
lar piece, the history of which is here
given, is discontinued in the proposed
bill" Then he goes on to tell why it
is to be discontinued 1T is, by exist
ing law, the dollar unit, and, assuming
the value of gold to be 15h times that
of silver, being about the mean ratio for
the past six years, is worth in gold a
premium of about per cent Gts value
being 103.l2), and intrinsically more
than per cent premium in our other
siver coin, its value thus being 107. AZ.
The present laws authorize both gold
dollar unit and silver dollar unit, diff
fering from each other in intrinsic
value. The present gold dollar piece is
made the dollar unit in the proposed
bill, and the silver dollar piece is dis
continued" The bill lay in the COM
mittee room for eight months, for, as
Mr. Sherman says, the committee was
in no hurry to act upon it. He adds ::
'The dollar was dropped from the coins
in the bill framed in the treasury de-
partment. 1t was then an unknown
coin. Although L was quite active in
business, which brought under my eye
different forms of money, do not re-
member at that time ever to have seen
a silver dollar
In the report by Mr.. Knox, in imme-
diate connection with the statement Of
the dropping of the silver dollar, is this I:
IF, however, such coin is authorized,
it should be issued only as CONNER
cial dollar, not as a standard unit of &C.
count, and of the exact value of the
Mexican dollar, which is the favorite
for circulation in China and Japan and
other oriental countries" Nearly ev-
erybody remembers the trade dollar, for
though it was not full legal tender. it
found its way into many pockets. 1t
would be tedious to rehearse the tale of
how first French dollar. and then the
trade dollar came to be provided for.
That dollar was substituted for the
French in compliance with the request
of the legislature Of California. This
was urged upon the ground that as the
Mexican dollar contained 4l6 grains. or
3% grains more than the old silver dol
lar, it had an advantage in trade with
China and Japan over our dollar, and
that coin containing few grains
more than the Mexican dollar would
give our people the benefit of this use
of silver"
The coinage act did provide for sill
yer dollar, but dollar intended for use
in oriental countries and legal tender
in this to the extent of only s.. The
trade dollar was not popular, would moi