In this task, you will be given a passage to read. A fill in the blank question will be given to you. Your answer should fit the blank appropriately.

The officers at the Philadelphia Mint , including Chief Coiner Franklin Peale , were mostly the friends and relations of Director Patterson . The outsider in their midst was Chief Engraver James B. Longacre , successor to Gobrecht ( who had died in 1844 ) . A former copper @-@ plate engraver , Longacre had been appointed through the political influence of South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun . When Longacre began work on the two new coins in early 1849 , he had no one to assist him . Longacre wrote the following year that he had been warned by a Mint employee that one of the officers ( undoubtedly Peale ) planned to undermine the chief engraver 's position by having the work of preparing designs and dies done outside Mint premises . Accordingly , when the gold coin bill became law , Longacre apprised Patterson that he was ready to begin work on the gold dollar . The Mint Director agreed , and after viewing a model of the head on the obverse , authorized Longacre to proceed with preparation of dies . According to Longacre , The engraving was unusually minute and required very close and incessant labor for several weeks . I made the original dies and hubs for making the working dies twice over , to secure their perfect adaptation to the coining machinery . I had a wish to execute this work single handed , that I might thus silently reply to those who had questioned my ability for the work . The result , I believe , was satisfactory . fill in the blank : The officers at the Philadelphia __________________ , including Chief Coiner Franklin Peale , were mostly the friends and relations of Director Patterson .
Mint