Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1891 — THE MEANING OF FREE COINAGE. [ARTICLE]

THE MEANIN G OF FREE COINAGE.

[Montgomery Ala., Advertiser] The National Stookman and Farmer having been frequently asked to define “free coinage of silver,” wrote to the Treasury Department at Washington and got this definition from the Director of the Mint: *Th< term ‘free and unlimited coinage of silver’ means the conferring of the right upon individuals to take silver of any kind to the mints and have every 37U pure grains of it stamped, free of charge into a dollar, which dollar is a full legal tender for its faoe value in the payment of debts and obligations, of all kinds in the United States." In other words says the Baltimore Sun an ounce of silver, (480 grains), which can now be bought in op«n market for 98 eents, is to pass, under the kind of free coinage now proposed, for $1,29. A speculator who paid S9B for 100 ounces would get at the Treasury $1,29 in National currency, making s3l by the transactien. Or, to put it differently, with the silver at 98 cents an ounce he would get 100 silver dollars or silver certificates, for silver bulilon costing him $75,79. The average cost of producing silver in the Unite! States in 1886 was 51.1 per ounce. Ip Montana the average cost was 43.3 cents per ounce. The Granite Mountain mine in that State, according to the official statement of the Granite Mountain Company to the director of the mint in 1886, prodnoed 2,987,754 ounces of silver at a cost of 2J cents per ounce. In Mexioo the cost is 43§ eents; in Booth America, 34$ cents; in Australia at the Broken Hill mine, 16 «ents. Very large quantities of silver am brodaoed at thase figures.