People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1895 — COIN NOT IGNORANT. [ARTICLE]

COIN NOT IGNORANT.

Charges of Gold Bog Editorial Writers Refuted. The following letter has been addressed to the editor of the Times-Herald in reply to an editorial published in that paper yesterday morning; “Chicago, April 24.—1 n this morning’s Times-Herald appears an editorial attack on the first chapter in ' ‘Coin's Financial School,’ in which the impression is intended to be conveyed that the financial law adopted in 1792 by the United States Congress did not fix the unit on silver, but did fix it on gold. The TimesHerald is wrong and the book is right. My quarrel with the Times-Herald is that it does not state the proposition or the authorities fairly, and draws conclusions ■which will not bear investigation for a moment. The substance of the discussion that led up to the fixing the UDit may be found in the state papers of that period, the principal ones of which may be found in the report of the international monetary conference of 1678, and consists of the following documents: “1. Mr. Jefferson's notes on the establishment of a money unit and of a coinage for the United States. “2. Report of a grand committee on the money unit. “3, The coinage system proposed to Congress April 18, 1786, by Samuel Osgood and Walter Livingston, who constituted the Board of Treasury. “4. The resolutions on coinage of Aug. 8, 1786. •*5, Report of Alexander Hamilton on the establishment of a unit. “6. Miscellaneous documents “From these you will see that Mr. Jefferson on page 438 advises the following coins: “1. A golden piece equal in value to 110. “2. The unit or dollar itself of silver. “3. The tenth of a dollar of silver also. “4. The hundredth of a dollar of copper. “The above is his exact language. Further on Mr. Jefferson says: “The unit or dollar is a known coin and the most familiar of all to the mind of the people. It is already adopted from South to North, has identified our currency, and therefore happily offers itself as a unit already introduced. Our public debt, our requisitions and their apportionments, have given it actual and. long possession of the place of unit. The course of our commerce, too, will bring us more of this than any other foreign coin, and therefore renders it more worthy of attention. “Furthur on he says: “If we determine that a dollar shall be our unit we must then say with precision what a dollar is.

“And then again, on page 442, he says: “The quantity of fine silver which shall constitute the unit being settled, and the proportion of the value of gold to that of silver, a table should be formed from the assay before suggested, classing the several coins according to their fineness. “And again on page 443 he recommends that a committee be appointed: “To prepare an ordinance for establishing the unit of money within these States; for subdividing it and for striking coins of gold, silver and copper on the following principles: “That the money unit of these States shall be equal in value to the Spanish milled dollar, containing so much fine silver as the assay before directed shall show to be contained on an average in dollars of the several dates circulating with us. • “That this unit shall be divided into tenths and hundredths. “In the report of the grand committee cn the money unit that fixed the silver dollar as the uqit we find on page 447 the following: “The quantity of pure silver being fixed that is to be in the unit or dohar and the relation between silver and gold being fixed, all the other weights must follow. “On page 449 we find the following: “On the Bth of April. 1786 ‘the Board of Treasury directed to the President of Congress their report on certain principles for establishing a mint, accompanied by a letter to the President of Congresp. The report was in triplicate and contained, as wul be seen below three distinct schemes, each of which was set! forth in the report with great l

particularity. * * * Each 0 f these reports proposed a silver dollar as a unit. “The opposite view of the question was presented by Alex-, ander Hamilton, and his report is in the book referred to and now before me with the other documents above referred to. On page 456 he says. “But, if the dollar should, notwithstanding, be supposed to have the best title to being considered as the present unit in the coins, it would remain to determine .what kind of dollar ought to be understood; or, in other words, what precise quantity of fine silver “On page 458 he again says: “The next inquiry toward a right determination of what ought to be the future money unit of the United States turns upon these questions: Whether it ought to be peculiarly attached to either of the metals in preference to the other or not; and if to either, to which of them. “On page 479 Mr. Hamilton recapitulates and advises as follows: “One gold piece equal in weight and value to ten units or dollars. “One gold piece equal to a tenth part of the former and which shall be a unit or dollar. “One silver piece which shall be in weight and value a tenth part of the silver unit or dollar. “Mr. Jefferson at one time came very near yielding to the arguments of Mr. Hamilton, but the whole matter went into the American Congress at its first session, and out of the recommendation and discussions that had been had, the result was + he enactment of the law of 1792, and section 9 of that act is the one that settled this question. It is as follows: “And be it further enacted. That there shall be from time to time struck and coined at the said mint, coins of gold, silver, and copper of the following denominations, values, and descriptions. viz: 1 “Eagles—Each to be of the value of ten dollars or units, and to contain 247 j grains of pure or 270 grains of standard gold. “Half Eagles—Each to be of the value of 15, and to contain 123 f grains of pure or 135 grains of standard gold. “Quarter Eagles—Each to be of the value of $2.50 and to contain sixty-one and seven-eights grains of pure, or sixty-seven and four-eights grains of standard gold. “Dollars or Units—Each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar, as the same is now current, and to contain 371-16 grains of pure or 416 grains of standard silver. “Half Dollars—Each to be of half the value of the dollar or unit and to contain 185 10-16 grains of pure, or 208 grains of standard silver.

“Quarter Dollars —Each to be of one-fourth the value of the dollar or unit and to contain nine-ty-two and thirteen-sixteenths grains of pure or 104 grains of standard silver. “The section closes by fixing the size of the minor coins. “It will thus be seen that the unit was settled on silver and remained the law until 1873, when it was changed to read p.s follows: “That the gold coins of the United States shall be a one-dol-lar piece, which, at the standard weight of 25 8-10 grains shall be the unit of value. “The mints were then closed to the free and unlimited coinage of silver, and a fierce and hostile attitude has been assumed toward it since that time. Thus, it will be seen that in fixing the unit originally the advice of Hamilton was rejected and tljat of Jefferson adopted, and while that was the law it was as impossible for the silver in a silver dollar to be worth less than a dollar as a bushel of wheat to be less than a bushel. It will be observed that Hamilton’s suggestion of two units, a gold and a silver unit was not adopted, and Jefferson’s position was adopted of a fixed unit on silver only. Jefferson’s plan contemplated a change in the commercial ratio of the metal in the two coins with.the intention of changing the size of gold coins if it should occur, .’and this change did occur twice afterward, and each time the change was made in the gold coins. “While the old law was in existence—l 792 to 1873—the mints were open to the free and unlimited coinage of both metals, but with the act of 1873 abolishing the silver unit and substituting the gold unit the mints were closed to silver and left open to gold alone. Sincerely, “W. H. Harvey, Author Coin’s Financial School.”