People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1895 — Changing the Size of the Gold Coins. [ARTICLE]

Changing the Size of the Gold Coins.

The gold coinage down to 1834 was not in general use; it was worth more as bullion than it was as coin, and was exported' the silver remaining as the general coin in circulation in the country. At that time Congress did not, as it is now proposed, vote to put more silver in the silver dollar, nor did it demonetize silver; it voted to reduce the amount of gold in the gold coin, thereby reducing the value of the gold eagle or $lO coin to the value of about $9.75 in silver coin. The gold coin, which was" thus debased and reduced 2| per cent below the silver dollar, which had previously been at a discount in gold, became the cheaper coin, and silver, being worth more as metal than as coin, was exported, and gold then, because cheaper, became the general coin un circulation; For forty years, gold continuing all that’time to be of less valfie in our coinage than the silver, was used to pay debts.—Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1878.