People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 August 1896 — Was Silver Demonetized In ’73? [ARTICLE]

Was Silver Demonetized In ’73?

The assertion has been freely made on the street in Rensselaer for several days past that the act of Feb. 12, 1873, did not demonetize silver dollars already coined. That law not only suspended the coinage of the standard silver dollar, but it absolutely demonetized all silver coin in sums exceeding five dollars. See section 15, page 37, Coinage Laws of the United States, the following is the wording of the legal tender clause; “The silver coins of the United States shall be a legal tender at their nominal value for any amount not exceeding five dollars in any one payment.” We would suggest to our gold standard friends that they compare the literature upon which they base their arguments with the laws published by the government itself.

The silver dollar has always contained 371£ grains of pure silver.

Herr Most advises his anarchist followers to vote for McKinley and the gold standard.

A reward has been offered for finding the law that requires the maintainance of a gold reserve.

The silver dollar was made the unit of value April 2, 1792, and so remained until Feb. 12, 1873.

The gold dollar was first authorized to be coined by act of March 3, 1849, “each to be of the value of one dollar, or unit.”

371 i grains of fine coined silver was made the unit of value in 1792; Washington, Jefferson, et. al. were the legislators of that day.

The credit strengthening act became a law in 1869, at that time the United States was paying its debts, and needed no credi nor credit strengthening.

A thing is always worth what it will bring, and a gold monometalist will not take less than one hundred cents for his so called fifty cent dollar.

A gold dollar when measured by itself, will always be worth one hundred cents because the law says it shall be; and the law has the same effect on any other material.

i Turkey is the sick man of Europe; it has been taking the British gold cure treatment for several years, in consequence of

,which the Turkish rug manufacturing business has been transfered to England and the Turks have gone into the busi-' ness of murdering their Armenian neighbors.

In 1873 twenty-five and eighttenths grains of gold was made the unit of value; John Sherman of Ohio and Earnest Seyde of London had much to do with legislation in 1873.

Alabama populists have once more fallen under the vicious counting methods of the Bourbon democracy. Significant is the fact that the populists carried everything except the celebrated “black belt”.

The law that deprived the trade dollar of its legal tender quality was an ex post facto law; and it accomplished its purpose of enabling the money changers to make twenty cents on each dollar that they had hoarded.

While silver standard Mexico is making more rapid advances on the line of civilization than any people on earth, gold basis Egypt is sinking deeper and deeper into barbarism and gold bonds.

A trade dollar of 420 grains of silver nine-tenths fine, was substituted for the standard 412£ grain dollar, and the legal tender quality of all silver limited to $5 in 1873. This trade dollar was demonerized, by sloping its coinage, and depriying it of legal tender quality in 1876.

Suppose you duop a card in the postoffice with the addresses of some of your friends on one side and the Pilot on the other; they will thereby get a copy of a paper that possibly they will desire to stick to, just as it is bound to stick to you aDd to them.