Bill Revising the Laws Relative to the Mint,
Assay Offices and Coinage of the United States--Why the Dollar was
Dropped from the Coins--Then Known Only as a Coin for the Foreign
Market--Establishment of the "Trade Dollar"--A Legal Tender for
Only Five Dollars--Repeated Attempts to Have Congress Pass a Free
Coinage Act--How It Would Affect Us--Controversy Between Senator
Sumner and Secretary Fish.

At the date of the passage of the act "to strengthen the public
credit," on March 19, 1869, there was but little coin in circulation
in the United States except gold coin, and that was chiefly confined
to the Pacific coast, or to the large ports of entry, to be used
in payment of duties on imported goods. Silver coins were not in
circulation. The amount of silver coined in 1869 was less than
one million dollars and that mainly for exportation. Fractional
notes of different denominations, from ten to fifty cents, were
issued by the treasury to the amount of $160,000,000, of which
$120,000,000 had been redeemed, and $40,000,000 were outstanding
in circulation or had been destroyed. These fractional notes
superseded silver coin as United States notes superseded gold coin.
The coinage laws as they then existed were scattered through the
laws of the United States from 1793 to 1853, and were in many
respects imperfect and conflicting.

The ratio fixed by Alexander Hamilton, of fifteen ounces of silver
as the equivalent of one ounce of gold, was, at the time it was
adopted, substantially the market ratio, but the constant tendency
of silver to decline in relative value to gold had been going on
for years and it continued to decline, almost imperceptibly perhaps,
and the legal ratio in France having been fixed at fifteen and a
half to one, there was an advantage in shipping gold to that country
from this, and consequently very little if any of our gold, even
if coined, came into circulation. By the act of 1793 foreign coins
were made a legal tender for circulation in this country, and the
Spanish silver dollar, on which ours was founded, with the 8th or
"real" pieces, found great favor. Singularly enough, in Mexico
and the West Indies, the Spanish population would exchange their
dollars for ours, dollar for dollar, although their pieces, if not
worn, were each three grains heavier. This led to an exchange of
our dollars for the Spanish ones, which were promptly recoined at
the mint at a fair profit to the depositor.

This