Under these circumstances, the gold standard existing _de facto_, and
there being no silver except light-weight subsidiary coins, our mint
authorities, the only people who took any interest in the subject,
began even before the war to recommend that the single gold standard
should be adopted in law as it had been adopted in fact. Ex-Gov.
Pollock, Director of the Mint, in his report for 1861 called attention
to the incongruity of a silver dollar that was worth 3.10 cents more
than the gold dollar and 8 cents more than two half dollars. He
recommended that it should either be dropped from the list of coins
or reduced in weight so as to correspond with the subsidiary coins.
He considered that gold was _de facto_ the standard of value, and he
recommended that the law should conform to the fact. But the nation
had more exciting topics to discuss in 1861 than those relating to
coinage. In 1866, after the war, Mr. John J. Knox, who then had
charge of the Mint and coinage matters in the Treasury Department,
recommended a revision of all the laws relating to the Mint. Secretary
Boutwell approved of the suggestion. Mr. Knox and Dr. Linderman were
appointed in 1869 a committee to make such revision. They presented
their report with a draft of a bill in 1870. The report recommended the
discontinuance of the silver dollar, this coin being obsolete.
The bill and report were transmitted to the Finance Committee of the
Senate on the 25th of April, 1870. The bill passed the Senate on the
10th of January, 1871. It made the gold dollar the unit of value and
it dropped the silver dollar from the list of coins. The bill failed
in the House for want of time. The Forty-first Congress having expired
without final action it came up again in the Forty-second. It passed
the House May 27, 1872, by yeas 110, nays 13. It passed the Senate
January 17, 1873, without a dissenting vote. The metal in the silver
dollar at that time was worth two cents more than the gold dollar. No
objection to the bill was heard until the price of silver had fallen so
that the silver dollar, if there had been any, would have been worth
less than the gold dollar. Then it became fashionable to say that
the bill was passed surreptitiously. The truth is, that the bill was
before Congress two years and ten months, that it was printed thirteen
times by order of Congress, that the debates on it occupy sixty-six
columns in the Senate proceedings, and seventy-eight columns in the
House proceedings, and that the discontinuance of the silver dollar
was specially discussed in the House. Any candid person must see that
the reason why the discontinuance of the silver dollar attracted so
little notice was that this coin had been discontinued _de facto_ in
1834, when the ratio of 16 to 1 was adopted. I have given reasons for
thinking that this ratio was adopted designedly to expel the silver
dollar from circulation. At all events, it did so, to the satisfaction
of the people. It is a great pity that our ancestors in 1834 did not
put their intentions into the form of law at that time. If they had
done so they would have spared us a Pandora’s box, to be opened forty
years later.
Bimetallism was abolished in the United States by the Act of 1873.
It has not been re-established by any subsequent act. The purchase
and coinage of a limited amount of silver by the Government is not
bimetallism. Still less so is the purchase of bullion which is not
coined. Any other metal would answer as well as silver as a backing for
the issue of Treasury notes. Let us imagine for a moment that silver
had not fallen in price after 1873. Would anybody ever have missed the
silver dollar? Would anybody have doubted that the gold standard was
brought about in this country by natural causes operating upon men’s
minds in the same way as it was in England, the action of Congress in
1873 merely giving the form of law to what had been done practically at
an earlier period?