coin. A sinking fund of coin was set apart to be used each year to liquidate the very debt that was being created. At that date nobody supposed the legal-tender currency would be issued beyond the $150,000,000 authorized, whereas the principal of these bonds was $500,000,000. Every member of Congress knew it. They were sold alongside of the coin-bearing bonds under the 10-40 act and met as ready a sale. Can any man believe that the buyers understood that they were getting paper bonds? No member of either House of Congress suggested such a thing. Mr. Stevens never gave a syllable of countenance to paper-money payment until long after the contracts had been made. In his speech on the loan bill in the House on February 6, 1862, three direct admissions are made that in his view the bonds were redeemable after twenty years in gold. In the same debate Mr. Hooper, a member of the Committee on Ways and Means, of which Mr. Stevens was chairman, used this language (Globe, second session 37th Congress, page 691):

"The proposed issue of Government notes guards against this effect of inflating the currency by the provision to convert them into Government bonds, the principal and interest of which, as before stated are payable in specie."

This was after the committee had reported the bill almost unanimously. Mr. Stevens rose immediately afterwards and suggested that the debate close, without intimating that Mr. Hooper was wrong. The Government and the public understood this contract alike. In the debate of 1863 on the 10-40 loan act, the intimation was for the first time made that the paper of the Government could pay the 5-20 bonds.

At this point in the debate Mr. Thomas, of Massachusetts, moved the express provision for payment in coin, which was carried after this remark from Mr. Horton, an influential member of the Ways and Means Committee, from Ohio:

"I wish to state here that the Committee on Ways and Means in framing this bill never dreamed that these twenty-year bonds would be payable in anything other than gold until the gentleman yesterday told it upon the floor of the House. I say to the gentleman and to this House that I never heard an expression that these bonds were to be paid in anything other than coin. The form here proposed is the form always used by the Government, and they have always been paid in coin up to this day.”—Globe, first session, Fortieth Congress, page 800.

To learn the truth of these contracts an intelligent man has only to turn to the reports of Secretary Fessenden and the official messages of the President and the concurrent and unanimous judgment of both Houses of Congress. The agreement interpreted by the history of the times was to pay them in money and not in depre

ciated promissory notes. And the only coined money then known at the mints or in the business of the people was gold. Without that understanding not a bond would have been taken in any market. Bull Run was not a very good advertisement for United States bonds. The existence of the Government, not to speak of its solvency, was at stake when these bonds were put upon the doubtful markets of Europe and America.—From the speech of Hon. J. P. Dolliver, in the House of Representatives.

DENOMINATIONS, WEIGHT, AND FINENESS OF THE COINS OF THE UNITED STATES.

*The alloy neither adds to nor detracts from the value of the coin.

Prior to the act of rebruary 21, 1853, all silver coins were legal tender in all payments whatsoever. The act of February 21, 1858, reduced the weight of all silver coins of less denomination than the silver dollar about 7 per cent, to be coined on Government account only, and made them legal tender in payment of debts for all sums not exceeding $5.

*Seventy-five per cent copper, 25 per cent nickel.
Ninety-five per cent copper, 5 per cent tin and zinc.

Troy weights are used, and while metric weights are by law assigned to the half and quarter dollar and dime, troy weights still continue to be employed, 15.432 grains being considered as the equivalent of a gram, agreeably to the act of July 28, 1866.

The weight of $1,000 in United States gold coin is 53.75 troy ounces, equivalent to 3.68 pounds avoirdupois. The weight of

$1,000 in standard silver dollars is 859.375 troy ounces, equivalent to 58.92 pounds avoirdupois, and the weight of $1,000 in subsidiary silver is 803.75 troy ounces, equivalent to 55.11 pounds avoirdupois.

COINAGE

Silver Dollars Coined Before and Since "The Crime of "73"The Record of 1897.

The total coinage of standard silver dollars during the fiscal year 1897 amounted to $21,203,701.

This is significant considered side by side with table XLIII contained in the report of the Director of the Mint, giving the total coinage of silver dollars from 1792 to 1873, the year in which it is alleged "silver was struck down." This table shows the coinage of silver dollars to have been:

It will be seen that the coinage of silver dollars during the single year of 1897 exceeded the total coinage for the eighty-one years from 1792 to 1873 by $13,172,463, or 164 per cent.

The coinage of silver dollars since "the crime of "73" foots up the enormous total of $505,993,684, down to June 30, 1898. This is what Republican legislation has done to "discredit" the "money of the people." Not a dollar was coined from 1806 to 1835, inclusive, operations in that direction having been suspended by order of President Jefferson (see official order elsewhere). The total coinage of silver dollars from 1793 to the beginning of the civil war, when the Democratic party had been in power continuously for many years, is shown in the following table:

Instead of having struck down silver, it will be seen from the foregoing comparison of official figures that the Republican party is the real friend of the "dollar of our daddies."

COINAGE OF THE UNITED STATES.

The following table exhibits the number of fine ounces and value of gold and silver coinage of the United States, by calendar years, from 1873 to 1897:

Coinage of gold and silver by the mints of the United States, 1373-1897.

Coinage of gold and silver since November 1, 1893, the date of the repeal of the purchasing clause of the act of July 14, 1890, to June 30, 1898:

Coinage of silver coins, by acts and denominations, from 1792 to June 30, 1898.

Fractional silver coinage, 1792 to 1853...

Subsidiary silver coinage, 1853 to February 12, 1873...

Subsidiary silver coinage, February 12, 1873, to June 30, 1898..

Total............