Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/194

188 an English company. The Treasurer of the mint, Señor Don Juan B. Castelazo, an intelligent and highly educated Mexican, who speaks English well, showed us through the establishment. From him we learned that the annual coinage of the mint is $4,000,000, of which $500,000 is gold and the remainder silver. The old silver coinage was dollars, half-dollars, quarters, reals, (12 1-2 cts.) medios, (6 1-4 cts.) and quartillas, (3 1-8 cts.) and this is the common currency of the country, though the old copper or brass claquos and quartillas still circulate extensively. The Governor has now prepared dies for a new half-dollar similar to the American, and ten and five cent pieces of our pattern. These coins, are already being struck off, but are not yet put in circulation. By the courtesy of Mr. Frederic Meyer, I obtained the first of these new half-dollars coined at the Guanajuato Mint; and for American gold, I obtained a handful of the smaller coins to take home as curiosities to my friends. The gold coined is in onzas or sixteen-dollar pieces, corresponding to the Spanish doubloon. Gold dollars will be coined hereafter, and the old silver, 12 1-2 cents, 6 1-4 cents, and 3 1-8 cents coinage, wil lbe abandoned. In other words, the American decimal system has finally been adopted for all the mints in Mexico.

Señor Castelazo gave me the following list of the taxes which silver producers in Mexico now pay: State tax, three and one-eighth per ct.; melting and assay of bars, one-half of one per ct.; coinage and Government tax, four and three-eighths per ct.; total eight per cent. If the coin is exported—as it generally is—it pays an additional export duty of eight per cent, or sixteen per cent, all told. This is a reduction of at least seven