Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/623

Rh new silver coin called the "trade dollar," ostensibly intended for foreign trade only, actually put into circulation to a large extent at home at a profit to silver owners. The "free coinage" privilege and falling market value of silver made these transactions remunerative.



Some people who accepted the trade dollars in good faith suffered loss. This was the first entering wedge of the silver speculation which has attained such gigantic proportions.

The first coinage of the country was, in a measure, experimental; there were several different and very complicated finenesses, or proportions of precious metal and alloy, used. Then, in 1837, an admirably simple system of coinage proposed by Dr. Patterson was established. Later on various more or less absurd ideas were advanced and experiments were tried, such as the "goloid" dollars, consisting of silver and gold in proportions of 1 to 1 and 24 to 1, invented and patented by Dr. W. W. Hubbell. Specimens of these freak coins were struck at the Philadelphia Mint in 1878.

At the time that Congress was engaged in formulating laws for the establishment of the Mint and the regulation of the coinage in