The Trade Dollar was made a trifle more valuable than the American and Mexican dollar, thus not only affording a market for the surplus silver of the mines of the Pacific Coast, but furnishing merchants and importers from China with silver in a convenient form for payment for commodities, instead of their being obliged to purchase Mexican dollars for that purpose.
When its coinage was authorized it was inadvertently made a legal tender to amount of five dollars, but this was repealed by section 2, Act of July 22, 1876.
Brief History of the Standard Silver Dollar.
Authorized to be coined, Act of April 2, 1792. Weight, 416 grains, standard silver; fineness, 892.4; equivalent to 371¼ grains of fine silver, with 44¾ grains alloy of pure copper.
Weight changed, Act of January 18, 1837, to 412½ grains, and fineness changed to 900, preserving the same amount of pure silver = 371¼ grains, with ⅒ alloy.
Coinage discontinued, Act of February 12, 1873.
Total amount coined, from 1792 to 1873, $8,045,838.
Coinage revived, two million dollars per month required to be coined, and issue made legal tender for all debts, public and private, Act of February 28, 1878.
Total amount coined, February 28, 1878, to November 1, 1884, $184,730,829.