This act represents a compromise not of principles but of self-seeking interests. The main regulations of
the law, which came into force on the 13th August 1890, were:—
1. The Secretary of the Treasury is to purchase silver to not more than the monthly amount of 4,500,000 oz. at the market price, so long as that price is below 129.29 cents per oz.
2, 3. To issue Treasury notes against the purchases, the said notes to be full legal tender, and capable of forming part of bank reserves.
5. Up to 1st July 1891, 2 million oz. monthly of this silver to be coined into dollars. That coinage to cease after the date specified, except so far as necessary to secure the Treasury notes. At the same time the Act declares the intention of the American Government to preserve the parity of gold and silver.
The fillip given by this legislation to the price of silver was over in a moment, and almost immediately the question recurred for pressing consideration, on the strong demand of the silver party for free coinage in place of these as yet ineffectual purchase schemes. The impotent close of the international monetary conference at Brussels, in February 1893, was followed by the Act of the Governor-General of India in Council of June 26th closing the Indian Mint to the free coinage of silver. Left practically alone in her stand in defence of silver, America, in the simple interest of her gold reserve, was obliged to abandon the field, and after a bitter fight the repeal of the clauses of the Sherman Act, which had
enacted the compulsory purchase of silver, was carried in November 1893.
UNITED STATES: COINAGE 1793-1893
We are too near the event to estimate these later developments of the situation, but as yet two remarkable facts have hinged upon this report—(1) the immediate depreciation of the value of silver and the effect on the export of silver to India were not such as might a priori have been conjectured; (2) the ceasing of the silver purchase deprived the currency of the United States of its only remaining element capable of expansion, and of all the countries of the world the United States stands most in need of an expanding and expansible currency.
COINAGE OF THE MINTS OF THE UNITED STATES.[21]