Editing Coinage Act of 1873 (section)

=== Intent of the bill's authors ===
[[File:1873 $1 Seated Liberty.jpg|thumb|left|450px|The standard [[Seated Liberty dollar|silver dollar]] was abolished by the Coinage Act of 1873.]]
When, several years after its passage, the 1873 law became a political issue, some of those involved in enacting it, including Sherman and Linderman, stated that there had been no intent to end bimetallism in the elimination of the authority for private citizens to have silver bullion coined into dollars. They argued that the 1853 legislation had ended the practice of having bullion struck into smaller-denomination coins; the 1873 act simply rectified an omission and eliminated a coin with a low mintage that did not circulate.{{sfn|Nugent|pp=168–170}} They were not always consistent in their denials: Boutwell wrote in his memoirs that "in 1873 I had come to believe that it was wise for every nation to recognize, establish, and maintain the gold standard&nbsp;... hence it was that I determined to abandon the idea of a double [i.e., bimetallic] standard.{{sfn|Nugent|p=169}}

Within a few years, the idea that the omission of the silver dollar from the Coinage Act had not been with intent to place the United States on the gold standard became the establishment position. Part of this was in reaction against the conspiracy theories that were circulating about the "Crime of '73", as advocates of bimetallism called the act. This was accepted by many historians well into the 20th century.{{sfn|Nugent|p=168}} Neil Carothers, in his 1930 history of small-denomination U.S. currency, wrote that "many others have demonstrated that this was not a corrupt or surreptitious action by the enemies of silver. The elimination of the standard silver dollar was simply in the interests of clarifying the coinage law&nbsp;... Not one party to the passage of the law of 1873 recognized the significance of the abolition of the legally existing double standard."{{sfn|Carothers|p=235}} According to historian [[Allen Weinstein]], "Silver's demonetization, according to the traditional account, came as an unplanned if fortunate by-product of a complex and largely technical revision of the mint laws in the Coinage Act of 1873."{{sfn|Weinstein|p=310}}

Economist [[Milton Friedman]] wrote, "what is not open to question is that the standard silver dollar was omitted from the list of coins to be minted intentionally, in full knowledge of the likely consequences, and in the belief that those consequences were desirable."{{sfn|Friedman|p=1166}} He cited Walter T. K. Nugent's 1968 book, ''Money and American Society, 1865–1880'',

{{quote|
as Nugent documents in great detail, Senator John Sherman, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, had been determined to demonetize silver from at least 1867 and had arranged to have a bill to that effect drafted at the end of 1869. From then on, Sherman, Linderman, John Jay Knox (deputy comptroller of the currency and then comptroller), and Secretary of the Treasury George Boutwell cooperated to push a coinage bill that included the demonitization of silver.{{sfn|Friedman|p=1166}}
}}

Knox and Linderman were both personally familiar with mining conditions in the Far West. They knew that the amount of bullion produced was only going to increase, and would likely drop the price of silver below the level ($1.2929 per troy ounce) at which the metal in a silver dollar was worth more as bullion than as money. In his explanatory statement accompanying his draft bill, Knox explained the discontinuance of the silver dollar would mean the United States was no longer a bimetallic nation.{{sfn|Nugent|p=136}}{{sfn|Friedman|p=1172}} Boutwell, in his 1872 annual report, urged Congress to end the coinage of silver from private deposits, lest the government take a loss from paying out gold in exchange for the silver dollars, and ultimately having to melt them when they could not be circulated.{{sfn|Van Ryzin|p=106}} According to Nugent, "Were Knox, Linderman, Boutwell, Sherman, and others aware of what they were doing when they planned to drop the silver dollar? It is inconceivable that they were not; Knox's statement was explicit. But did they urge it because they feared a drop in silver prices? No one made an explicit statement to that effect, but it was undoubtedly the case."{{sfn|Nugent|pp=136–137}}