II. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL EFFECTS OF A Marked differences in the weight and fineness of coins, such as frequently occurred before the coinage process was perfected, usually lead to disastrous social consequences. For instance, Macaulay tells us that:1 The old, crude, hammered coins of Great Britain were of varying weight, slightly irregular shape, and with unmilled edges. As a result they were easily clipped and mutilated. . . . . In the autumn of 1695 it could hardly be said that the country possessed, for practical purposes, any measure of value. It was a mere chance whether what was called a shilling was really tenpence, sixpence, or a groat. The results of some experiments that were tried at that time deserve to be mentioned. The officers of the exchequer weighed £57,200 of hammered money which had recently been paid in. The weight ought to have been 220,000 ounces. It proved to be under 114,000 ounces. Three eminent London goldsmiths were invited to send £100 each in current silver to be tried by the balance. The £300 ought to have weighed almost 1,200 ounces. The actual weight proved to be 624 ounces. The same test was applied in various parts of the kingdom with practically everywhere similar results. Interestingly enough, although the penalties against clipping and mutilating the currency were most severe, it was almost impossible to check the practice. Says Macaulay: The severity of the punishment (clipping carried the penalty of death) gave encouragement to the crime. For the practice of clipping did not excite in the common mind a detestation resembling that with which men regard murder, arson, robbery, nay, even theft. The injury done by the whole body of clippers to society as a whole was indeed immense; but each particular act of clipping was a trifle. To pass a half-crown after paring a pennyworth of silver from it seemed a minute and almost imperceptible fault. Even while the nation was crying out most loudly under the distress which the state of the currency had produced, every individual who was capitally punished for contributing to bring the currency into that state had the general sympathy on his side. Constables were unwilling to arrest the offenders. Justices were unwilling to commit. Witnesses were unwilling to tell the whole truth. Juries were unwilling to pronounce the word guilty. There was a general conspiracy to prevent the law from taking its course. . . . the offenders who were convicted looked on themselves as murdered men, and were firm in the belief that their sin, if sin it were, was as venial as that of a schoolboy who goes nutting in the wood of a neighbor. .... These examples clearly reveal the paramount necessity of a uniform currency. Macaulay concludes that: It may well be doubted whether all the misery which had been inflicted on the English nation in a quarter of a century by bad kings, bad ministers, bad Parliaments, and bad judges was equal to the misery caused by bad crowns and bad shillings. Those events which furnish the best themes for pathetic or indignant eloquence are not always those which most affect the happiness of the great body of the people. The misgovernment of Charles and James, gross as it had been, had not prevented the common business of life from going steadily and prosperously on. While the honor and independence of the state were sold to a foreign power, while chartered rights were invaded, while fundamental laws were violated, hundreds of thousands of quiet, honest, and industrious families labored and traded, ate their meals, and lay down to rest, in comfort and security. But when the great instrument of exchange became thoroughly deranged, all trade, all industry, were smitten as with a palsy. The evil was felt daily and hourly in almost every place and by almost every class, in the dairy and on the threshing-floor, by the anvil and by the loom, on the billows of the ocean and in the depths of the mine. Nothing could be purchased without a dispute. Over every counter there .... was wrangling from morning to night. The workman and his employer had a quarrel as regularly as the Saturday came around. On a fair day or a market day the clamors, the reproaches, the curses, were incessant; and it was well if no booth was overturned and no head broken. No merchant could contract to deliver goods without making some stipulation about the quality of the coin in which he was to be paid. Even men of business were often bewildered by the confusion into which all pecuniary transactions were thrown. The simple and the careless were pillaged without mercy by extortioners whose demands grew even more rapidly than the money shrank. The price of the necessaries of life, of shoes, of ale, of oatmeal, rose fast. The laborer found that the bit of metal which, when he received it, was called a shilling, would hardly, when he wanted to purchase a pot of beer or a loaf of bread, go as far as a sixpence. III. COINAGE RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES The following rules and regulations' govern the coinage process at the present time in the United States: a) Receipt of bullion.-All bullion deposited or purchased at any of the mints or assay offices of the United States shall be weighed in the presence of the depositor or his agent, and the weight shall be verified by the registrar of deposits. If the bullion deposited is found to be of less value than $100, it may be legally refused. If, upon report of the assayer, it is found to be unsuitable for the operations of the mint, it shall be refused. b) Assaying. As soon as the weight of a deposit has been ascertained and recorded, the assayer takes at least two samples in sufficient portion for assay and proceeds to test the quality of the metal. The assayer shall insert in the report the fineness of the gold or silver contained in the deposit. If the base is ascertained to be copper suitable for standard metal, he shall so state in his report. He shall also insert in his report the charges to which the deposit is subject. c) Mint charges.-Section 3524, Revised Statutes of the United States, provides that the charges for the various operations on bullion deposited and for the preparation of bars shall be fixed from time to time by the Director of the Mint, with the concurrence of the Secretary of the Treasury, so as to equal, but not exceed, in their judgment, the actual average cost to each mint and assay office of the material, labor, wastage, and use of machinery employed. The following are the principal mint charges: 1. Melling charge. On deposit of bullion a charge of $1 shall be imposed for each 1,000 ounces of bullion or fraction thereof as shown by weight after melting, except in the case of uncurrent United States coin and mint-fine bars for which no charge is made. 'Adapted from General Instructions and Regulations in Relation to the Transaction of Business at the Mints and Assay Offices of the United States. 2. Parting and refining bullion.-The charges for parting and refining bullion vary with the amount of impurities and base metal. Bullion containing 800 thousandths or more of base metal is not accepted. At the other extreme no charge is made for bullion containing 992 thousandths of gold and upward. The charges on other bullion vary from one-half cent per ounce to four cents per ounce, depending upon the amount of base metals and copper alloy contained. For instance, where bullion contains from 950 to 991 thousandths inclusive of gold and not more than 30 thousandths base, the charge is two cents per ounce. The depositor is given credit for the copper contained in the bullion. There is no charge for parting and refining foreign coins unless they are below standard fineness. 3. Toughening charge.-Bullion containing one or more of the following substances, viz., iron, lead, antimony, bismuth, tin, arsenic, zinc, or sulphur, in amounts sufficient to make it impossible to obtain a satisfactory assay, shall, at the discretion of the superintendent, be subject to an additional charge equal to the cost to the government for remelting and treatment by the deposit melter. 4. Copper alloy.-Two cents per ounce for copper required, to be determined by taking one-tenth of the standard weight of gold, except where the base in the deposit is all good copper and the fineness above standard, when the method of determining the number of ounces of copper required shall be by taking the difference between the standard weight and the gross weight of the deposit. 5. Assays of bullion and plated ware.-Samples of gold and silver bullion will be assayed at the mints and assay offices at a charge of $2 per sample. In case of plate, or what is known as rolled or filled plate, the charge shall be $4 for each assay; or the assay may be refused, at the option of the assayer. d) Advances or partial payments on deposits.-In case of deposits, the fineness of which may be readily determined approximately by inspection, payments may, at the discretion of the superintendents of the coinage mints and the assay office at New York, be made within 10 per cent of their value, or within 2 per cent when already closely determined by assay and awaiting remelting or reassay for exact determination: provided, no partial payment shall be made on a deposit containing less than $5,000 in gold, or 5,000 ounces of silver. e) Deposits of United States coin.-United States gold coin of legal weight shall not be received from depositors except in sums of not less than $5,000 in exchange for gold bars. Mutilated or otherwise uncurrent United States gold coins, of any denomination, will be received at any of the mints or assay offices of the United States, and the value of the fine gold contained will be paid to the depositor at the rate of $20.67 per ounce fine, or $18.60 per ounce standard (0.900 fine). f) Mode of payments.-Payments for deposits of gold bullion at the coinage mints and at the assay office in New York will be made in fine bars, coin, or by check, as may be desired by the depositor. At the minor assay offices payments are made by check on an Assistant Treasurer of the United States, or government depository bank nearest at hand. g) Manufacture of bars.-Unparted, fine, and standard bars may be manufactured at the coinage mints and the assay office at New York, and unparted bars at all of the institutions. Fine bars may be approved when they have a fineness of o.992 and upward, and no bar of gold or silver of less weight than 5 ounces shall be issued at any of the mints or assay offices of the United States. h) The "tolerance of the mint" and "trial of the pyx."-The weight of a new gold eagle, or double eagle, must not vary more than half a grain from the standard weight fixed in the law. That of the smaller gold coins must not vary more than a quarter of a grain. This allowable variation is called the "tolerance of the mint." The testing of this weight is determined by a "trial of the pyx." Five pieces out of every thousand coined are taken out by the superintendent upon receipt from the coiner and tried separately by him. If successful, these pieces are sealed and deposited in a pyx which is kept under the joint care of the superintendent and the assayer and secured so that neither can have access to its contents without the presence of the other. If the original trial by the superintendent proves unsatisfactory, all the coins shall be weighed separately, and such as are not of legal weight shall be defaced and delivered to the melter and refiner. Four times a year the samples from the minor mints are sent to the mint at Philadelphia. The entire quantity of samples is then subjected to an annual "trial of the pyx" by a special Assay Commission, composed of the judges of the district court of the eastern district of Pennsylvania, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Assayer of the assay office at New York, and such other persons as the President may from time to time designate. If an error is found, the officers |