319
of eight'), or Spanish dollars (because of their similarity in weight and fineness to the
In 1785, Thomas Jefferson urged the adoption of the Spanish silver dollar as the nation's official monetary unit. In a pamphlet submitted to the delegates of the Continental Congress, he said: Taking into our view all money transactions, great and small, I question if a common measure, of more convenient size than the dollar, could be proposed.... The unit or dollar is a known coin, and the most familiar of all to the minds of people. It is already adopted from south to north; has identified our currency, and therefore happily offers itself as an unit already introduced.2
On July 6, 1785, Congress unanimously voted to adopt the
Spanish dollar as the official monetary unit of the United States.
Jefferson realized, however, that this was not sufficient. Although the coin had been one of the most dependable in terms of weight and quality, it still varied in content between issues, and a way had to be found to rate one coin in value against another. That was, after all, the service that Congress was required to render when it was given the power to 'regulate the value' of money. Jefferson came directly to the point when he said: 'If we determine that a dollar shall be our unit, we must then say with precision what a dollar is. This coin as struck at different times, of different weight and fineness, is of different values.'3
The logic voiced by Jefferson could not be ignored. Two years later, after carefully examining the actual weight and fineness of the Spanish dollars currently in circulation, Congress
As the Spaniards continued to reduce the silver content of their coins, the pressure for the minting of an
2.
320 THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND
establishment of a federal mint and also presented a powerful case for maintaining an inviolable standard for the coins to be produced by that mint. He said:
The dollar originally contemplated in the money transactions of this country, by successive diminutions of its weight and fineness, has sustained a depreciation of five per cent, and yet the new dollar has a currency in all payments in place of the old, with scarcely any attention to the difference between them. The operation of this in depreciating the value of property depending upon past contracts, and ... of all other property is apparent. Nor can it require argument to prove that a nation ought not to suffer the value of the property of its citizens to fluctuate with the fluctuations of a foreign mint, or to change with the changes in the regulations of a foreign sovereign T h e quantity of gold and silver in the n a t i o n a l coins, corresponding with a given sum, cannot be made less than heretofore without disturbing the balance of intrinsic value, and making every acre of land, as well as every bushel of wheat, of less actual worth than in time past.... [This] could not fail to distract the ideas of the community, and would be apt to breed discontent as well among those who live on the income of their money as among the poorer classes of the people to whom the necessities of life would ... become dearer.1
BIMETALLISM
Note in the preceding quotation that Hamilton referred to both gold
That is precisely what happened in the early days of our
Republic. It was determined after careful analysis of the free-1.
1834), Appendix, pp. 2059,2071-73. Cited by Vieira, pp. 95,97.
THE LOST TREASURE MAP
321
market that the value of gold
grains. The content of the
Contrary to popular misconception, Congress did
'gold dollar.' (It didn't do that until fifty-seven years later in The Coinage Act of 1849.) In fact it reaffirmed that 'the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars or units'
and again