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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;yakpoo, post: 1262721, member: 18157&quot;]<b>Interesting question! </b>I&#039;ll give it a try...</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp; [FONT=&amp;quot]In the late 19th century, there were two political factions; those supporting a gold standard (Republicans) and &quot;bimetalists&quot; (Democrats). The bimetalists wanted US currency to be based on both silver and gold at a fixed ratio. This position was largely supported by farmers and laborers who often carried debt and the inflationary pressure of bimetalism created the situation where debts could be repaid with less valuable money.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Bland-Allison Act, passed on Feb 28, 1878, reestablished the silver dollar at the 1837 standard (412.5 grains, .900 fineness). The Bland-Allison Act required the US Government to purchase between 2-4 million ounces of silver bullion each and every month to be coined into silver dollars. The coins didn&#039;t circulate much; they backed the new Silver Certificates. So many silver dollars were required to be minted, that the New Orleans Mint resumed operations after an 18 year suspension. </p><p><br /></p><p>On July, 14 1890, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act replaced Bland-Allison and was even more generous to the Bimetalists. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act required the Government to purchase as much silver bullion as was offered...up to 4.5 million ounces per month. Two (2) million ounces were to be coined into silver dollars each month during the first year. Subsequent years permitted the Mint to create only as many silver dollars as needed to redeem the new Treasury Notes (created by the same law).</p><p><br /></p><p>Now here&#039;s where it starts to get interesting. The new Treasury Notes were redeemable &quot;...in coin, either gold or silver, at the discretion of the Treasury Secretary. There was so much silver that its price kept falling. The Treasury Secretary, William Windom, felt the only way to maintain the value of the Treasury Notes was to redeem them in gold...and that&#039;s what happened.</p><p><br /></p><p>The “Fore-Fathers of CT members” (no doubt) rushed to the banks to redeem their silver for Treasury Notes. They then went to another bank and demanded gold coin at a huge profit. This cycle repeated itself until there was almost not enough gold left to back the dollar. So, on November 2, 1893, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was repealed.</p><p><br /></p><p>The drain on US Gold reserves caused a painful deflation; the dollar rose in value and wages and prices fell. The ensuing labor strife renewed the call for inflationary bimetalism. This was the back drop for the William McKinley vs. William Jennings Bryan Presidential battles of 1896 and 1900. In 1896, Bryan gave his famous &quot;<b><span style="color: darkorange"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeTkT5-w5RA" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeTkT5-w5RA" rel="nofollow"><span style="color: blue">Cross of Gold</span></a></span></b>&quot; speech at the Democratic Convention and was nominated as their candidate the next day.</p><p><br /></p><p>As things turned out, the Gold Standard Republican William McKinley was elected in both 1896 and 1900. In 1900, another law was passed which reaffirmed the gold standard that had been in place since 1893. The government has so much silver bullion by this time that it took until 1904 before it was all coined into silver dollars. Since they were mainly used to back US currency, many of the surviving silver dollars never circulated.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ok...so fast forward to 1918. In 1918, there was a speculative silver bubble in India (part of the British Commonwealth) and Great Britain had an urgent need for silver to flood the market and pop the bubble. They turned to their wartime ally, the US, for help. The US Government passed the Pittman Act on April 23, 1918. The Pittman Act called for the melting of 350 million US silver dollars used to back Silver Certificates. The Silver Certificates were withdrawn from circulation as they were turned in to the banks.</p><p><br /></p><p>Again, politics gets involved and, instead of the US realizing a huge profit on the silver sale, they threw a bone to the western silver producers. The Pittman Act called for the replacement of all the melted silver dollars with newly mined silver from US mines. Actually, only 270 Million silver dollars were melted and over 11 million of those were used by the Mint for the production of dimes, quarters, and halves. </p><p><br /></p><p>So...to answer your question, the replacement dollars mandated under the Pittman Act of 1918 began in the spring of 1921. [/FONT]</p><p>&nbsp; <span style="color: black">[FONT=&amp;quot]</span></p><p><span style="color: black">&nbsp;</span></p><p><span style="color: black">&nbsp;[/FONT]</span>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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