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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Catbert, post: 761174, member: 12718&quot;]This is a brief summary that describes why tokens were introduced that touches on your subject of interest:</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Over a century later, a second crisis produced a second, more massive issue of copper tokens. These pieces first appeared in 1787, and they were struck in consistently large numbers over the next ten years. Their production and circulation was once again rendered unneccessary by action of the Crown: in 1797, George III empowered one of the outstanding token manufacturers, Matthew Boulton, of Soho, near Birmingham, to strike copper coins on behalf of the government. A third and final token issue saw the light in 1811, continuing through most of the 1810-1820 decade. This final series was declared illegal by an 1817 Act of Parliament, although certain places were allowed to circulate tokens for a few more years. In 1821, the Royal Mint took the basic step of providing the public with that which it was now preventing others from providing - the low-denomination copper coins. And it made a determined, consistent effort in this direction. Since that time, tokens have not played an essential part in British monetary life as a whole, although they have been used for a number of specialized purposes, such as public transportation, and in certain specialized industries, such as coal mining.</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>It must be stressed that, when we speak of British tokens, we are almost always speaking of copper pieces, with a stated or implied value of a penny or less. <b>That this should be the case is partially explained by the attitude of the British government concerning copper as a coinage metal. Throughout the period under discussion, the official view was that copper was not a proper metal for a regal coinage at all, and, by extension, that copper coinage was not an especially important activity for the Royal Mint to pursue.</b> This bias led to James I&#039;s selling of a patent to produce farthings to his crony, Lord Harington of Rutland, in a most ingenious scheme. Harington was to produce 100,000 lbs. of farthings, weighing six grains each. The king calculated that they would have a circulating value £90,400, but would cost only £25,450 to strike. Harington was to be allowed £25,000 profit for his trouble, and the remaining profit would go to the King! This was in 1613; <b>we can still see traces of the bias against copper in the 1790&#039;s, when the Royal Mint, still feeling that a copper coinage was somehow beneath its dignity</b>, allowed Matthew Boulton to strike the famous Cartwheel coins on its behalf. Boulton was allowed to coin copper for it again in 1799, and yet again in 1806-1807.</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i><b>This jaundiced view of copper for coinage was not unique to the British government. We may observe something similar at the early United States Mint, where copper was coined only when there was an absence of gold and silver for the eagles, dollars, and dimes which made up the &quot;real&quot; coinage of the young Republic. This attitude was also reflected in the very limited legal tender status assigned to American copper coins.</b></i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>Of course, such an attitude on the part of officialdom does not neccessarily call forth a copper token coinage. But in the case of Britain, it happened to coincide with a basic historical fact: more and more people where leaving the farm for the workshop and, later, the factory. As Britain moved from a predominantly rural, farming situation to an increasingly urban, industrialized one, the traditional methods of payment for labor and products in kind or in services began to break down. And more and more people entered a wage-earning situation. In the absence of low-denomination coins, how would they be paid? Inevitably, the effort to answer this question would call the token into being.</i></p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://www.chicagocoinclub.org/projects/PiN/emt.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.chicagocoinclub.org/projects/PiN/emt.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.chicagocoinclub.org/projects/PiN/emt.html</a>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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