In the director's report for the year 1880 I find the following: "In Great Britain the gold coinage consists almost wholly of sovereigns and half-sovereigns; in France, of twenty and 
$10 gold piece. Pike's Peak gold. Clark, Gruber & Co., Denver, 1860. ten franc pieces; and in Germany, of ten - mark pieces, all of these coins being of less value than five dollars. The absorption by France of $1,100,000,000 of gold imports into her circulation during the thirty years from 1850 to 1880 may in part be accounted for by the coinage of nearly all this gold into denominations of less than two and four dollars value."
The average coinage value of double eagles during the past four years has been over $44,000,000 a year, as compared with a yearly average value during the same period of about $10,000,000 in eagles, $4,000,000 in half eagles, and $30,000 in quarter eagles! It thus appears that we are still coining two thirds of our gold into double eagles that never pass into circulation and disappear immediately.[1]
If, instead of pursuing this short-sighted policy for so many years, the people had been encouraged, by the issue of small denominations, on the return to specie payments in 1879, to circulate gold instead of paper, the gold could not have been so readily drained away from this country to foreign lands as has unfortunately happened on a great scale during the past few years.
If these words shall produce any impression upon those in authority, and thus lead to a modification of our coinage laws or customs in this regard, the attempt I have here made to combine with an academical discussion of the curiosities of American coinage some practical suggestions for improvement therein may not prove altogether futile.
For nearly fifty years we have been coining double eagles (not to
- ↑ The following table shows the gold coinage executed at the mints of the United States during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1897:
Denomination. Number. Value. Double eagles 2,990,241 $59,804,820 Eagles 804,301 8,043,010 Half eagles. 747,802 3,739,010 Quarter eagles 23,946 59,865 Total gold 4,566,290 $71,646,705
