Q. David Bowers
"The ingots, having been approved, are first brought to a red heat in order to anneal and render them sufficiently ductile to be rolled with facility; they are then passed between hardened steel rollers, driven by a steam engine, which are so .. _ .. arranged that they can be adjusted with the greatest nicety in order to reduce the bar very nearly to the exact thickness required for the coin. In this form they are taken to the drawing bench, driven by the same engine, in which the strip is drawn slowly through the drawing dies, or plates of the hardest steel accurately adjusted to reduce the strips to their proper thickness. The strip, thus prepared, is next passed through the cutting press, also moved by steam, and pieces or planchets of the proper size are cut from it. The punch moves with such rapidity that 160 pieces on an average are cut out in one minute.
At the completion of this part of the process, which leaves the strip full of holes, it is folded up and returned to the melting pot. "The planchets are now carried to the coining room, where, in order to raise the edge of the planchet to protect the surface of the coin, they are passed through the milling machine. The planchets are fed to this machine through an upright tube, and as they descend from the lower aperture, they are caught upon the edge of a revolving wheel and carried about a quarter of a revolution, during which the edge is compressed and forced upon-the space between the wheel and the rim being a little less than the diameter of the planchet. This apparatus moves so nimbly, that 560 half dimes can be milled in a minute; but for large pieces the average is about 120.
"The planchets are next to be cleaned, annealed, and whitened; after which, in the case of the gold, they are adjusted in their weight, piece by piece. (Note: At the French mint this is done by the aid of an ingenious machine of French invention, a sample of which now stands in the Cabinet of the United States Mint. At our mint this is done entirely by hand.) The silver pieces, however, having been tested by samples from each strip, are allowed to pass until after coinage, when their weight is proved in bulk.
"The planchets are now ready to receive the last impression which is to render them a perfect coin. This most important office is performed by the coining press, which we have before mentioned. This machine receives the planchets in a tube from the hand of a workman; as the coin reaches the bottom of the tube it is seized between a pair of fingers and carried forward and deposited within a steel collar between the dies; and while the fingers are expanding and returning for another planchet, the dies close upon the one within the collar, and by a rotary motion are made to impress it silently but powerfully. The fingers, as they again close upon a planchet at the mouth of the tube, also seize the coin, and while conveying a second planchet on to the die, carry the coin off, dropping it into a box provided for the purpose-and this operation is repeated ad infinitum. These coining-presses are of various sizes to suit the different denominations of coins. The usual speed of striking is 60 pieces per minute for the half dollar; 75 for the quarter dollar; and 90 for the dime and half dime.
"The coining dies, it will be necessary to state, are prepared by engravers specially maintained at the Mint for the purpose. The process of engraving a die consists in cutting the devices and legends in soft steel, those parts being depressed which in the coin appear in relief. This having been finished and hardened, constitutes an 'original die;' which being the result of a tedious and difficult task is deemed too precious to be directly employed in striking coins, but is used for multiplying dies. It is first used to impress another piece of soft steel, which then presents the appearance of a coin, and is called a hub. This hub being hardened, is used to impress other pieces of steel in like manner, which being exactly like the original die, are hardened and used for striking the coins. A pair of these will, on an average, perform two weeks' work."
Silver to China
The Bankers' Magazine, August 1860, pp. 126-129, gave the following information:
Imports from China and Singapore into the United States consisted mainly of tea and silk. During the year from April 1, 1859 to March 31, 1860, 47 ships left New York for China, and seven left Boston, a total of 54, as compared to 34 during the preceding period.
It cost about $5 to $10 per ton to ship tea and miscellaneous articles from China to the Eastern ports of the United States, and $15 to $20 for silk goods.
On a fiscal year basis, April 1 through March 31st, the following trade was done with China, in each instance showing a large surplus of imports (primarily paid for in silver) over exports. During the year 1850-1851 $2.5 million value of goods was exported and $ 7.1 million was imported. 1851-1852 exports totaled $2.7 million, imports $10.6 million; 1852-1853 exports $3.7 million, imports $10.6 million; 1853-1854 exports $1.4 million, imports $10.5 million; 1854-1855 exports $1.7 million, imports $11.0 million; 1855-1856 exports $2.6 million, imports $10.0 million; 1856-1857 exports $4.4 million; imports $8.4 million; 1857-1858 imports $5.7 million, exports $10.6 million; 1858-1859 exports $7.1 million, imports $10.8 million.
The following amounts of bullion and specie were exported, against very small imports: 1850-1851 $147,475 bullion and specie exported, little or no imports (no record of imports); 1851-1852 $19,728 exported, $281 imported; 1852-1853 $489,344 exported, no imports; 1853-1854 $155,588 exported, $108,174 imported; 1854-1855 $674,983 exported, no imports; 1855-1856 $633,592 exported, $1,000 imported; 1856-1857 $295,913 exported, no imports; 1857-1858 $2,691,639 exported, no imports; 1858-1859 $566,724 exported, $2,920 imported. The total for 1850 through 1859 amounted to $5,674,986 worth of bullion and specie exported, against only $112,375 imported.
The Year 1860 in History
In the presidential election, Abraham Lincoln garnered 40% of the popular vote and 180 electoral votes, while his main opponent, John C. Breckenridge, got 18% of the popular vote and 72 electoral votes. Stephen A. Douglas had 30% of the popular votes but just 12 electoral votes. John Bell gained 12% of the popular votes and 39 electoral votes. The election results were very distasteful to Southerners. On December 20, 1860, the South Carolina legislature voted 169·0 to secede from the Union.
The decennial census put the United States population at 31,443,321, or twice that of 1820. New York City was the largest metropolis in the United States, with a population of 805,651, of whom 203,740 were Irish. The next largest cities were Philadelphia with 562,529 inhabitants, Brooklyn 266,661, Baltimore 212,418, Boston 177,812, New Orleans 168,675, Cincinnati 161,044, St. Louis 160,773, and Chicago 109,260. The mint city of San Francisco had 56,802.
John D. Rockefeller, age 20, entered the oil business. On April 3, 1860, the first Pony Express mail riders left St. Joseph, Missouri. Ten days later they reached Sacramento, California. The Pony Express would last but a short time, but it made an indelible mark on the pages of American history. There were 372 daily newspapers in the country, an increase from 254 in 1850. America's prime export was cotton, much of it for the mills of England. Of the nation's total export value of $334 million (up from $72 million in 1850), $192 million was in cotton. Apparently, Drake's Plantation Bitters, a rum-laced cure-all, was first compounded this year, for P.H. Drake used the slogan S.T. 1860 X. in advertising, a cryptic notation which some said meant "Started trade in 1860 with $10," but which Drake said meant "St. Croix, 1860," St. Croix being the Caribbean source of the rum used. Drake's went on to advertise on encased postage stamps in 1862-1863.
On Broadway, Rip Van Winkle opened as a play, with Joseph Jefferson, age 31, in the title role. He would become famous as Rip, and during the next several decades would play him hundreds of times.
The Bankers' Magazine, June 1860, p. 968, reported this: "Several gentlemen interested in the science of numismatics assembled in Boston, on Saturday, March 3, at the rooms of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, organized themselves into a society to be called the Boston Numismatic Society .... The meetings of the society will be held at Number 13 Bromfield Street on the first Saturday of each month."
The Mint Cabinet was dedicated on Washington's birthday, February 22, 1860, with Washington tokens and medals being the center focus of the display. For much of the next decade, Washington numismatic a would be among the hottest items on the market while scarcely anyone paid attention to gold Proof sets, for example. In the Indian cent series the reverse design was changed from a laurel wreath to an oak wreath surmounted with a shield. New designs appeared on half dimes and dimes, with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA on the obverse, rather than the reverse. Nevertheless, Snowden ordered 100 half dimes made with the old obverse design (with stars); these lack mention of the country of origin, and have been popular collectibles ever since. The hobby of coin collecting was growing by leaps and bounds, and the decade of the 1860s would see many fine collections sold at auction.