Q. David Bowers
Quantities of Silver Dollars on Hand
An item in the Annual Report of the Director of the Mint, 1886, mentioned in passing the storage of coins and bullion (mostly comprised of earlier-dated silver dollars):
"The Act of Congress, providing for a new steam plant and engine outside of the mint building, beneath the level of the court, did not pass until after the close of the fiscal year. The removal of this plant will provide space for the construction of coal vaults under the gangway on the west side, and also for the proper location of vaults for the storage of coin and bullion in the centre of the building, instead of along the outer walls as at present."
Elsewhere in the same Report, more was stated concerning storage:
"The Act of Congress, providing for a new steam plant and engine outside of the mint building, beneath the level of the court, did not pass until after the close of the fiscal year. The removal of this plant will provide space for the construction of coal vaults under the gangway on the west side, and also for the proper location of vaults for the storage of coin and bullion in the centre of the building, instead of along the outer walls as at present."
"Storage and Custody of Standard Silver Dollars at Philadelphia: In my report for the last fiscal year attention was invited to the exigencies of the storage of bullion and coin, with special reference to the Mint at Philadelphia, where two thirds of the mandatory coinage of silver dollars is executed over and above the coinage of minor coin and the larger part of the subsidiary[silver].
"Without repeating the considerations there presented, it proves important to urge the same considerations, as the Department is again called upon to meet an emergency similar in kind to that described at the beginning of the last fiscal year. From the emergency at that time relief was found in the provision of two empty vaults connected with the vacant apartments in the United States post-office building in that city. These vaults were fitted for the reception of silver dollars and made ready for occupation about December 1, 1885. At the insistence of the Department they were supplied with timelocks and metallic lattice for the storage of silver dollars in excess of what could be kept at the Mint, and the delivery of which to the Treasury or sub-treasury might not be called for.
"The anomalous course has thus been forced upon the mint service of retaining the immediate custody, under the personal responsibility of the Superintendent of the Mint at Philadelphia, of the bulk of the output to that institution, instead of delivering the same according to custom to the United States Treasury. The anomaly is all the greater that the storage of this treasure is not upon the premises of the Mint itself, but in a separate building with separate environments, thus requiring a special watch for its safety.
"Up to the 30th October 1886, a date subsequent to that of this report and while it was in press, the amount of silver dollars thus stored in the post-office building was $20.25 million. This is the sum of the daily output of the Mint for less than a year, the vaults of the Mint proper, including a number of provisional vaults without special safety appliances, having been filled to repletion and in a manner very objectionable, from the fact that sufficient space for gangways has not been available for examination and count.
"On the same date I forwarded you a communication from the Superintendent of the Mint at Philadelphia stating that the vaults in the post-office building will be completely filled at the end of twenty days, when they will contain some $21.5 million, and that no further space will be available for storage of silver dollars in the Mint building except by recourse to the very objectionable expedient of piling solid vault No.6. This vault contains 1,733,000 pieces, which, from the circumstance that it is without safety appliances and that it is upon the outer walls of the building, are all that can be stored therein, with the usual requirement of gangway spaces necessary for purposes of examination and count.
"Even if this vault be filled to its cubical capacity, storage can be found for the output of less than two months' work. The emergency is thus forced upon the attention of the Department either to provide space, with suitable safety appliances and guard, for the storage at Philadelphia of the further output of the Mint, or else to provide for its transfer from time to time, at short intervals, to the custody of the United States Treasury.
"The vaults in the United States Post Office building still remain in the custody of the Superintendent of the Mint at Philadelphia, owing to the impracticability of their transfer to the custody of the United States Treasury while open to the reception of the daily output of the mint. When these vaults, however, be finally filled, I have to recommend that the custody of the same be transferred to the United States Treasury.
"Owing to the bulky character of the silver treasure, for the storage of which temporary and unsuitable expedients have had to be adopted at the Mint at Philadelphia, I took occasion in my last annual report to point out as the greatest danger to which this treasure is exposed whatever danger there be from popular disorder. In order to be prepared for any contingency of the kind, however remote, I undertook to secure, through the cooperation of the War Department, a suitable defensive armament for the Mint at Philadelphia. The armory was early in the year newly equipped with Gatling guns mounted on tripodsand with repeating rifles, & c. An armorer has been detailed from the roll of the mint and a portion of his time given to the proper care of these arms."
Other mints had the same problem, more or less, except for Carson City, whose "cc" dollars had been transferred elsewhere by the Treasury. The 1886 Report further noted that the Philadelphia Mint had on hand at the end of the fiscal year, June 30, 1886, some 27,974,020 pieces, having distributed during the year 3,323,972 silver dollars. San Francisco had on hand 19,229,530 silver dollars, with 2,865,009 being distributed; Carson City had none on hand and had distributed 80,236; and New Orleans had 3,279,237 silver dollars on hand, having distributed 5,092,762.
The Year 1886 in History
The labor movement in the United States, which had an uncertain status and future up to this point and had been largely at the mercy of industrialists, received worldwide attention and gained its first martyrs in Chicago's Haymarket Massacre. This disaster had its beginnings when police fired into a crowd of striking laborers on May 1st, killing four and wounding others. Three days later, a peaceful mass meeting was held to protest police brutality, someone (never identified) threw a bomb, police fired into the crowd, and more casualties were added to the list.
The world may have needed another gold rush, for the California and Australia bonanzas were old news by now. In the Transvaal district of South Africa a new discovery is exploited, and the district would produce vast quantities of gold for over a century to come, leading directly to the Boer War and generations of hostility to British exploiters, and, some allege, indirectly to South Africa's siding in World War II with Britain's enemies, the Nazis. Aluminum, which had been known for many years and which had been used at the Mint to strike pattern coins on numerous occasions, lost its status as a semi-valuable metal in 1886 when Charles M. Hall devised a practical method of extracting aluminum from bauxite ore by the use of electricity. On October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty, a gift of France, more formally known as Liberty Enlightening the World, was dedicated on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor.
B.F. Keith and Edward F. Albee (who did not permit vulgarity on the stages of his theatres) joined together to form a vaudeville circuit. During the next three decades, the Keith, Orpheum, and other circuits would book traveling troupes into theatres owned by the circuits in various cities, large and small. Entertainment varied and usually consisted of musical acts, magicians, skits, comedy, and other doings, which the typical patron paid 10, 20, or 30 cents to see, depending upon the location of his seat.
Richard Warren Sears entered the merchandising business in Minnesota by buying agroup of watches which had been refused by a local jeweler, thus sowing the seed for Sears, Roebuck & Co. On the soft drink scene, Coca-Cola was sold for the first time in Atlanta, the Coca part of the name coming from the coca leaf.
The Treasury-held supply of subsidiary silver coins was diminishing rapidly, and in 1886 the Mint began to receive calls for new coins. Until recently, the government had a quantity of silver coins on hand, which had been minted in the 1860s and not distributed, and others which had been struck in the early 1870s (especially the 1873 arrows and later coinage) in anticipation of the resumption of specie payments. These stocks were augmented by the surprising return of about $30 million worth of silver coins that had been exported to Latin America circa 1862, coins that the Treasury and others had assumed had been melted. Normal silver coinage continued in the dime series, as it had for several years previous, and after about 1890, the production of quarters and half dollars would increase as well.
The Treasury began issuing Silver Certificates in $1, $2, and $5 denominations. The $5 portrays a group of Morgan dollars on the reverse, one showing the date 1886. Though they were redeemable in silver dollars, the notes instead circulated in huge quantities, rather than easing the Treasury's silver dollar storage burden.