Q. David Bowers
More About Silver Dollar Storage
Storage Facilities for Silver Dollars, Report of the Director of the Mint 1887, page 122:
"In the course of remarks under a previous heading it was incidentally pointed out that the minting facilities afforded by the mint at San Francisco are regarded by this Bureau sufficient to meet all requirements. The most modern of the four coinage mints, including the mint at Carson, it is of such magnitude as to admit of considerable expansion beyond any present necessities.
"Not so, however, with the mints at Philadelphia and New Orleans, under the circumstance that both of these institutions are called upon to execute the bulk of the mandatory coinage of silver dollars, besides, at Philadelphia, a large portion of the subsidiary coinage, and the whole minor coinage. Public requirements for the two latter coinages, from time to time, are less pressing than the coinage of silver dollars only so far as this coinage is not mandatory. This, at least, has been the case during the last fifteen months.
"The recent limitation of the bulk of the silver dollar coinage to the mints at Philadelphia and New Orleans has grown out of the expediency of providing for the storage of silver dollars in the immediate custody of the United States Treasury.
"Provision having been made by Congress for the ultimate storage of silver dollars in the vaults now in the course of construction at the mentioned mints is determined by the measure of facilities for transport from the coinage mint to Washington, and the relative cost of the same as compared with the cost from different mints. On such grounds of expediency both of the eastern institutions have been called upon to the full extent of their present capacity for the execution of the whole mandatory coinage of silver dollars, except what small proportion of that coinage has from time to time been assigned to the mint at San Francisco when the other mintshave been unable to fulfill the whole satisfactory requirement, as during the last year, when operations were contracted at the Mint at Philadelphia for the renewal of its steam plant."
New York Assay Office
The U.S. Assay Office at New York was very active during the late nineteenth century, and information concerning its operations was carried in each issue of the Annual Report of the Director of the Mint. No coins were struck at this and related assay offices, but they did serve as a depot for the evaluation, collection, and distribution of gold and silver bullion. An example of such a report is this, given in 1887:
"The melter and refiner operated upon 2,904,738 ounces of gold bullion during the year, and delivered in settlement an excess of 914,061 ounces. He operated upon 4,828,925 ounces of silver bullion during the year, and delivered to the superintendent in settlement an excessof 1,311.18. He also melted and cast into bars trade-dollars to the amount of 2,787,165 gross ounces. This large volume of business was at an expense of about one-half cent an ounce, or about one-tenth of 1 % of the value of the bullion."
Distribution of Silver Dollars
The Annual Report of the Director of the Mint, 1887, told of the distribution of silver dollars at the Philadelphia Mint: On hand June 30,1886,27,974,020 [silver dollars]; coinage of fiscal year 1887 21,290,831; transferred to United States Treasury 10,500,000; available for distribution $68,764,851; in mint June 30, 1887 35,386,110; distributed from mint: 3,378,741.
The Year 1887 in History
The Interstate Commerce Act, approved by Congress, became effective on February 4, 1887, and regulated the rates of railroads. The Florida state legislature passed a law to segregate blacks on railroad passenger cars. In Chatsworth, Illinois, about 100 people were killed when a burning bridge collapsed beneath a train.
The Pratt Institute opened in Brooklyn, New York and would go on to train many artists. The Marine Biological Laboratory was established in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes detective story was published, A Study in Scarlet. Appearing in Strand Magazine, the tale earned its creator £50. The story was primarily set in Utah among the Mormons. She, a novel by popular British writer H. Rider Haggard, was published, and told of an ancient woman who came to life. "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," wrote John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton, a Roman Catholic opposed to the dogma of papal infallibility.
Thomas Edison opened a new laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. He produced an electrically-driven phonograph-an improvement on his earlier models-intended for office dictation use. By the end of the year there were 200,000 telephone subscribers in America. The first social register published in the United Statesappeared and was the work of Lois Keller. Listed were about 3,600 names, primarily consisting of prominent New Yorkers who were white, not divorced, and not Jewish. A statue of Lincoln, for Lincoln Park, Chicago, was completed by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
At the Philadelphia Mint the quantities produced of quarters and half dollars continued to be low, as they had been since 1879, due to a glut of coins in Treasury vaults.