Awesome ribbon & pin, billjones. The monetary debates of the late 18th-early 19th century are an aspect of American history that do not really get spotlighted enough, IMO. There were powerful political and social interests on all sides from the 1870s going onward - Free Silver (WJB & the silverites/farmers/western mine owners), the Gold Bugs (McKinley, the Republicans & the bankers/captains of industry), etc. Political battles were fought that led to the
Trade dollar, the
Morgan dollar, and so on, which might not have ever seen the light of day otherwise.
WJB's influence, directly and indirectly, on the collecting and minting of coins and currency, would be felt for a century more, and still is, even though his Populists -- having been weakened heavily by the Dems, who pretty much took over -- fell apart in the early 1900s. Some, such as the man himself, threw in with the Dems; others followed Debs and went Socialist, and a few sided with progressive Republicans like La Follette.
Even with the near collapse of the Socialist Party by the start of the 1920's (following Debs being vilified as an anti-war seditionist and in conjunction with the increasing power of trade unions including Debs' own Wobblies and the AFL-CIO) the group who would dominate American politics for the next 20 years were the Progressives - Republicans & Democrats with different parties but common ideals.
Their efforts led to some of the most comprehensive changes to the American government and finance systems, and those changes affected coin collectors right along with the rest of the nation. The Progressives didn't claim a direct link to those Free Silver Populists of the 1890s, but some of their key platform planks - farm subsidies and modernization, labor activism, American exceptionalism, trust-busting/anti-monopoly regulations, systems for regulating the banks and bankers and the Wall Street tycoons, and a dislike of hard money as opposed to paper - had roots there.
One thing that definitely affected collectors -- the Fed was set to be established in 1913, after the Panic of 1907 finally spooked bankers and politicians alike into realizing that they needed a way to counteract bank runs and stock market crashes -- well, old Mr. WJB the Populist-now-Democrat wasn't having any of that, those Wall Street robber-barons are just going to walk all over the poor and destitute. So crafty progressive President Wilson made sure that the hard-up farmers could get mortgages and loans directly from the government to keep to their living, and oh, by the way, the new Federal currency would be an obligation of the government, and not the private banks, so no need to worry about concentration of power with the bank tycoons -- hey, now we're cool, get the Fed up and running, and it still is, and those pre-Fed United States Notes & even the FRN's have lots of collectors too.
Other ripples in that big pond would also affect coin collecting over time, including the battle that was pitched and won in 1932-1933 by FDR to ban the private holding of gold (who presaged the modern Fed to an extent by seizing gold to drive interest rates down, hold them down, and stimulate economic growth and investment at the cost of discouraging individual accumulation of current assets); the removal of precious metal from most, and then all, of our circulating coinage in 1964 and then 1970; the ending of silver certificate redemption in the 60s and resulting GSA sales after the government finally decided to end the long lines of folks turning in dollar bills for coins which could be worth much more than a dollar; and then another in 1971 when Nixon decided that a dollar didn't need to be backed by anything after all, removing the convertibility of gold, our last link to the gold standard as a nation; the Hunt Brothers making many into lovers / melters of silver and then breaking their hearts in the late 70s and early 80s...
Posted 10/28/2016 7:21 pm
