bimetallism

1. The use of a monetary standard consisting of two metals, especially gold and silver, in a fixed ratio of value.
2. The doctrine advocating bimetallism.

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In 1791, most of the world's leading nations were on a bimetallic standard in which both gold and silver served as the basis for coinage (known as "specie"). Following the recommendations of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1792, in which a gold eagle ($10) gold piece of 247.50 grains, 100 percent fine, a silver dollar of 371.25 grains, and subsidiary silver coins including half-dollars, quarters, and dimes of proportional weight became the money standard for the new nation.

The American silver dollar circulated at face ("par") value in Latin America even though it weighed less than the Latin American dollar. Consequently most of the coins that were minted were exported and did not circulate internally to any significant extent. In 1806, President Jefferson suspended the coinage of silver dollars.

The mint ratio of silver to gold (15 to 1) undervalued gold. An owner of gold could sell it to the mint at the government-set price of $19.40 per ounce, but in the market, where prices were set by supply and demand, the same owner could obtain nearly $20 per ounce. The undervalued metal in a dual system such as this tends to cease circulation once the disparity between the mint and market ratios becomes large enough to yield a profit after transaction costs are paid—a phenomenon known to economists as "Gresham's law" ("good money drives out bad"). Until the Napoleonic wars, the disparity between the prices in gold and silver still did not grow far enough to induce many people to take advantage of the price differential (a process known as "arbitrage"). But in 1821, England adopted the gold standard, which raised the demand for gold and raised its price beyond the level needed to initiate Gresham's law. Gold all but disappeared from circulation.

By the early 1820s, many proposals were made to devalue gold, but the scarcity of the metal argued against devaluation. After gold was discovered in the Appalachians, however, Congress in 1834 reduced the gold content of the eagle to 232 grains. Three years later, the weight was increased to 232.2 grains, making the mint ratio of silver to gold 15.988 to 1. Gold was overvalued at the mint, but it took until 1844 for all the silver coins to disappear from circulation. To bring back silver for daily transactions, Congress in 1853 reduced the half-dollar from 206.25 grains, 90 percent fine, to 192 grains, and reduced other coins proportionately.

Civil War inflation drove all specie out of circulation. The country was on an irredeemable paper standard from 1861 to 1879. In light of the fact that the silver dollar had not circulated for thirty years, the coinage laws were re-written: the act of February 1873 dropped the silver dollar and made the gold dollar the monetary standard, evoking a howl of protest from agrarian groups and miners who wanted to inflate the currency. They referred to this as the "Crime of '73."

A series of events in the early 1870s reduced the demand for silver. In 1871–1873, Germany went on the gold standard, demonetizing silver; several Latin American countries closed their silver coinage production; Scandinavia adopted the gold standard; and Russia, in 1876, suspended its silver coinage. Meanwhile, new discoveries of silver in Nevada, combined with the continued productivity of the Comstock Lode, increased U.S. silver production by about 20 percent.

The price of silver fell sharply, and, combined with a worldwide gradual deflation, many Americans saw the declining price levels as a conspiracy or plot by lenders to maintain deflation. "Silverites" (who began to meld into the newly forming Populist Party) clamored for "free and unlimited silver at 16 to 1." In 1878, pressure from silver interests led to passage of the Bland-Allison Act, which required the U.S. Treasury to purchase $2.5 million worth of silver every month for coinage into silver dollars at the rate of 412.5 ounces, 90 percent fine. The catch was that the Treasury was to pay market prices, not "16 to 1." Thus the anticipated inflation that would have ensued had the silverites' program been adhered to did not materialize.

Silver forces relentlessly pressed their program. In June 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which required the purchase of 4.5 million ounces of silver per month at slightly higher than market prices of approximately 16.5 to 1. This had the disastrous effect of draining gold out of the country at precipitous rates. By the time Grover Cleveland was reelected president in 1892, the nation teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Congress repealed the act in November 1893, but not in time to stop the panic of 1893. Worse, the gold drain on the government's vaults had continued: in 1892 the government had $84 million in gold, but by 1894 the reserves had fallen to $69 million and continued to drop. Finally Cleveland worked with the banker J. P. Morgan to arrange a massive syndicate to lend the U.S. government gold totaling more than $65 million, which stabilized the markets. In 1896, the bimetallism issue was politically ended with the election of the Republican William McKinley, who favored a gold standard, over the Democratic silverite William Jennings Bryan, who had won the nomination with his famous Cross of Gold Speech.

The Great Depression brought new calls to add silver back to the monetary mix. On 5 April 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt suspended the gold standard. The Thomas Amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act (May 1933) authorized the president to devalue the gold dollar up to 50 percent, accept up to $200 million in silver at 50 cents an ounce in payment for war debts, and to restore bimetallism. By the Gold Reserve Act of January 1934, the weight of the gold dollar was reduced from 23.22 to 13.71 grains, making gold worth $35 an ounce instead of $20.67. The government also bought more domestically mined silver during the depression.

During the 1960s, the United States abandoned all but the symbolism of a metallic standard. In acts of 1965 and 1968, Congress eliminated the gold reserve requirement for Federal Reserve bank deposits and Federal Reserve notes. In 1965 the government quit minting standard silver coins and in 1971 temporarily suspended the right to convert dollars into gold. In 1972, the dollar was devalued, raising the price of gold to $38 per ounce; a year later, the dollar was devalued again, forcing the price up to $42. It was hopeless for the government to try to peg the price of the dollar to gold, or vice versa, and soon the dollar (as did all currencies) "floated" against the value of gold and all other currencies. During the oil crisis of the mid-1970s, the market gold price soared to as much as $900 an ounce, although once oil prices stabilized, the price of gold fell back to around $300, where (with a few exceptions) it has remained.

Bibliography

Friedman, Milton. "Bimetallism Revisited." Journal of Economic Perspectives 4 (1990): 95–104.

Friedman, Milton, and Anna J. Schwartz. A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967.

Krooss, Herman E. Documentary History of Banking and Currency in the United States. New York: Chelsea House, 1969.

Laughlin, J. L. History of Bimetallism in the United States. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963.

—Larry Schweikart

In economics, bimetallism is a monetary standard in which the value of the monetary unit is defined as equivalent either to a certain quantity of gold or to a certain quantity of silver. Such a system establishes a fixed rate of exchange for the two metals. The merits of the system were the subject of debate in the late 19th century. Primarily this took place inside the United States, the U.S. being the only major country which was a large producer of both gold and silver.

This monetary system can be very unstable.^{[citation needed]} Due to the fluctuation of the commercial value of the metals, the metal with a commercial value higher than the currency value tends to be used as metal and is withdrawn from circulation as money in accordance with Gresham's Law.

Contents 1 Political debate 2 Monometallism 3 Primary sources 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

Political debate

In the United States, bimetallism became a center of political conflict toward the end of the nineteenth century. Newly discovered silver mines in the American West caused an effective decrease in the value of money. In 1873, in order to de-monetize silver, the government passed the Fourth Coinage Act, just as these silver resources were beginning to be exploited. Proponents of monetary silver, known as the Silverites, referred to this act as “The Crime of ’73,” as it was judged to have inhibited inflation. Instead deflation resulted, causing problems for farmers with large mortgages who found they could sell their goods for only a fraction of their post-Civil War price. In addition, improvements in transport meant it was cheaper for farmers to ship their grain to Europe, and they over-expanded production until there was a glut on the market. The Panic of 1893 was a severe nationwide depression that brought the money issue to the fore. The "silverites" argued that using silver would inflate the money supply and mean more cash for everyone, which they equated with prosperity. The gold advocates said silver would permanently depress the economy, but that sound money produced by a gold standard would restore prosperity. The gold advocates won decisively in 1896 and 1900.

1896 GOP poster warns against free silver.

Bimetallism and "Free Silver" were demanded by William Jennings Bryan who took over leadership of the Democratic Party in 1896, as well as the Populist and Silver Republican Parties. The Republican Party nominated William McKinley on a platform supporting the gold standard which was favored by financial interests on the East Coast. A faction of Republicans from silver mining regions in the West known as the Silver Republicans endorsed Bryan.

Bryan, the eloquent champion of the cause, gave the famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the National Democratic Convention on July 9, 1896 asserting that “The gold standard has slain tens of thousands.” He referred to “a struggle between ‘the idle holders of idle capital’ and ‘the struggling masses, who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country;’ and, my friends, the question we are to decide is: Upon which side will the Democratic party fight?” At the peroration, he said “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” However, his presidential campaign was ultimately unsuccessful; this can be partially attributed to an economic upturn caused in part by the failure of Russian harvests and the resultant increase in commodity prices. The McKinley campaign was effective at persuading voters that poor economic progress and unemployment would be exacerbated by adoption of the Bryan platform. 1896 saw the election of McKinley, who implemented the gold standard and ran on it in his 1900 re-election. The standard lasted until the Great Depression. It was abandoned in 1934 in FDR’s New Deal program.

Monometallism

The practical difficulties which in times past had confronted the maintenance of a joint standard, a concurrent circulation of the two metals, led one nation after another to abandon the effort, and to adopt a system of monometallism, with gold as its basic unit of trade.

McKinley stands triumphant on the gold standard after reelection in 1900

The historical development of coinage in modern nations has been from silver monometallism through a more or less unsatisfactory experience with bimetallism, to the single gold standard. Still, in the twentieth century, both metals lost their former importance within monetary systems. Now, monometallism in the form of the gold standard has been abandoned by all nations.

Primary sources

• Campaign Text-book of the National Democratic Party (1896) by Democratic Party (U.S.) National Committee: this is the Gold Democrats handbook; it strongly opposed Bryan.
• Walker, International Bimetallism (New York, 1896)
• Robert Giffen, Case against Bimetallism (London, 1896)
• Joseph Shield Nicholson, Money and Monetary Problems (London, 1897)
• Samuel Dana Horton, The Silver Pound (London, 1887)
• Walker, Money (New York, 1878)
• Francis Amasa Walker, Money, Trade and Industry (New York, 1879)
• Elisha Benjamin Andrews, An honest Dollar (Hartford, 1894)
• Helm, The Joint Standard (London, 1894)
• Frank William Taussig, The Silver Situation in the United States (New York, 1893)
• Horace White (writer), Money and Banking (Boston, 1896)
• James Laurence Laughlin, History of Bimetallism in the United States (New York, 1897)
• Langford Lovell Price, Money and its Relations to Prices (London and New York, 1896)
• Utley, Bimetallism (Los Angeles, 1899)
• Roger Q. Mills, What shall we do with silver?  (The North American Review, Volume 150, Issue 402, May 1890.)

See also

• Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• Silver standard
• Gold standard
• Crime of 1873

References

• James A. Barnes, "Myths of the Bryan Campaign," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 34 (Dec. 1947) online in JSTOR
• David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, "Gold Democrats and the Decline of Classical Liberalism, 1896-1900,"Independent Review 4 (Spring 2000), 555-75.
• Bordo, Michael D. "Bimetallism." In The New Palgrave Encyclopedia of Money and Finance edited by Peter K. Newman, Murray Milgate and John Eatwell. 1992.
• Dighe, Ranjit S. ed. The Historian's Wizard of Oz: Reading L. Frank Baum's Classic as a Political and Monetary Allegory (2002)
• Friedman, Milton, 1990a, "The crime of 1873," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 98, No. 6, December, pp. 1159-1194
• Friedman, Milton, 1990b, "Bimetallism revisited," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 4, No. 4, Fall, pp. 85-104.
• Friedman, Milton, and Anna J. Schwartz, 1963, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960
• Jeansonne, Glen. "Goldbugs, Silverites, and Satirists: Caricature and Humor in the Presidential Election of 1896." Journal of American Culture 1988 11(2): 1-8. Issn: 0191-1813
• Jensen, Richard J. (1971). The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict 1888–1896. 
• Jones, Stanley L. (1964). The Presidential Election of 1896. 
• Littlefield, Henry M., 1964, "The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism," American quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring, pp. 47-58.
• Angela Redish, "Bimetallism"
• Rockoff, Hugh, 1990, "The Wizard of Oz as a monetary allegory," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 98, No. 4, August, pp. 739-760.
• Velde, Francois R. "Following the Yellow Brick Road: How the United States Adopted the Gold Standard" Economic Perspectives. Volume: 26. Issue: 2. 2002.
• Richard Hofstadter (1996). "Free Silver and the Mind of "Coin" Harvey". The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. Harvard University Press. Harvard.. ISBN 0-674-65461-7. 

External links

• The Bimetallic Standard, a series of pages on bimetalism from Micheloud & cie.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - dobbeltmøntfod

Nederlands (Dutch)
bimetallisme

Français (French)
n. - bimétallisme

Deutsch (German)
n. - Bimetallismus, Doppelwährung

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (οικον.) διμεταλλισμός

Italiano (Italian)
bimetallismo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - bimetalismo (m) (Fin.)

Русский (Russian)
биметаллизм

Español (Spanish)
n. - bimetalismo, standard monetario basado en oro y plata

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - bimetallism, dubbel myntfot

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
金银复本位制

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 金銀復本位制

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 양화 본위체[복본위제]

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 複本位制

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) نظام نقدي بمعدنين (ذهب و فضه)‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮דו-מתכתיות‬

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