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From: eac@drutx.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.legal,net.consumers
Subject: Re: Legal Tender and the U.S. Government
Message-ID: <588@drutx.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Jul-84 10:08:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: drutx.588
Posted: Tue Jul 10 10:08:06 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Jul-84 01:05:23 EDT
References: <420@teldata.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Denver
Lines: 17

It is interesting that they were trying to beat inflation with precious
metal coinage.  In the late 1800's it was just the fact that coinage
was made out of precious metals (silver and gold) that prompted the use
of silver and gold certificates.  The value of the metal was increasing
so fast that coins were forced to be made smaller and smaller to keep
people from melting them down.  This lead to the trend of making the
metal worth less than the face value of the coin--which defeated the
original purpose of the coin.  For example--a "double eagle" (twenty
dollar gold piece) was supposed to contain twenty dollars worth of
gold.  These would go out of circulation quite quickly when the gold
in a single coin became worth more than twenty dollars.  So now we have
come full swing--the actual value of the printed dollar and the coins
is practically nill.  Only convention dictates that a twenty dollar
bill is worth twenty dollars.

Betsy Cvetic
ihnp4!drutx!eac