used for purposes other than for effecting change, its legal-tender power was restricted to payments not exceeding five dollars. This system, a single gold standard for large, and silver for small, payments, continued without question, and with great convenience, until the days of the war, when paper money (1862-1879) drove out (by its cheapness, again) both gold and silver. Paper was far cheaper than the cheapest of the two metals.
The mere fact that the silver dollar-piece had not circulated since even long before 1853 led the authorities to drop out the provisions for the coinage of silver dollars and in 1873 remove it from the list of legal coins (at the ratio of 1 to 15.98, [pg 322] the obsolete ratio fixed as far back as 1834). This is what is known as the “demonetization” of silver. It had no effect on the circulation of silver dollars, since none were in use, and had not been for more than twenty-five years. There had been no