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1873

Coinage Act

The standard silver dollar is dropped from the coinage list.

Nineteenth-century cartoon about the U.S. trade dollar and the silver question after 1873.
Trade-dollar cartoon — popular memory of the 1873 coinage change and the silver question.Public domain (19th-century U.S. print; copyright expired).

The Coinage Act of 1873 left the standard silver dollar off the list of coins the Mint would strike. Silver advocates later called that the Crime of 1873. Others called it a clarification toward gold.

Both readings of the Act still circulate. The statute is the fact; the name is the argument.

The Crime of 1873 →