A government can write a law that says so many ounces of silver equal one ounce of gold at the Mint — and markets can refuse to freeze that number. Bimetallism is the attempt to keep both metals in the same monetary system at a fixed mint ratio. The mint stands ready to coin both into full-weight money at that legal number. When the market ratio — the gold price of silver in trade — drifts away, Gresham’s pattern appears. The statute does not defeat arbitrage.
This page carries that general machine. The loud American political event is the Crime of 1873. The opening American arithmetic is early U.S. coinage. The market quotient without a mint claim lives on the gold–silver ratio fact page. The chapter overview sits under silver in history.
Mint ratio versus market ratio
A mint ratio is a law: so many units of silver equal one unit of gold at the Mint. The Coinage Act of 1792 used fifteen to one. Later U.S. practice and free-silver politics often spoke of sixteen to one. Those numbers are statutes or political demands. They are not geology.
A market ratio is a quotient of two prices at a date: gold’s print divided by silver’s print, or the trade price of one metal in terms of the other. Mines, industrial use, war, and monetary demand move that quotient. The Mint’s number can sit still while the market moves.
When the two diverge, one metal is legally overvalued at the Mint relative to the other. People bring the overvalued metal to be coined and melt or export the undervalued metal. The circulating coinage skews. That is not a moral failure of one metal. It is arithmetic under a fixed legal price.
Gresham’s pattern in mint dress
“Bad money drives out good” is the slogan. The mechanism under bimetallism is sharper: the metal that the Mint overvalues relative to the market tends to stay in coin; the metal the Mint undervalues tends to leave circulation. “Bad” and “good” here mean legally mispriced relative to trade, not moral labels.
States can change the mint ratio, suspend free coinage of one metal, or move to a gold or silver standard in practice while keeping the other metal as subsidiary coin. Europe’s late-nineteenth-century gold turn and America’s 1834 gold-friendlier correction are examples of ratio politics. The Crime of 1873 is the American omission of free coinage of the standard silver dollar — a different instrument from rewriting 15:1 on the page, with the same family of pressures behind it.
Keep the stories labeled. A mint-ratio fight is not a warehouse-receipt story from banks and paper, and it is not the 1980 Hunt squeeze. Different centuries, different instruments.
Europe’s gold turn and the Latin Monetary Union
Several European states entered the nineteenth century with bimetallic or silver habits and left it closer to gold. Germany’s shift after unification in the early 1870s dumped silver onto the market and pressured other mints. France and partners in the Latin Monetary Union (from 1865) tried to coordinate silver and gold coin standards across borders — a treaty about fineness and circulation, not a single central bank.
When silver’s gold price fell and gold became the preferred large-value standard among major trading states, bimetallism’s fixed ratios became harder to defend. Subsidiary silver — small change with limited legal tender — could remain while the large unit went gold. That European context sits behind America’s 1873 politics without being identical to them.
Union members still faced the same Gresham arithmetic when market and mint ratios drifted. Coordination of coin types does not freeze the world price of silver. This page does not retell every European statute. It names the pressure: a world market for silver, a gold preference among creditors and large-payment systems, and mint ratios that no longer matched trade.
America’s face of the same problem
The United States wrote gold and silver into law in 1792 at fifteen to one. When the world ratio drifted, the undervalued metal left. 1834 moved the U.S. ratio gold-friendlier. After the Civil War’s greenbacks and resumption fights, the Coinage Act of 1873 omitted free coinage of the standard silver dollar. Free silver at sixteen to one became the agrarian demand. Bryan’s 1896 campaign was the peak volume.
Open the America articles for the statute narrative. This page only states the mechanism those statutes were fighting over: two metals, one legal unit, a ratio that markets will not freeze.
After 1900 the United States defined the dollar in gold in statute. Silver’s political fight cooled as a remonetization campaign. Silver’s monetary memory and industrial job continued — the next articles in this chapter. The mint-ratio lesson remains: a legal number is not a market equilibrium, and renaming the fight does not repeal arbitrage.
A short timeline
The legal number can sit still for decades. The trade price of silver rarely does.
- 1792: U.S. Coinage Act — gold and silver at 15:1 mint ratio.
- 1834: U.S. gold-friendlier ratio correction.
- 1865: Latin Monetary Union begins coordinating coin standards among members.
- Early 1870s: German gold shift; world silver price under pressure.
- 1873: U.S. Coinage Act omits free coinage of the standard silver dollar.
- 1878–1890: Bland–Allison and Sherman silver-purchase compromises (America chapter).
- 1896: Bryan free-silver campaign; gold side wins the election.
- 1900: U.S. Gold Standard Act — dollar defined in gold.
Law versus the scale
Mint ratio, market ratio, and Gresham under a two-metal statute are the documentary spine here — not a brief for remonetizing silver, not a target for today’s gold–silver quotient, and not a pitch to hold either metal. The American statute fight lives under the Crime of 1873. Opening arithmetic sits under early U.S. coinage. The market quotient without a mint claim sits on the gold–silver ratio.
Return to silver in history for the chapter’s mountain-to-industry arc.