4T? What 4T?

[pbrower2a]

(06-04-2016, 09:53 AM)Mikebert Wrote: [Kinser] I did…(look at the article)
[Mike] I went back to look at the article myself and I couldn’t find it.  I had found a 1916 report that had a nice little table in which they gave the market price for silver and the value of 371.25 grains of silver, which showed fluctuations in value with changes the price of silver over the 1882-1916 period, but all were less than $1. I somehow must have deleted the part of the post that referenced this article.  I neglected to bookmark it and cannot find it now. 

So here is a link that makes the same point. Here is the relevant section:
Between 1878 and 1900, silver was used as money in its own right in the form of the silver dollar. However, unlike the silver dollar before 1873, which was commodity money, the silver dollar between 1878 and 1900 was fiat money. Congress and the Secretary of the Treasury decided how many silver dollars to issue. Moreover, the value of silver in a silver dollar was less than its monetary value.
 
Here’s another link that covers the later period.
Substantial “backing” of paper money by gold is also both unnecessary and insufficient to make such paper “as good as gold. ”For that, what’s usually required is unrestricted convertibility of paper money into gold coin, for which fractional gold reserves not only may suffice but in practice usually have sufficed. Thus “silver certificates” issued by the U.S. Treasury between 1878 and 1933, though “backed” by silver, were worth their nominal value not in the silver for which they were exchanged (the market value of which was well below its then inoperative mint value) but in gold, thanks to the limited number of certificates issued and (after 1890) to their being redeemable for gold

As usual, the value of any currency is what one can buy with it (ignoring numismatic value). The South Korean won is useful. The North Korean currency is worthless.

The real backing of the US dollar in 1900 was American farm output, steel, machinery, etc.

The US minted so-called trade dollars that have a checkered history:

The United States trade dollar was a dollar coin minted by the United States Mint to compete with other large silver trade coins that were already popular in East Asia. The idea first came about in the 1860s, when the price of silver began to decline due to increased mining efforts in the western United States. A bill providing in part for the issuance of the trade dollar was eventually put before Congress, where it was approved and later signed into law as the Coinage Act of 1873. The act made trade dollars legal tender up to five dollars. A number of designs were considered for the trade dollar, and an obverse and reverse created by William Barber were selected.

The coins were first struck in 1873, and most of the production was sent to China. Eventually, bullion producers began converting large amounts of silver into trade dollars, causing the coins to make their way into American commercial channels. This caused frustration among those to whom they were given in payment, as the coins were largely maligned and traded for less than one dollar each. In response to their wide distribution in American commerce, the coins were officially demonetized in 1876, but continued to circulate. Production of business strikes ended in 1878, though the mintage of proof coins officially continued until 1883. The trade dollar was re-monetized when the Coinage Act of 1965 was signed into law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_doll...es_coin%29