Did the Treasury Department resist striking Morgan dollars?
Many times, but the silver lobby was too powerful. Secretary of the Treasury Charles T. Fairchild in his 1887 annual report said, “It is a waste to coin and store any more silver dollars at present. There is no function which those that are coined after this time will probably ever perform, except to lie in Government vaults and be a basis upon which Silver Certificates can be issued. The five, two and one dollar Certificates furnish a convenient currency, and it is evident that the future use of the silver dollar will be almost exclusively in that form.” I know that over the centuries a lot of bells were melted down and turned into coins, and that there have been instances in the past of coins being melted down to cast as bells, but have there been any recent instances of bells made of coin metal? The Peace Bell is one, presented to the United Nations in 1954. The bell was cast from coins donated by delegates from some 60 countries who attended the 13th general conference of the U.N.
