November 2015 – Week 1 Edition

Gold consolidated to $1140 last week after the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) met and issued a “hawkish hint” that they might raise interest rates a quarter-point at their December meeting.  Although 0.25% is a trivial amount and it is way overdue (we’ve been at near-zero short-term interest rates since late 2008), that “hint” pushed gold down.  However, the economic news has been downbeat and the Fed will not likely raise rates if job growth and GDP growth remain anemic over the next few weeks. 

Civil War Gold Survives: At Historic U.S. Mint

On the battlefield, the British-made Whitworth rifle was a favorite weapon of Yankee and Confederate sharpshooters during the Civil War.  On the home front, hard money – especially gold coinage – would have enjoyed similar popularity with civilians … if they could have gotten it.  Coins of all kinds virtually vanished from view in both the North and the South because of widespread hoarding during the war.

The Union and Confederacy both issued paper money to keep the wheels of commerce turning and pay their large armies, but almost no one trusted it.   Many remembered hearing the phrase “not worth a Continental” to describe the colonies’ nearly worthless currency during the American Revolution. 

Gold coins were minted during the Civil War, but few found their way into people’s pockets and purses until hostilities ended.  Some turned out to be quite scarce and all are prized today as valuable collectibles.

Recently, we acquired an original collection of popular double eagles - $20 gold pieces - issued during the War Between the States.  Heightening their historical significance all had been stored for many years at the old San Francisco Mint, one of the few major buildings to survive that city’s calamitous earthquake in 1906.  That building, now a museum, is affectionately known as “The Granite Lady” because it withstood the quake and the fires that followed.

This collection contains original double eagles dated between 1862 and 1865, many bearing the coveted “S” mint mark, showing they were made at the San Francisco Mint.  We immediately had them submitted to the respected Professional Coin Grading Service, and Numismatic Guaranty Corporation, which certified their authenticity and grade and sealed them in protective holders displaying their Granite Lady pedigree.  Call us for current price and availability.

Letter-Writing Matters

Letter-writing has become a lost art in this Internet Age of e-mail, tweets and hash tags.  But it still has the potential to influence powerful people and achieve important objectives.  In just the last year or so, we’ve seen a simple letter from a 9-year-old girl ignite a nationwide movement that will lead by 2020 to the use of a woman’s portrait on U.S. paper money.  This is not the first time a well-thought-out letter from an ordinary American has brought about significant, meaningful change in the nation’s coins and currency.

In 1861, a minister’s fervent letter to the U.S. Treasury Secretary led to the addition of the words “In God We Trust” to a new national coin – and, in time, to all U.S. coinage.  And in 1953, a small-town Arkansas businessman’s letter to the Treasury Secretary serving at that time resulted in the addition of this now-familiar phrase to U.S. paper money as well – and, as a bonus, helped persuade Congress to adopt “In God We Trust” as our official national motto. The power of the pen – and pencil – was demonstrated most recently by a Massachusetts girl who was a third-grader at the time she wrote a letter, in 2014, to President Barack Obama asking him why there weren’t more women on U.S. coins and paper money.

“I think there should be more women on a Dollar/coin for the United States becuas if there where no woman there wouldn’t be men,” the girl – Sofia, by name – told Obama in a letter with a few understandable misspellings.  (Her last name has not been made public.)

The letter contained a list of prominent American women who, in Sofia’s opinion, had done important things and deserved the honor of being portrayed on U.S. money.  The list included Rosa Parks, Abigail Adams, Emily Dickinson, Helen Keller, Betsy Ross, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Eleanor Roosevelt and Harriet Tubman.

Obama shared the letter with an audience in Kansas City during an economic speech in August 2014.

“A young girl wrote to ask me why aren’t there any women on our currency,” the President told the gathering, “and then she gave me like a long list of possible women to put on our dollar bills and quarters and stuff – which I thought was a pretty good idea.”

News reports about these comments caught the fancy of media outlets around the country, as well as equal rights advocates.  They also led to a nationwide campaign on the Internet – a 21^st-century form of letter-writing – to get the federal government to implement the kind of change sought by Sofia and seemingly endorsed by the President.  The movement proved so powerful and persuasive that in June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that starting in 2020, Uncle Sam will issue $10 bills bearing the image of a woman.  That woman’s identity is due to be disclosed by the end of the year.  “Tens” with the portrait of Alexander Hamilton, who has appeared on the bills since 1928, will continue to be issued, circulating side by side with the new 10-spots honoring a woman.

Letter-writing was the normal means of communication in 1861, a decade-and-a-half before the invention of the telephone – and that’s the way a Baptist minister from Ridleyville, Pa., the Rev. Mark R. Watkinson, conveyed his concern about the Civil War, then in its opening months, to a high federal official and offered a suggestion for uplifting Americans’ spirits at that time of strife and turmoil.  

Writing to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, the small-town minister urged that provision be made for “the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins.”

Up to that time, U.S. coinage had never made reference to a supreme being, but strong religious fervor stemming from the war created a climate conducive to the use of such an inscription.  Watkinson’s letter crystallized this feeling.  “This,” he told Chase, “would place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed.”  Three years later, in 1864, the U.S. Mint introduced a new bronze two-cent piece bearing the inscription “In God We Trust.”  The exact motto wasn’t proposed by Watkinson, but rather evolved as development of the coin and its design moved along.

In 1866, the words “In God We Trust” were added to most other U.S. coins, and they have appeared on every U.S. coin since the debut of the Jefferson nickel in 1938.  Although at least some U.S. coins had carried the motto since 1864, it didn’t appear on U.S. paper money until the 1950s.  Again, it was a letter from an average American citizen that resulted in its usage there.

Matthew Rothert, who operated a furniture business in Camden, Ark., was an avid  coin collector who later became president of the American Numismatic Association.  One Sunday in 1953, while attending Presbyterian church services during a business trip to Chicago, he noticed that while the coins on the collection plate bore the words “In God We Trust,” the paper money did not.

It occurred to Rothert that a message about Americans’ faith in God “could be easily carried throughout the world if it were on United States paper currency.”  He wrote to Treasury Secretary George W. Humphrey making this case and also organized a letter-writing campaign that deluged federal officials with expressions of support for the placement of “In God We Trust” on U.S. paper currency.

Congress, with strong support from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, went above and beyond fulfilling Rothert’s goal.  It not only passed legislation on July 11, 1955 requiring the use of “In God We Trust” on Americans’ folding money but also, on July 30, 1956, adopted this phrase as the nation’s only official motto.  The motto first appeared in 1957 on new $1 bills, and has graced all U.S. currency issued since 1966.

Sofia, the Rev. Mark Watkinson and Matthew Rothert came from much different eras and diverse social backgrounds.  But all had good ideas, and they shared the belief that writing a letter to someone important might transform those ideas into reality.

Their success should serve as an inspiration to others who might have similarly worthwhile ideas and a road map on how to proceed:  Get out pen and paper – or use your computer and printer – and write that letter to someone who can fulfil those ideas.

Sofia, now a 10-year-old fourth-grader, has this advice:  “I really think that if anyone has an idea that they think would be important or something they think needs to change, then they should do something about it.  They can do a lot of things, even if they’re kids.”

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