The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

Here the Bland-Allison Act did have an effect. Every month the government, according to law, bought and minted $2 million in silver dollars, and every month it issued those dollars only to have the vast majority quickly come back to the Treasury in exchange for paper or gold. Carrying around silver dollars—popularly known as a “stove-lid currency”—was inconvenient. As a result, silver flowed into the Treasury, and notes backed by gold reserves flowed out. The unwanted silver coins piled up. By 1880 the Treasury held thirty-two thousand ordinary nail kegs full of silver dollars in its vaults. The situation only got worse. By 1885 the government had coined a little more than two hundred million silver dollars, with only one-quarter in circulation. The Treasury had to rent space and build new vaults to hold the excess. If someone had stolen all of the silver dollars, it would have saved the government money. The government purchase of silver worked largely to subsidize western mines.5