The Twenty Cent Piece
 

I think it would be a safe assumption to state that most Coin Collectors knew the Susan B. Anthony Dollar would be a failure, just as the Sacagawea Dollar has been unsuccessful. The size and weight of the coins replicates that of the quarter too closely. These examples are not the first time our government produced coins that replicated another coin in size and weight. It has been done before, and has failed before. George Santayana said, "Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them." The U.S.
Twenty-Cent piece (1875-1878) is a great example of a failed coin to examine. It makes one wonder why the government has not learned from its past mistakes, or were the politicians, as children, the ones who whined, "Why do I need to learn history? It's boring!"

Although the founding Fathers of the United States were very fond of, and considered adopting the decimal system of coinage, the Spanish coinage was universally accepted around the world, and the U.S. coinage ended up being a combination of both systems. We find that in the quarter dollar which most closely replicated the two reales (two-bits), and the disme (later to be called a dime) representing 1/10 of a dollar. As early as 1791, Thomas Jefferson proposed the double disme or Twenty-cent coin in keeping with the decimal system, but Congress realized that the denomination was too close to that of the
quarter, and abandoned the proposition. The same recommendation came to the table again in 1806, and again it was turned down. When a bill for the proposal of a Twenty-cent piece resurfaced in 1874, there were strong political ramifications that had been in the making for years, and this was just the first step for the Silver Mine Lobby, in Congress, towards having the Silver Dollar reinstituted.

The Mint Act of 1873 ended the production of the 3¢ silver piece, the silver half dime and the silver dollar, thereby reducing the amount of silver needed by the U.S. Mint. Many countries throughout the world were adopting the Gold Standard, and dumping massive quantities of Silver on the open market. Silver was cheap. The United States was preparing to follow suite, but with massive silver strikes occurring in the Western sections of the United States, the mine owners were not about to sit back and allow this to happen. After all, it was their money that made a significant contribution financially to the coffers of the Treasury which aided President Lincoln in defeating the Confederacy. The U.S. government owed the mine owners, and they were about to collect on their debt.

Another result of the 1873 Mint Act was an increase in pricing of common goods by the shopkeepers in the West. Minor coinage was already in short supply, and with the further reduction of small denominations of coins, the only way to do business was to decrease the coinage needed for change, and/or shortchange their customers.

The easy solution of this shortage of minor coins was for the government to allow the branch mints in San Francisco and Carson City to produce the needed coinage, but that did not occur until the early 1900s. In February of 1874, Nevada Senator John Percival Jones introduced a bill in Congress for the production of the Twenty-cent piece. He sited the reason for this coinage was to provide merchants with a denomination of coin which would allow them to lower their prices and/or prevent them from shortchanging their customers. Being a Senator from Nevada, one would suspect Jones had a hidden agenda of protecting the interests of the silver mine owners and his position as a Senator. With Mint Director Henry R. Linderman supporting the bill, and as a favor to Senator Jones, President Ulysses S. Grant autographed the bill into law on March 3, 1875.

Either Mint Director Linderman knew the mind of Congress and could anticipate their every move, or his passion for coin collecting influenced his decision making, but in 1874, he ordered Philadelphia Mint Superintendent James Pollack to begin preparing pattern coins for this new denomination. The first pattern design submitted to Linderman seemed to replicate the existing quarter, and he ordered additional designs produced, but in the end, the Treasury policy which favored uniformity of design in coins produced of the same metal led to a coin that looked very much like the existing quarter.



Ultimately, the obverse of the coin depicts a lowered relief of the Sully/Gobrecht/Hughes design of the seated Liberty, modified by William Barber, the mint's Chief Engraver. It depicts Miss Liberty seated on a rock with a shield inscribed with the word LIBERTY at her right foot. She is holding a staff in her left hand topped with a Liberty Cap. Around the perimeter of the coin encircling Miss Liberty from the 8 o'clock to the 4 o'clock positions are 13 stars, and centered at the 6 o'clock position is the date. The reverse of the coin bears the design of Barber's eagle from the Trade Dollar. Along the circumference of the coin's edge
the legends read UNITED STATES OF AMERICA flanked by a single star on each side, and the denomination of TWENTY CENTS centered at the 6 o'clock position. To distinguish this coin from the quarter for the illiterate in society, the edge of the coin was plain, without reeding. Other then a few minor design differences between the Twenty-cent piece and the quarter, the two coins differed in size by only 2.3 mm in the diameter, and 1-1/4 grams in weight. This new coin was a disaster waiting to happen.

Upon their release for circulation in 1875, the resulting public confusion was immediate and wide spread. The Twenty-cent piece was extremely unpopular, and the effect Senator Jones claimed these coins would have on the economy in the West never came to fruition. The new coin was only issued for circulation in 1875 and 1876 however; proof coins were made until 1878. A bill was introduced in Congress to repeal the mints authority to produce the Twenty-cent piece in July of 1876, finally becoming law
in May of 1878. Mint Director Linderman ordered the meltdown of all Twenty-cent coins on hand, in all of the mint branches, for production of other denominations. Among the coins melted were 12,359 Carson City 20¢ pieces, most of which were dated 1876. It is currently estimated that only 18 of the 1876-CC 20¢ pieces are known to have survived.

It makes one think of the wisdom of the founding Fathers of the United States in their understanding of producing a coin similar to one that had become entrenched within the social fabric would fail. Then we examine the failure of the same coin produced as the result of political manipulation. Why does the government think that production of a similar size coin to one currently in use will be successful? It is in the history.