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The E-Sylum: Volume 8, Number 18, May 1, 2005, Article 19 TOO MUCH SILVER COINAGE "Club member David Ginsburg submitted this interesting article about too much silver coinage in circulation (don’t we wish!): "Recently, while reading the reminiscences of a 19th-century riverboat gambler, [Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi by George Devol (Cincinnati: Devol & Haines, 1887) reprinted by Applewood Books, Bedford, MA], I came across these sentences: “At one time, before the war, silver was such a drug in New Orleans that you could get $105 in silver for $100 in State bank notes; but the commission men [factors who acted as business agents and informal bankers for planters] would pay it out to the hucksters dollar for dollar.” Later in the book, Devol writes: “There was a man in New Orleans before the war that supplied the steamboat men with silver to pay their deckhands. He could buy it at a discount, as it was a drug on the money market at that time. I have often seen him, with his two heavy leather bags, on his way from the bank to the boats.” Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@coinlibrary.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum | |
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