By this act the dollar was fixed at about the same weight of silver as the Spanish peso. coinage system was established, at least in outline, by the Coinage Act of 2 April 1792. In keeping accounts, colonists and colonial governments reckoned usually in pounds, shillings, and pence but the most common coins were probably the real (nominally a sixpence, but usually rated at seven or eight pence) and the eight-real piece, or "dollar." Because the sixpence and the real carried the slang name "bit," the two-real piece, or quarter of a dollar, was sometimes called "two bits." The English and their colonists applied the term indiscriminately to thalers, to French silver "dollars" (écus), and to the Spanish "pieces (pesos) of eight," or eight reals. It comes from the English corruption of the German word "thaler," the term for the widely circulated silver coin from the Joachimsthal silver-mining center, which was located in what is now the Czech Republic. One could even say that the English monopoly of coinage in colonial America proved a blessing in disguise, since when independence was won, none of the states possessed a vested interest in a state minting operation. For large transactions the colonists could use bills of credit and other forms of paper currency. Elsewhere the lack of an adequate amount of English specie was compensated by French, Dutch, Portuguese, and above all Spanish coins, all of which were allowed legal-tender privileges by the English authorities. Colonists in less-prosperous areas used wampum, tobacco, beaver skins, and other forms of commodity money. Massachusetts coined "pine tree shillings" from 1652 to 1684, but no other colony managed to strike more than a small number of coins. Unlike the Spaniards, the English denied their American colonies the right to possess local mints. In the colonial period, it is true, the lack of an adequate volume of coins was certainly irritating. Apart from occasional financial crises, the coinage system has generally accomplished well enough what has been demanded of it. coins have done little either to retard or to advance U.S. The denominations, metallic content, and volume of U.S. Studies in the last half of the twentieth century, however, made it apparent that coinage has been a rather passive institution in American affairs. Colonial coin shortages, the uncertain coinage policies of the early nineteenth century, and the bimetallist controversies of the late nineteenth century are standard features of older histories. economic history through its relations to money supply and monetary policy. Until World War II, coinage was thought to have played a great role in U.S.
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