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Show Bankers this week. Mr. Mackenzie Macken-zie admits pleasure at results so far attained. Silver Dollars Instead of Currency A. G. Mackenzie, the popular secretay of the Utah chapter of the American Mining Congress who has done so much for the betterment of miners and mining min-ing in this state ha3 written the following letter to bankers throughout the state urging them to- replace currency with silver dollars. Gentlemen :- You have no doubt not-ed not-ed the program of Secretary Mellon to increase the use of silver dollars. The Treasury Department De-partment is setting an example by using silver dollars in part payment of its own employes and is urging other Government departments to take like action. The Treasury Department has found that the upkeep of paper money costs the Government , about three per cent of its total face value while maintenance of silver dollars costs practically nothing. Mr. Mellon says in his annual report: "There are many reasons why the silver dollar should be restor ed to its former importance in the currency structure. The life of a silver dollar is indefinite. If the Treasury can restore to circulation 3U,uuu,uuo silver dollars dol-lars in the United States and 10,000,000 in insular possessions it can displace equal amounts of paper currency at an annual saving of $828,000. The use of the silver dollar is not an innovation. inno-vation. It has merely lost its place temporarily in circulation in certain localities and it is proposed pro-posed to restore a limited a-mount a-mount of these coins as an auxiliary aux-iliary to paper currency." An inquiry shows the banks of Utah are receiving from the Fedral Reserve Dank an astonishingly aston-ishingly small number of silver dollars in companson with the total amount of money our Utah banks use. Utah has been for several years the leading silver producing &tate of the Nation and we feel that this State should not only supplement the campaign of the Government for the sake of the advantage which, as Mr. Mellon points out, will accure to the Government, but also should set an example to other states for patriotic and also selfish reasons. It is not necessary to point out to you gentlemen, as bankers, that the great value of the mining min-ing industry to the State is in the number of persons it employs, em-ploys, all of whom are consumers consum-ers of the State's other products and services. Silver is an extremely ex-tremely important factor in our metal mining industry; in fact, there is practically no metal mine in the State that is unaffected unaf-fected by the silver situation. You may be interested to know that there are only about a dozen metal mines on an earning basis in the State today, and that this condition is largely due to the silver situation. It is to the direct advantage of all the people of the State to take any feasible steps that will tend to increase the metal mine operations and thereby increase employment. There are several thousand unemployed men in the State today, many of whom are miners. For the reasons given, we feel that you will receive heartily our suggestion that you do all you consistently can do to stimulate stim-ulate the use of silver dollars in your community. It is suggested that your tellers offer silver dollars instead of currency to your patrons up to $5.00 in a-mount a-mount and that you urge the business men of your community commun-ity to use silver dollars in change among their customers and bank the one and two dollar bills instead in-stead of continuing them in local lo-cal circulation. Our inquiries indicate in-dicate that the use of the silver sil-ver dollars as indicated facilitates facilita-tes making change and reduces the liability of mistakes, as the coins are much easier to handle than the currency. . We are advised that the Salt Lake City Branch of the Federal Feder-al Reserve Bank will, until further fur-ther notice, supply silver dollars to you without the transportation transporta-tion charges previously imposed so that you can obtain the silver on the same basis as currency. Until the last few years the West was thoroughly habituated to the use of coin so that it should not be difficult to reinstate rein-state the silver dollars as a preferred pre-ferred form of money, and we believe the bankers of Utah can render real constructive service to" the entire State in this way. Altho . the above letter has only been mailed out to the |
