OCR Text |
Show When Tokens Were Issued At two periods since the nation began to coin money, there has arisen a stringency of small coins, which made it necessary for business busi-ness firms to supply their wants by the issue of copper tokens redeemable re-deemable in lenl money by the firms which issued thein. The first period to witness such an issue is-sue came in 1S.T7, when many business busi-ness houses had prepared for their use copper tokens of the size of the larsre connpr rpnf- nha t,-a these tokens then, as usually, were of two principal classes, the one strongly political with devices and Inscriptions giving vivid expression to the partisan slogans of the day, while the other bore simply the advertisement of the merchant who issued them. Again, in 1SG3, the dearth of small coins gave rise to an enormous issue of such tokens, at that time again in the module of the current bronze one-cent piece. |