On the other side of the Atlantic an important event had taken place in the United States. In 1870 that Government resolved to consolidate the Mint laws, which had not been revised since 1837, in a comprehensive statute. Since the legislation of 1853 the silver dollar was the only coin which the United States Mints coined freely. But in the new consolidated Mint Statute of 1873 the silver dollar was deleted from the list of coins to be issued from the Mint, [pg 76] so that it virtually amounted to suspension of the free coinage of silver in the United States.¹⁵² The silver dollars previously coined continued to circulate as full legal tender, but that power was taken away by the law of June, 1874, which declared that “the silver coins of the United States shall be a legal tender at their nominal value for any amount not exceeding five dollars in any one payment.” ¹⁵² This measure was the subject of a strange controversy. The gold men argued that it was deliberately adopted, while the silver men decried it as a surreptitious act due to a “combination of rascally contrivance and rascally connivance.” Prof. Laughlin has well cleared the mystery surrounding this Act. He shows by reference to debates in Congress on the legislation of 1853 that Congress knew that by refusing to alter the ratio between gold and silver it was placing the country on a gold standard. Too much consideration, he thinks, has been wasted on the Act of 1873, which merely took legal notice of the consequences of the Act of 1853. Cf. his _History of Bimetallism_, pp. 80 and 93–95. The other factor appealed to in explanation of the dislocation of the relative values of gold and silver was the great increase in the production of silver as compared to gold. TABLE IX _Relative Production of Gold and Silver (Ounces)_