But silver was not in common use except as a subsidiary coin. For many years the value of the bullion necessary for coining a silver dollar had been greater than the value of the coin. Nobody therefore brought his silver to the mint but sold it instead in the commercial markets. Indeed so insignificant was the amount of silver usually coined into dollars that an act of 1873 systematizing the coinage laws had omitted the silver dollar completely from the list of coins. The omission was later referred to by the friends of silver currency as the "Crime of 1873." At the same time a remarkable coincidence was providing the motive power for the demand that silver be more largely used as currency. Early in the seventies Germany and the Latin Monetary Union, (France, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Greece), had reduced the amount of their silver coinage, thus throwing a large supply of bullion on the market. Simultaneously, enlarged supplies of silver were being found in western United States. A Nevada mine, for example, which had produced six hundred and forty-five thousand dollars' worth of ore in 1873 had turned out nearly twenty-five times that amount two years later. Naturally the market price of silver fell and the mine owners began to seek an outlet for their product. Thus the people who were convinced that the volume of the currency was insufficient for the industrial demands of the nation received a new and powerful reenforcement from the producers of silver ore. There arose what the New York _Tribune_ referred to as "The Cloud in the West."