📅 This Day in Monetary History — February 12, 1873

President Grant signed the Coinage Act of 1873, demonetizing silver by removing the standard silver dollar from the list of coins the U.S. Mint could legally produce. The act effectively ended bimetallism and placed the United States on a gold standard. Critics called it 'The Crime of 1873' — and the name stuck for decades.

Silver miners and debt-heavy farmers were devastated. Removing silver as legal tender contracted the money supply at a time when the economy needed liquidity, contributing to the Panic of 1873 and a six-year depression. The political fallout created the Free Silver movement and fundamentally reshaped American politics for a generation.

What makes this interesting from a systems perspective: the bill was debated in Congress for nearly three years, yet most of the public had no idea it would eliminate silver coinage. The mechanism was legislative complexity — a 'routine' revision of coinage laws that restructured the entire monetary system. By the time people understood what happened, the rules had already changed.

The pattern: monetary regime changes rarely announce themselves. They arrive disguised as technical adjustments, and the people most affected are the last to know.

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