QUESTION: I made a bet that a friend was wrong that Roosevelt also confiscated silver. I never heard of that, only gold. He said I should write to you and you will decide who wins.
Thanks
FD
ANSWER: Sorry, you lose. He must have been at one of my conferences when we discussed that if he told you to ask me. Most people have never heard that Roosevelt also confiscated silver – not just gold. On August 9th, 1934, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented the seizure of all silver situated in the continental United States with Executive Order 6814 – requiring the Delivery of All Silver to the United States for Coinage. This was the same abuse of executive power as Executive Order 6102, which FDR signed on April 5th, 1933, “forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates within the continental United States” with some differences.
A key difference here with the silver Executive Order 6814 excluded the seizure of all silver coins, whether foreign or domestic. At the same time, Executive Order 6102 only exempted certain types of collectible or numismatic coins from seizure because Teddy Roosevelt had been an ancient coin collector and even J.P. Morgan. Franklin was a stamp collector.
In a famous letter to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury L.M. Shaw, dated December 27, 1904, Teddy Roosevelt stated, “I think the state of our coinage is artistically of atrocious hideousness. Would it be possible, without asking permission of Congress, to employ a man like [Augustus] Saint-Gaudens to give us a coinage which would have some beauty?” He saw the ancient coins as magnificent works of art unprecedented in numismatic history. Teddy saw the ancients as inspiration.
He had the $20 1907 gold struck in high relief with Roman numerals for the day. But modern machines could not handle this type of work. Only 11,250 were struck before being replaced with the flat-relief design with regular Arabic numbers.
There was a shortage of silver because people were also hoarding silver after confiscating the gold. There were no silver dollars minted after 1928. Only when Roosevelt confiscated the silver in 1934 did we see 1934 silver dollars being struck again.
