Re: My mind is not easily boggled, but...


"Mr. Jaggers" <lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com> wrote in message news:gpjf80018ns@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
mazorj wrote:

....
Remember, this is in 1877:

"Why is it that we have the ugliest money of all civilized nations?
For such undoubtedly our silver coinage is. The design is poor,
commonplace, tasteless, characterless, and the execution is like
thereunto. Our silver coins do not even look like money. They
have rather the appearance of tokens or mean medals. One
reason of this is that the design is so inartistic and so insignificant.
That young woman sitting on nothing in particular, wearing nothing
to speak of, looking over her shoulder at nothing imaginable, and
bearing in her left hand something that looks like a broomstick
with a woolen nightcap on it what is she doing there? What is the
meaning of her? She is Liberty, we are told, and there is a label to
that effect across a shield at her right, her need of which is not in
any way manifest. But she might as well be anything else as Liberty;
and at the first glance she looks much more like a spinster in her
smock, with a distaff in her hand.

"Such a figure has no proper place upon a coin. On the reverse
the eagle has the contrary fault of being too natural, too much like
a real eagle. In numismatic art animals have conventional forms,
which are far more pleasing and effective than the most careful and
exact imitation of nature can be. Compare one of our silver coins
with those of Great Britain, France or Germany, and see how mean,
slight, flimsy, inartistic and unmoneylike it looks. Our coins of forty
or fifty years ago were much better in every respect, andlooked
much more like money, the reason being that they bore a head
of Liberty which was bold, clear, and well defined incomparison with
the weak thing that the Mint has given us for the last thirty years
or so. The eagle too, although erring on the side of naturalness,
was more suited in design to coinage.

"But still better were the coins struck at the end of the last century
and the beginning of this one. The eagle was a real heraldic eagle,
the head of Liberty had more character, and the whole work was
bolder and better in every way. But even they had the great defect
of being without significance in design. What is a head of Liberty?
What distinctive character can be given to a head upon a coin which
will make it more like Liberty than anything else? ...

"The coins of the French republic bear a head supposed to typify the
Republic. It has in its features and in its decorations some character and
significance, and it is bold and stands out in good relief, as it should.
But we can do better than to use such mere abstractions, no matter
how bold the design, how high the relief, or how fine the workmanship.
From this utterly unmeaning and uninteresting condition our coin might
be lifted by the substitution, in place of this so-called Liberty, of two
heads, the appropriateness of which upon our coins and indeed almost
their right to be there would be felt by every American, and not only so,
but recognized by the whole world. It is hardly necessary to say that the
heads we mean are those of Washington and Franklin.

"And fortune, nature, Providence, what you will so ordered it that neither
of them left descendants of their own name to be elevated by the
appearance of their ancestors' head upon a nation's coinage.
There are no Washingtons, no Franklins to say, 'This is the image and
superscription of the head of our family.' All democratic fear of the
elevation and glorification of individuals or of families is therefore to be set asideat once as having no occasion. It so happens also that these two men represent the two elements
of our population, the two great divisions of our country. One was a Virginia
planter; the other, a Philadelphia printer, born in Boston, grew from a printer
into a philosopher and a statesman. The proper place for Washington's head
would be upon the gold pieces; for no one would dispute the
appropriateness of placing that of the author of ' Poor Richard's Almanac,' and
of the adage, 'A penny saved is a penny earned,' upon the silver coins
representing fractional parts of a dollar, and upon the cents. Thus our gold
and silver coins would be distinguished from each other in design, not as they
now are by the mere difference between a meaningless head
and a meaningless sitting figure, but by two noble portrait busts of which an
American might be prouder than any European ever was of the effigy of king or kaiser.

"With this change and with a return to the old breadth of piece, and the heraldic
eagle used in the beginning of this century (the two examples now before us
are dated 1803 and 1805), we should have a coinage which instead of being as
now the meanest in appearance and most insignificant of all that is known, would
be the most beautiful and the most fraught with associations of historic interest
and national pride. We commend the subject to the attention of the House, and
hope that some member may be found who will take it up and bring it before the people."

Plus ça change, plus ça le même chose.

Oh Mon Dieu, j'ai créé un monstre!

Jacques

The parallels are startling, n'est pas? Even down to the part about appealing to the House of Representatives.

.

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