Crime of '73
When Congress stopped the coinage of the silver dollar against the will of the farmers and westerners who wanted unlimited coinage of silver. With no silver coming into the federal government, no silver money could be produced. The whole event happened in 1873. Westerners from silver-mining states joined with debtors in demanding a return to the " Dollar of Our Daddies." This demand was essentially a call for inflation, which was solved by contraction (reduction of the greenbacks) and the Treasury's accumulation of gold. A compromise over the coinage of silver came with the Bland-Allison Act of 1878. The law instructed the Treasury to coin between 2 million and 4 million dollars in silver each month.