GENERAL41483

• Permit No: M1995097
• IBM Index Class Name: General Documents
• Doc Name: BIBLIOGRAPHY WITH INTRODUCTION GLOSSARY OF TERMS AND LIST OF MINERALS
• Media Type: D
• Archive: No

INTRODUCTION
tremendous amount of energy supplied to Aspen almost exclusively by
coal. And coal, high-quality coal, was located nearby in
abundance, and considering the technology of the time under
conditions that led to remarkably economic extraction.
It should come as no surprise that the developers of the
largest early mines in the Grand Hogback coal field west of Aspen,
in the Carbondale-Glenwood Springs-New Castle area, under the name
of the Grand River Coal & Coke Company, were J. J. Hagerman, the
president of the Colorado Midland Railway, w. B. Devereux, a mining
engineer employed as the general manager of the Aspen Smelting &
Mining Company, and Jerome B. Wheeler, one of the original Aspen
developers, principal owner of the Aspen Smelting & Refining
Company, numerous mining claims, the North Texas Smelter, the
Holden Lixiviation Works, the Wheeler Bank and many other
businesses.
As mines opened up all over the western United States, and
indeed world-wide, silver prices which had been as high as nearly
$1.40/ounce in the 1860s began a slow decline. Prior to 1873 the
U.S. Treasury purchased all silver it was offered at a price ratio
with gold of 1 to 16, or about $1.36/ounce. With prices declining
on the world market, however, the government decided to purchase
silver at the prevailing market price, which declined to
$1.15/ounce by the early 1880s. Meanwhile production was
increasing rapidly. in Colorado alone silver production increased
from 1.5 million ounces in 1872 to 24 million ounces in 1882.
In 1878, in an attempt to ease a recession in the West, the
U.S. Treasury was ordered to purchase two million ounces of silver
a month at market price. Prices stabilized in a range between
$1.10 and $1.20 per ounce from 1878 through 1889 but began falling
again, dropping below $1.00/ounce in 1886. Finally, in 1890 a
populist combination of agricultural interests wanting unlimited
silver coinage to push up crop prices and the silver-mining
industry convinced Congress to pass the Sherman (Silver Purchase)
Act, Act of July 14, 1890, 26 Stat. 732.
The Act required the U.S. Treasury to purchase 4.5 million
ounces of silver a month, approximately the total U.S. output. In
response the price of silver rose abruptly to $1.05/ounce but
resumed its decline to $0.99 in 1891 and to a historic low of
$0.87/ounce in early 1892. World over-supply was the primary
driving force behind silver's market decline. But politicians and
miners alike formulated all manner of schemes to prop up the price
without restricting production.
The "silver question" was a major topic of debate in the
1892 presidential election which pitted a Republican indifferent to
silver, Benjamin Harrison, against anti-silver Democrat Grover
Cleveland. Cleveland, who won by less than 365,000 votes out of
BrlICO A. COlllil5 - XV11 - SHUGGLER BIBLIOGRAPHY