You gave good insight on your discussion post. “Free coinage is critical because it gave practical content to a specie standard by providing that the government mint would convert specie that individuals chose to bring to the mint into legal tender currency denominated in dollars in the form of coins; later in paper certificates as well at the stated metallic equivalent.” (Friedman, 1990) It seems that wealthy people were not caring about the poor man financial state. Legally silver could be used, although the market price for gold compared to the price of silver was the ratio 15 to 1.
