Silver in US Monetary History

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ames Grant, The Other Precious Metal; The value of silver—not to mention its legendary role in the world’s monetary affairs—is capable of driving some people crazy.. Wall Street Journal, Feb 21, 2019.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the ... s-metal-11550705603
(book review on William L Silber, The Story of Silver; How the white metal shaped America and the modern world. Princeton University Press, 2019)

Quote:

"in 1792. Alexander Hamilton declared that the dollar was a unit of account weighing 371.25 grains of pure silver, and death was the penalty for debasing it. 'The Story of Silver' is the biography of America's first monetary metal.  Biography is the word * * * At the nation's founding, Hamilton granted silver and gold equal roles in the American monetary system. A 19th-century holder of precious metals could take ingots of either to the Mint and exchange them for US coins at the fixed value assigned to each by law, gold being 15 times more valuable than silver.

"Mr Silber, a former gold and silver options trader, is a fine hand at explaining the mechanics of the bimetallic system as well as in the inside details of the modern silver market.

"In 1873, Sen John Sherman [general William Tecumseh Sherman was John's older brother], an Ohio Republican, sponsored legislation to strike silver from America's monetary rolls, relegating it to small change and silver dollar. [Sherman's bill was hard to penetrate.] Unmistakable, however, was the subsequent plunge in the silver price and the resulting howls of impoverished miners. The 'Crime of '73,' they called Sherman's Coinage Act * * *

"William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat running for president in 1896 on a pro-silver, pro-inflation platform, lost to William McKinley , the Republican gold-standard champion.

"Mr silver's 20th-century cast of characters features Henry Morgenthau, secretary of Treasury under Franklin F Roosevelt, who carried out presidential orders to raise the price of silver and thereby placate the silver bloc [see both previous quotation and Note (c)]. But that beckoning American price, by drawing silver from China to America, toppled China's currency, the silver-linked yuan * * *

In "1960s * * * the [American] coins disappeared into [private] vaults when the silver value of a dime topped the stated 10 cents, or of a quarter, the stated 25 cents. (For a less fervid account [than the book under review], see William F Rickenbacker's 1966 book, Wooden Nickels.)

Note:
(a) There is no need to read the rest of the text. Really.
(b) The German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) Silber is "from Middle High German silber, [Modern] German [noun neuter] Silber silver."
(c) History: The 'Crime of 1873.' Office of Corporate Communications, United States Mint, US Department of Treasury, undated/
https://www.usmint.gov/news/insi ... story-crime-of-1873
(d)
(i) For the last quotation, see silver standard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_standard

section 3 China: "the US silver purchase act of 1934 created an intolerable demand on China's silver coins, and so in the end the silver standard was officially abandoned in September 1935 in favor of the four Chinese national banks' 'legal note' issues. China would be the last to abandon the silver standard, along with the British crown colony of Hong Kong. China's use of silver as a medium of exchange is reflected in the name for bank '銀行' (literally 'silver house' or 'silver office') and for the precious metal and jewel dealer '銀樓.'

(ii) After coming to United States and studying the issue on the sidelines, I doubt generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek brought much gold reserve from China to Taiwan. China was on gold standard for just 14 years. Vefore 1935 why would China want to hold much gold for reserve, being in silver standard?  Not to mention Chia did not collect much tax due to wars with Japan and then communists.