trade, and generally had much of it on their hands.
Some foreign coins began to circulate at the value put
upon them by the United States government. At
last, to obviate difficulties, the legislature passed a law
making it a criminal offence, punishable by fine and
imprisonment, for coiners to neglect stamping upon
their coin its true value, or failing to redeem it from
the holders thereof on demand.
In October 1852 news came that the federal gov- ernment had ordered that the fifty-dollar slugs or in-
p'ots should not be received for duties at the custom ^ . . .
house. This was a serious blow, at a time when com
was very scarce. Legal coins at once advanced two per cent. Though that order was coupled with a promise to establish immediately a mint, the people were not satisfied.
The bank failures of 1854 and the political corrup- tion of 1855, hastened a commercial crisis which had been brewing for a year or two previous. The mone- tary cataclysm of 1848-52, was followed by a reaction resulting from various causes combined, to-wit: in- crease of a non-productive population, greater labor to extract gold from the earth, high-pressure life and reckless extravagance, a succession of disastrous floods and fires, and over-trading. Hundreds of merchants failed and involved hundreds of others in their fall. Many failed as many as three times and started anew, others took subordinate positions or drank themselves to death. Not one in ten of the San Francisco mer- chants of 1849, was doing business in 1855. Fifteen hundred healthy men, of every intellectual calibre, found themselves without occupation or means of live- lihood. California's credit was now at a low ebb abroad. The population did not then increase at all. Real estate was so low that there was scarcely any sold. Since the fire of 1851, San Francisco saw no 'gloomier day than that following the suspension of Page, Bacon, and Company, announced on the 2 2d of February, 1855.
