Gadsden Purchase half dollar
The Gadsden Purchase half dollar was a proposed commemorative coin to be issued by the United States Bureau of the Mint.
Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon sent a letter and two officials in opposition to the bill, but it passed both houses of Congress without dissent.
[1] During the late 1920s, El Paso coin dealer Lyman W. Hoffecker tried hard to gain congressional approval for a half dollar commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Gadsden Purchase.
[3] At the time, commemorative coins were not sold by the government—Congress, in authorizing legislation, usually designated an organization which had the exclusive right to purchase them at face value and vend them to the public at a premium.
It stated that Texas Congressman Claude Benton Hudspeth of El Paso had agreed to introduce legislation for the Gadsden piece.
Hoffecker related that the coin would have the portrait of Gadsden on its obverse and on its reverse a map of New Mexico and Arizona depicting the purchased lands and El Paso.
[5] Hudspeth introduced a bill for a Gadsden Purchase half dollar into the House of Representatives on April 25, 1929; it was referred to the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures.
He noted that in 1927, at the time of the Vermont Sesquicentennial half dollar, the Coinage Committee had gone on record in opposition of commemorative coin issues, many of which were only of local and not national significance.
[7] On March 8, Hoffecker sent a telegram to the committee offering to pay for the entire issue of 10,000 anytime the department wanted, and given that the Mint had produced over 30,000,000 coins for other nations in 1929, any burden posed by commemorative half dollars was slight.
He also presented a joint resolution of the houses of the Texas Legislature, asking the state's representatives to introduce and support a bill for a Gadsden Purchase half dollar.
Hudspeth sent a letter, and his secretary Kate George told the committee that the senators from Texas, New Mexico and Arizona were unanimously in favor of the bill.
Hudspeth's letter stated he had been told by Hoffecker's committee that the money from the coins would be used to set up a small monument where the U.S. flag had first been raised in the Gadsden Purchase.
O'Reilly told of a man who was about to be put off a Philadelphia streetcar, having only a commemorative half dollar to pay the fare, something not recognized by the conductor.
[13] Perkins's committee issued a report dated March 17, 1930, stating that the anniversary of the Gadsden Purchase was of international importance, and there was no risk to the Treasury given the willingness of Hoffecker to pay for the coins.
[20] Hoover's attitude was said to be informed by fundraising committees returning large amounts of several commemorative coin issues to the Mint for redemption and melting, something he considered wasteful.
Many of the bill's proponents came to the House floor to back the override, with the support of members from other parts of the country who sought commemorative coins.
[26] On April 26, The Washington Post published an editorial in favor of Hoover's action: It is to be hoped that the practice of minting special coins for occasions of this kind is definitely at an end ...
[29] By 1935, Roosevelt had warned Congress against issuing large numbers of commemoratives and repeated this in 1937, both times citing Hoover's veto of the Gadsden Purchase bill, and urging the issuance of medals instead.
In 1946, President Harry Truman signed the first authorizations for commemorative coins since 1937, but cited the Treasury's position and stated he would not look with favor on further issues.
