Mint

The first properly equipped mint was proposed in 1887 in Canton by Chang Chih-tung, who tried to introduce a national currency. It was ready in 1890, the cost being about a million dollars. Within nine years it i ued three millions of dollar coins and forty-eight million dollars in subsidiary In 1895 Chang Chih-ttjng, transferred from pieces. the Two Kuang to the Hu Kuang viceroyalty, founded the Wuch'ang silver mint. In 1896 the Peiyang and Foochow mints were established; the latter has coined nothing but pieces of ten and twenty cents. At the end of 1898 there were. 388 besidets the above named, mints at Nanking, Hangchow, Anking, Mukden, Kirin and Ch'engtu. Others were projected but not established. The dollars coined have had only a provincial circulation; the mints have i ued an unlimited quantity of smaller pieces but have not succeeded in replacing the Mexican dollar by a national coin.