On the 20th anniversary of legislation authorizing the Susan B. Anthony dollar, the author takes a look at the circumstances surrounding its creation.

The Federal Reserve spent 48 million dollars for printing new currency in fiscal year 1976.  Of that 48 million dollars, 28 million dollars was spent to print nearly two billion dollar notes.  If all these dollar notes were replaced by coins, the Federal Reserve would realize savings of 28 million dollars in printing costs.

     The Treasury Department estimated that replacing the Eisenhower dollar with mini dollars would result in savings of $4.5 million.  Even greater savings would be achieved by replacing circulating dollar notes with the mini-dollar coin.  The Treasury Department compared the 15-year estimated service life of a dollar coin to the 18-month life span of a $1 note.  Replacing only 20 percent of the $2.4 billion worth of outstanding $1 notes with dollar coins would save yet another $4.8 million.  Mint Director Stella Hackel summed up other advantages:

A brochure circulated by the Treasury Department in 1979 promoted the new coin as the "dollar of the future" and listed some of its benefits to consumers, as well as retail and financial communities.

     Opposition to the mini coin came from the American Bankers' Association (ABA).  An ABA spokesman hit hard at the lack of definition in Administration policy, accusing the government of a "piece-meal approach to the nation's circulating coin and currency system."  The bankers believed "there [was] a lack of fundamental market research and a master plan for the future of the dollar."  The group also feared that the Treasury had no plans to promote the circulation of the new mini dollar and felt it was doomed to failure without an adequate public information campaign.  In support of their claim, they cited the failfure of the $2 bill.

There are certain long term business interests which must be considered in any coinage change.  Consumer substitution of dollar coins for dollar bills may work well on paper but not necessarily in practice.  Fiscal responsibility demands that the Mint carry out studies before it changes its coinage.

     Speakers for the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA) endorsed the new mini coin. NAMA gave strong testimony, stressing its importance for the convenience of millions of consumers

Representatives of the vending-machine industry endorsed the concept of a smaller dollar coin.  However, they failed to follow through by converting equipment to accomodate the new coin.

     Hindsight proved the bankers correct.  Despite Treasury Department hopes to reap large fiscal savings, the coin failed to catch on with the public.  Most Americans rejected the Anthony dollar because they confused it with the quarter.  In addition, NAMA never followed through on its commitment to a wide-scale conversion of vending machines to accomodate the new coin.
     Production of Susan B. Anthony dollars ceased in 1981 even though the law authorizing its mintage remained on the books.  In 1985 the United States Mint offered Susan B. Anthony dollar sets to collectors through the mail.   Ironically, the Anthony dollar became one of the most popular items in the Mint's catalog.

We have never had the face of a woman who actually lived, memorialized on a United States coin. [T]he choice of the mythical figure of "Miss Liberty" is not an appropriate figure to symbolize American womankind just as I don't think Uncle Sam and Father Time belong on United States coins to represent mankind.

     In her introduction of the Susan B. Anthony Bill, Oakar praised Anthony's lifelong dedication to the Women's Rights movement, attributing the passage of the 19th Amendment to her leadership.
     Several individuals and national groups with widely separate political viewpoints supported Oakar's position.  The bill garnered the support of the League of Women Voters, National Women's Political Caucus, Daughters of the American Revolution, Women's Lobby Incorporated, American Association for University Women, National Federation of Business, Professional Women's Clubs, and National Organization for Women (NOW).  Eleanor Smeal, president of NOW, argued that the "Miss Liberty" design would be a grievous error and could be interpreted only as a statement by the government that no American woman is worthy of such recognition.
     Representatives Patricia Schroeder, Gladys Moon Spellman and Millicent Fenwick also pushed for the legislation.  As Schroeder said, "We have had live eagles and live buffaloes on our coins, but never have we has a live woman."

In 1868 Women's Rights pioneers Susan B. Anthony (left) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (right), pictured together around 1900, published a newspaper that championed their cause.

     Despite the opposition, Oakar introduced the bill to the House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs.  At the same time, Senator William Proxmire (D-Wisconsin), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, sponsored a similar bill in the Senate.  Both houses of Congress successfully advocated the inclusion of Susan B. Anthony's portrait, and the Treasury Department and Mint bowed to the legislative mandate.  On August 22, 1978, the Senate passed the bill providing for the striking of a new, reduced size dollar coin carrying the image of the 19th-century suffragist Susan B. Anthony on the obverse.  The reverse would bear the Eisenhower dollar's Apollo 11 motif.  Not a single Senator dissented.   On September 26, 1978, the House of Representatives approved by a vote of 368 to 38.

Anthony . . . carefully, wittily, and sometimes painfully laid the groundwork for virtually every right we [have as women today.  She] not only helped create the first women's movement in this country, she led it, brilliantly, for more than fifty years.  Indeed, it was her tireless dedication to The Cause - the drive for the most crucial political right of all, the vote - and her astounding skill at organization that not only changed laws and attitudes, but also helped introduce the entire realm of equal rights to a very reluctant nation.

     Anthony branded herself a "radical egalitarian," insisting that "no human being was superior to or inferior to any other."   This belief in the equality of all human beings underscored both her public and private life and served as the guiding force in all of her relationships and her work.   She used this principle in deciding campaign strategies and dealing with confrontations.  Anthony also used this "radical egalitarianism" to justify her status as a single woman:

When I am crowned with all the rights, privileges, and immunities of a citizen, I may give some consideration to this social institution; but until then I must concentrate all of my energies on the enfranchisement of my own sex.

     Anthony began her career as a schoolteacher, and her democratic and progressive views on education again reflected her radical egalitarianism.   She also showed a strong commitment to public education.  In an 1862 letter to longtime friend and fellow women's rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she wrote:

Any and every private education is a blunder, it seems to me.  I believe those persons stronger and nobler who have from childhood breasted the commonalty.  If children have not the innate strength to resist evil, keeping them apart from what they must inevitably one day meet, only increases their incompetency.

     Keenly aware of the lack of educational opportunities available to women, Anthony dedicated many years to the fight for coeducation.  Says Sherr, "At a time when separate schools for female students were catching on, she remained a relentless advocate of coeducation."  She delivered several speeches arguing for the sexes to be educated together.  In 1856 Anthony explained her belief that

[b]oth sexes eat, sleep, hate, love and desire alike.  Everything which relates to the operations of the mind is common to both sexes. . . . If they are allowed to attend picnics together, and balls, and dancing schools, and the opera, it certainly will not injure them to use chalk at the same blackboard.

     She soon realized, however, that teaching did not leave her enough time to work for social reform.  By 1848 she had abandoned her career and plunged herself into a life dedicated to social reform.  Although her chief concern centered on women's rights, she also fought for temperance and the abolition of slavery.   A few years before the Civil War, she offered her views on the institution:

     What bothered Anthony most about drinking was the abusive effect alcoholic husbands had on the lives of their wives and children.  She believed that her work in the temperance movement turned her into a feminist.
     She joined the Daughters of Temperance Society, and while traveling arounf the country to raise money for the temperance movement, she discovered that married women had no money to contribute to the cause.  Even if they did hold a job, their husbands controlled the family finances.  From this, Anthony realized that women's rights went way beyond economic freedom.  In an 1885 interview for the New York Mail and Express, she told of her experiences:

     Anthony also embarked on a campaign to change the laws concerning ownership of property by women.  First she arranged a series of regional conventions in New York.  From there, she organized petition campaigns designed to change the property laws for married women in that state.  She and her co-workers started a door-to-door campaign.  Braving the vicious winter weather of upstate New York, they collected more than 6,000 signatures in a 10-week period.  In 1860, after five years of petition drives, state canvasses and legislative hearings, New York passed a law allowing married women to own separate property, to carry on business in their own names, to enter into contracts, to sue and be sued, and to be the joint guardian of their children.
     In May 1860, Susan B. Anthony opened the Tenth National Women's Rights Convention in New York City with an invigorating speech that infused the movement with new energy and spirit:

     Always witty and spunky in speaking out for the rights of married women, Anthony was challenged by renowned abolitionist Reverend A.D. Mayo of Rochester, New York.  When Mayo accused her of being single and thus having no business discussing married women's rights, Anthony quipped, "Well, Mr. Mayo, you are not a slave, suppose suppose you quit lecturing on slarery."
     In January 1868, Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton published a newspaper, The Revolution, championing the cause of women's rights.  The newspaper became an instant success.  Sherr describes how Anthony's personality was well-suited for the task:

     In the 1872 presidential election, Anthony doggedly lobbied both parties to include "a plank in your platform that shall assert the duty of the National Government to protect women citizens in the exercise of their right to vote; & thereby make it possible for women possessed of true self-respect to advocate the claims of [your] party to the suffrages of the people."
     When both parties refused to address the suffrage issue, an infuriated Anthony took matters into her own hands.  She, along with her three sisters, walked into a Rochester polling place and voted in the presidential election.   Two weeks later, she was arrested at her home.  Justice Ward Hunt presided over her tial in a New York court.  The judge made a mockery of the entire trial, forbidding Anthony to testify in her own defense, denying the jury the opportunity to retire and weigh the evidence, and instructing the all-male jury to return a guilty verdict.  At the completion of the trial, Hunt imposed a $100 fine and asked if she had anything to say to the court.  In her lengthy response, she stated:

     By 1882 Anthony's movement had its own committee working in the Senate and in 1890 its own committee room.   As she happily remarked, "Oh, we are getting along, but it takes a long time to educate public opinion in a matter like this."  This was no exaggeration on her part.  Her tireless devotion to the cause can be seen in a diary entry made at the age of 78:

I have delivered 75 to 100 speeches a year for forty-five years, not counting thirty years of addresses to Congress and the New York State Legislature.  I spoke in churches, parlors, town halls, opera houses, and vaulted state capitals; in Colorado I climbed atop a billiard table for one lecture and a dry goods box on the courthouse steps for another.  I addressed farmers in Kansas, students in New York, townfolk in Iowa, others in Missouri.  I spoke against a background of crying babies, raging thunderstorms and welcoming applause.

     As the years passed, Anthony became a charismatic leader, earning for herself the nickname "Napoleon of women's rights."  Her total commitment to the women's movement, her strong principle of "radical egalitarianism," and her personal strength and boundless energy motivated those with whom she came into contact.
     She helped women see themselves as individuals as well as understand their collective tie to the larger group of women.  Susan B. Anthony served as the catalyst of this new identity.  A reporter for the Cincinnati Gazette summed up her importance to the women's movement shortly after the Civil War:

The paramount reason why Susan B. Anthony should be the Apostle of the Women's Rights cause is that she has never surrendered to man her independence, nor annihilated her personality by marriage, nor promised to honor and obey a male master.

     Although Anthony did not live to see the 19th Amendment, she never questioned that it would become a reality.  At the 1906 meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association - her last speech before the public - she put forth this inspiring prophecy:

There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause - I wish I could name every one - but with such women consecrating their lives, failure is impossible!

[Susan B. Anthony] dealt not only with the vote, but with most of the same issues confronting modern women - domestic violence, . . . the value of female friendship, the victimization of prostitutes, the battle for equal pay.

     Although the Susan B. Anthony coin never achieved the popularity its creators hoped for, it remains a symbol of bold aspirations and high ideals.  Not everything in our society can be measured in terms of economic gain.   The Anthony dollar demonstrated that a country can respond not only to economic influences, but also to political, historical and social influences.  The Susan B. Anthony coin celebrates the commitment to "liberty and justice for all" that has become the ha;;mark of our country.

Barry, Kathleen.   Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist.  New York: New York University Press, 1988.

Ganz, David L. "Anthony Accorded Little Recognition." Coin World (May 10, 1978).

_____. "Anthony Coins Struck." Coin World (December 27, 1978)

_____. "Anthony Design Snowball Growing as Congress Considers Mini-Dollar." Coin World (August 2, 1978)

_____. "Anthony Dollar to Sport 'P' Mintmark." Coin World (December 27, 1978)

_____. "Bankers Censure Government Policy on Coins, Currency." Coin World (June 14, 1978)

_____. "Full Senate Passes Mini-Dollar Bill." Coin World (September 6, 1978)

_____. "Liberty 'Si,' Anthony 'No!' Say Readers." Coin World (July 12, 1978)

_____. "Way Clears for Anthony Dollar." Coin World (October 4, 1978)

_____. "Witnesses Testify of Proposed Mini Buck." Coin World (May 31, 1978)

Sherr, Lynn. Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words. New York: Times Books, Random House, 1995.

Jillian Leifer is a college student from Wayland, Massachusetts.  This article is based on "The Susan B. Anthony Dollar," her 1997 submission to the Professional Coin Grading Service (PCGS) essay contest.

Reprinted from THE NUMISMATIST, official publication of the American Numismatic Association, 818 N. Cascade Ave., Colorado Springs, CO 80903-3279, telephone 800-367-9723, fax 719-634-4085, E-mail ana@money.org, http://www.money.org.