United States House Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures

The Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures (established as the Committee on a Uniform System of Coinage, Weights, and Measures) was a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives from 1864 to 1946.

History

In 1864, the Committee on a Uniform System of Coinage, Weights, and Measures was established to relieve the House Committee on Ways and Means of part of its workload. The name was shortened to Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures in 1867. In 1921, the portion of the committee's jurisdiction relating to stabilization of the currency was transferred to the House Committee on Banking and Currency. Under the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, the coinage portion of its jurisdiction was also transferred to that committee, while its weights and measures jurisdiction was transferred to the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, thus dissolving the committee.

Jurisdiction

The jurisdiction of the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures included the subjects listed in its name: coinage, weights, and measures. The coinage part of the jurisdiction included the defining and fixing of standards of value and the regulation of coinage and exchange. This included the coinage of silver and the purchase of bullion, the exchange of gold coins for gold bars, the subject of mutilated coins, and the coinage of souvenir and commemorative coins. The committee's jurisdiction also included legislation related to mints and assay offices and the establishment of legal standards of value in the insular possessions.

Chairmen Representative Party State Congress(es) John A. Kasson Republican Iowa 38th–39th William D. Kelley Pennsylvania 40th David Heaton North Carolina 41st William D. Kelley Pennsylvania 41st–42nd Samuel Hooper Massachusetts 42nd–43rd Sherman Otis Houghton California 43rd Alexander H. Stephens Democratic Georgia 44th–46th Horatio Gates Fisher Republican Pennsylvania 47th Richard P. Bland Democratic Missouri 48th–50th Charles Preston Wickham Republican Ohio 51st Richard P. Bland Democratic Missouri 52nd–53rd Charles Warren Stone Republican Pennsylvania 54th–55th James H. Southard Ohio 56th–59th William B. McKinley Illinois 60th–61st Thomas W. Hardwick Democratic Georgia 62nd–63rd William A. Ashbrook Ohio 64th–65th Albert Henry Vestal Republican Indiana 66th–68th Randolph Perkins New Jersey 69th–71st Andrew Lawrence Somers Democratic New York 72nd–78th Compton I. White Idaho 79th

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