The Morgan Dollar PART III

WITH MORGAN and Barber working at top speed, Barber was able to report on March 23 that the new hub would be ready within the next few days and that working dies as early as April 11. Morgan, however, reported on the 25th that the hub was actually finished on that date and working dies would be ready from it on about April 2. Although neither man indicated which hub was being worked on, it is likely that Morgan was speaking of the reverse and Barber the obverse. (At the same time that Morgan reported on the progress of the reverse hub, he also notified Linderman that this new hub would be used to reimpress the altered design onto about 50 of the old reverse dies then on hand.)

In the meantime, the engraving department had been experimenting with methods to prolong the life of the dies still on hand from the first design, especially the reverses. There exists a March 23 letter from Barber in which he speaks of “efforts of ingenuity” in achieving this end. The details are not spelled out, but the suggestion in the VAM reference work that improvements in the basining process had been put into use is probably correct.

In order to impress the revised (second) design into the reverse dies of the old (first) design which had not already been used in