Among other signs of the degradation of the great free West, is to be numbered the damaging circumstance of thu advent of the copper coin, Old residents on the Pacific Slope remember when two bits" (25 cents) was the smallest piece in circulation. From this high estate the body politic fell rapidly to the use of the dime, as the minimum permissible value that a gentleman might handle. It was a sad day for the boot-blacks and hawkere and small tradesmen when the erst generous souls of the Californians shrank to such a point that they could allow themselves to use the base '"'nickel" (five cents) of the nig-hardly East. Yet it came in time, and till to-day has held its own as the smallest coin that a "broad-gauge people" would tolerate in trade. But within the lust year large orders have been placed for the penurious copper cent to be used in the cities of the Pacific coast. Millions' of them have now arrived or are on their way and are slowly trickling into circulation, bearing witness every one to the unprocedentedly hard times that have made so deplorable an expedient necessary.
i certain busi-sent for a considerable sum in these copper coins, to be used in making change for ita customers. This innocent act called forth a dignified editorial "protest and appeal" from the leading newspaper. It sot forth although the effete East and the poverty-stricken South had long since set the example in the matter, yot the citizens of Arizona were too broad-gauge (sic) people to descend to such contemptible and pettifogging meanness as this of counting pennies, Nevertheless, the knell of the nickel has sounded.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.