Executive Order 6102

In an attempt to address the causes and effects of the Great Depression, Executive Order 6102 was signed on April 5, 1933 by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It prohibited the "hoarding" of privately held gold coins and bullion in the United States. The Order was given under the auspices of the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, as recently amended. The government required holders of significant quantities of gold to sell their gold at the prevailing price of $20.67 per ounce. Shortly after this forced sale, the price of gold from the treasury for international transactions was raised to $35 an ounce. The U.S. government thereby devalued the dollars (which it had just forced citizens to accept in exchange for their gold) by 41% of its former value.

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The order specifically exempted "customary use in industry, profession or art"--a provision that covered artists, jewelers, dentists, and electricians among others. The order further permitted any person to own up to $100 in gold coins (equivalent to about $1,550 as of 2006).

Section 9 of the Order noted the punishment for failure to comply could include a fine of up to $10,000 or up to ten years in prison. Nevertheless, anecdotal accounts later related that many persons who possessed large amounts of gold simply ignored the order and hid their gold until the Order ceased to be in effect.

The government held the $35 per ounce price until August 15, 1971 when President Richard Nixon announced that the United States would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value, thus abandoning the gold standard.

On the evening August 15, 1971 in New Orleans, Louisiana, James U. Blanchard, III and Evan R. Soule', Jr. founded the National Committee to Legalize Gold (NCLG) in response to President Nixon's announcement that the United States was abandoning the gold standard. Over the next several years, the NCLG waged a national campaign to enable American citizens to again own gold in any form. The campaign included repeated national mailings and regional press conferences in which the U.S. Treasury Department was challenged to act when an illegal bar of gold bullion was displayed to the newsmedia. The NCLG hired a 1926 Steerman bi-plane to continuously fly over Washington, D.C. during Nixon's Inauguration in January 1973 with a banner that read "LEGALIZE GOLD" -- an action which received national publicity. In New Orleans in February 1974, the NCLG held the largest (up to that time) privately-sponsored monetary symposium entitled "Investing Towards Freedom". That symposium further galvanized actions in support of proposed Congressional legislation to legalize private ownership of gold in any form. Several decades later, derivatives of that first symposium continue every Fall in New Orleans.

The limitation on gold ownership in the U.S. was repealed after President Gerald Ford signed a bill legalizing private ownership of gold coins, bars and certificates by an act of Congress codified in Pub.L. 93-373 [1] [2] which went into effect December 31, 1974. P.L. 93-373 does not repeal the Gold Clause Resolution of 1933, which makes unlawful any contracts which specify payment in a fixed amount of money or a fixed amount of gold. That is, contracts are unenforceable if they use gold monetarily rather than as a commodity of trade.

See also

• Gold Reserve Act
• Gold standard