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In the early days, metal tokens were used for gambling. Low value chips were used mostly because of the value of the dollar then. Gambling supply catalogs pictured such items amongst their offerings.
The chips are generally larger than the corresponding U. S. coins, though the $1.00 one is exactly 1-1/2", the same as the modern commemorative coin dollars. The 10-cent one is 3/4" diameter, the 25-cent one 1-1/8," and the 50-cent one 1-1/4." All nice fractionals 100 years old!
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The Chicago Merchants Club was a predecessor club to The Commercial Club of Chicago. It was organized in Chicago in 1896. It merged with the Commercial Club in 1907. Its leaders included Charles G. Dawes, Frederic A. Delano, and Charles H. Wacker. It was responsible for commissioning Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago (1909), also known as Burnham's plan, which brought together some of the best architects and minds of the time to remodel and shape the layout of the city to make it as attractive and commercially successful as possible.
In 1906 Merchants Club Finance Committee Chairman Walter Wilson contacted banker Charles Dawes, urging him to solicit funds from other wealthy and civic-minded Chicagoans. Every one of the approximately fifty members of the Merchants Club was made a member of the Finance Committee and asked to solicit from others in support of the planning effort. Dawes was later Vice President of the United States and co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.. ... ... ... In 1906-07 Charles Norton was president of Chicago's Merchants' Club when he persuaded Daniel Hudson Burnham to undertake the three-year planning effort which resulted in the famous "Burnham Plan" (see: http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/191.html) even though the famous architect just had heard that he was ill, with three years to live (he lived six, Norton reported in an article in the 1922 history of the Merchants' Club, because he so enjoyed working on the plan!).
Robert
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