The suggestions made at that time were just like others made at other periods; they were in the nature of broad generalizations, and proposals were neither consistent with the existing state of affairs nor practicable. Hu Chu-fen, then Mayor of Peking, suggested in 1895 the introduction of a uniform coinage in three metals, gold, silver and copper, and the establishment of a bank of issue under the control of the Board of Revenue, which was to have branch banks in the provinces. The censor named Wang Pen-yuan proposed the immediate coinage of silver to relieve the market stringency caused by the scarcity of copper cash in about 1895.* The question of establishing the central mint came to naught, the only result of the proposal being the establishment of several provincial mints. There were numerous proposals of this kind -none of which revealed a thorough under-standing of the subject.