News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1883-10-11
A LESSON IN LIVING.
A CHAPTER ON THE CUSTOMS OF
OLDEN TIMES
How We Lived Forty Years Ago, with ,
Slight Reference TO How We Live Now.

| How We Lived Forty Years Ago With ,
| Slight Reference TO How We Live Now.
To go back forty years, fully as usefu
contrast and as instructive a compare
son may be made as to bring the early
settler from England, Holland, anG
| France in opposition to their descend.
ants of two hundred years later. In
| 1913 and for some period thence onward
money, as currency, was scarce. Pos.
sibly general business suffered for want
Of the medium of exchange. Money, in
bills or coin, had value that would be
looked upon now as almost O. worshiping
of fetich. Zone dollar a day" was a
good day pay, " and so it twas considered
even for fairly skillful labor. Several
men, for instance, We're employed in
squaring, by chalk line and broad AK,
the round timbers to form the framing
OF dam. Others bored the holes for
mortises and chiseled them out. Others
did the ''scribing," the saving, and
dressing of the lemons. Few of them
got over one and a quarter dollars per
day ''from sunup to sundown." " The
man who could ''scribe, and who laid
out the job, got perhaps one dollar and
fifty cents. The machinist got from one
dollar and fifty to two dollars per day !:
and he who got the two dollars was a
fortunate man; and for that time he was
a competent man. Laborers had fifty
cents per day, and in haying time, when
several days ordinary work must be
crowded into twelve, fourteen, or possibly
sixteen hours, they got seventy-five
cents. Special wOrkmen. apt at any
jobs, one dollar.
Now this is fair showing ofthe value
of the labor forty years ago. What was
the relative value of housing, fuel, food,
and clothing? Rents very low. A good
house for the times costs from S25 to
$40 per year. Fuel-wood-wa some
what less than it can be furnished, as
coal now, at any place remote from the
mines; say for an ordinary family six
cords of hickory, $24; now four tons of
coal (two tires), about equal. Food cost
lest forty years ago than now; but it was
not the same food. Fresh meat once,
or at most twice, week, and rarely that
except in ''the killing season." fish
caught at the stream or pond, or hawked
about at four cents a pound dressed.
Vegetables from the garden, or from the
market at twenty-five cents a bushel for
potatoes and less prices for turnips.
Onions almost as dear as now, and cab
bages no cheaper. Clothing can be
bought cheaper now than it could be
forty years ago, and it is cheaper in
more than one sense. Perhaps it would
be better for the country at large if
better clothing at higher prices should
be the rule.
1t is scarcely necessary, says the
Scientific American, to add to chow we
lived forty years ago" any statement of
how we live or how we might live now.
1t is enough to the present Garner of his
bread by labor to know of the annoyance
and lack of opportunities to his prede-
cessor. A glance over the condition of
forty years ago and the present condition
will convince any unprejudiced mind
that an improvement has been made in
the condition of our workers, and that
the worker of to-day gets a better re-
turn for his labor than he did forty years
ago And this statement applies as
nearly to the unskilled worker as to the
adept mechanic. Only that the advan-
tage now, as ever before, holds with the
skilled, experienced me-
chanic.