The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1883-10-13
How We Lived Forty Years Ago.

To 90 back forty years, fully as USE
full a contrast and as instructive COM
parison may be made as to bring the
early settler from England, Holland
and France in opposition to their de-
scendants of two hundred years later
In 1S43 and for some period thence on
ward, money, as currency, was scarce.
Possibly general business suffered for
want of the medium of exchange.
Money, in bills or coin, had value
that would be looked upon now rs al
most a worshiping of fetch. Zone
dollar day was ga good days pay"
and so it was considered even for fairly
skillful labor Severed men, for in
stance, were employed in squaring, by
chalk-line and broad-ax, the round tim
bers to form the framing of a 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 quarter dollars per day from
sunup to shutdown" The man who
could "scribe," and who laid out the
job, got perhaps one dollar and fifty
cents. The machinist got from one dol
lar and fifty to two dollars per day; and
he who got the two dollars was for
tunate man; and for that time he was
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 of the
value of labor forty years ago
What was the relative value of housing,
fuel, food and clothing? Rents were
low. A good house for the times cost
from twenty-five to forty dollars per
year. Fuel-wood-wa somewhat 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, twenty-four dollars; now four
tons of coal (two tires,) about equal
Food cost less forty years ago than
now; but it was not the same food.
Fresh meat once or at most twice a
week, and rarely that except in 1.-The
killing season." fish caught at the
stream or pond, or hawked about at
four cents q pound dressed. Vegetables
from the garden or from the market at
twenty-five cents bushel for potatoes
and less prices for turnips. Onions al
most as dear as now, and cabbages 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 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 annoyances and lack of opportuni-
ties of his predecessor. A glance over
the condition of forty years ago and the
present condition will convince any I'M
prejudiced mind that an improvement
has been made in the condition of our
workers, and that the worker of to-day
gets better return for his labor than
he did forty years ago. And this state.
ment applies as nearly to the unskilled
worker as to the adept mechanic. Only
that the advantage now, as ever before
holds with the intelligent, skilled, ex.
periepced mechanic. -Scientifc Ameri
can.