The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1907-03-09
"TRn GOOD OLD TIMES"


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Had you lived IN the fourteenth century you
could have bought drausht horses at y cents
each and oxen Ct SIS In the days Of Henry II
$50 would have equipped farm with three
draueht horses, half dozen oxen, twenty cows
ana two hundred sheep, leaving q balance Of 81
toward the payment Of rent, which was about s.
a year. In England pasture and arabic lands
were ridiculously cheap, cents an acre for the
former and II cents an acre for the latter being
considered fair annual rental. Two cents or
its equivalent would buy pair of chickens in
these blessed days of old. For the value of
nickel one could acquire goose ft for q Christ
mas dinner or two ducks that would make
fine roast. A penny would purchase dozen
strictly fresh eggs, and wheat sometimes fell as
low as 40 cents quarter, or eight bushels. This
period seems to have been the paradise of topers,
as the brewer was compelled by law 10 sell for 2
cents three gallons of beer, the equivalent of
forty eight glasses. 1t will give our modern
labor unions the cold shivers to read that 3cents
day was considered good wages for an ordinary
laborer. Our farmers will probably heave sigh
of sympathy when they learn that even at har-
vest time cents was the highest amount ex-
pected. Young couples about to marry had no
such terrors before their eyes as confront them
in this era of prosperity. Housekeeping might
safely be entered upon by the most timorous In
those good old days" House rent was 80 low
that the Lord Mayor of London paid only $3.50 a
year to his landlord.
The Chancellor of the British exchequer, the
man who does the work of our Secretary of the
Treasury, had an annual salary Of S1e2. When a
father sent his son to university cents day
was looked upon as q comfortable allowance,
with a margin for such luxuries as wine at to
IL cents gallon. A salary of $24 year was con-
sidered munincent. King Edward vi gave his
daughter an allowance Of $3.50 week, with an
additional $2l7.6O year for the maintenance Of
her eight servants. The bed that king then
slept on would now be summed by the humblest
farmer in the land. There is not renter in the
West that would not be considered rich by COM
parison. Remember, too, that they had no rail-
roads in those days, or decent roads of any kind.
A trip of few hundred miles was momentous
undertaking. and man setting out from Lon
don to Edinburg made his will with little hope
of getting back. OF course. there were no in
tertirbans, or street cars, or even canals, and
wheeled vehicles we're entirely out of the reach
of any but the aristocracy.
But it is not necessary to go back to the four
teenth century or to England to find out what
was meant by 1.-THE good old times" Come along
down to the nineteenth century and to our own
country and see how people lived much less than
hundred years ago. Many men now living re-
member when one had to work all day at the
hardest kind of work for one bushel OF wheat
Fifty cents in trade was what one got for begin
ming at daylight and grubbing or splitting rails
until the sinking sun reminded him to quit his
arduous task. Farm produce, when salable al
all, was absurdly low. There were no markets
only the neighborhood consumption, and, there
being little or no money, everything was barter
Eggs went begging at a cent or two dozen
poultry was but little better, stock of all kinds
at the very lowest ebb, and no farmer could hope
to make profit off any of his produce. Merely 9
living, as the result of days devoted to toll and
nights devoid of ease, was the best that could be
anticipated by millions of pioneer farmers ir
1.-THE good old days." Some sentiment still lin
gers about those times, we recall with interest
many of the romantic and tragic incidents, but
we hardly think any of our farmer readers would
care to be transported back, except in fancy, tt
the period which did not fully end until the las
| century was more than half over. 1.-THE goot
| old times" are well enough for the poets, the
| writers of historical novels and the ancien
danes who Groom in the corners of the blessed
| days of linsy woolsey dresses, jeans suits, cor
| duroy roads and open cabin doors. AS for our
| selves we prefer the present, despite its graf
and greed, its selfshness and its sordidness, TO
| at least it has replaced penury with plenty, de
| privations of all kinds with innumerable com
forts, and has changed agriculture from grovel
| ing calling to the noblest and most prosperou
of the professions.