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Delaware County, Iowa
History
History of Delaware County, Iowa and its People
History of Delaware County, Iowa and its People, Illustrated, Volume I. Captain John F. Merry Supervising Editor. The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1914 page 189-193 |
Chapter XXIV
Delaware County In The Early Days, cont:
EARLY MAIL
Our first mails were
carried mostly upon horseback and came once a week. The carriers did
not have as much mail as one of our rural carriers have now every
day. The route was from Dubuque to Elkader, about sixty miles. Daily
papers had not come into use among us, and there were but few
weeklies. One paper was passed around among the settlers and served
several families, as a matter of economy.
GAME PLENTIFUL
Wild game was very
plentiful. Bear, deer and elk were killed by the settlers and the
meat and hides sold at Dubuque. A bear skin brought $10. Quite a
number of bears were killed in Turkey Timber. Elk and deer were
about as plentiful as sheep. A deer skin brought 50 cents. Wild
turkeys were numerous, also prairie chickens, pheasants and quails
were in unlimited numbers. Our people were well provided with meat,
as wild game was so plentiful that it was had for the killing of it.
Wild bees were found in every tree that has a cavity in it
sufficient to hold a swarm. We were well supplied with honey from
the forests and with Maple molasses, which we made from male trees
that grew in our forest.
MONEY SCARCE
Money was a
scarce article. Deer skins, other hides and furs were a medium of
exchange. If a man had anything to sell he managed to exchange with
his neighbor at the price a fur buyer would pay for hides and furs
when he came in the spring. Notes were given and they were used in
the place of money. One of our neighbors had a yoke of oxen to sell.
He made the sale to another man, the payment being in notes and deer
skins. Among the notes was one for $5.00 that the man who sold the
oxen had given to another party, and when it came to accepting his
own paper he said, "Hold on; let me see the paper." After
scrutinizing it for a moment, he remarked, "O yes, that is a good
note. I can make something out of that." As the note had not been
mutilated or torn, he was perfectly willing to accept it,
considering only the value of the paper on which it was written. Had
the note been torn he would have raised the objection that he could
not pass it on account of being mutilated.
PRICES LOW ON FARM PRODUCTS
Prices of our produce were
very low. Corn was sold for 8 and 10 cents per bushel; oats about
the same; wheat sold for from 25 to 35 cents per bushel and some of
that wheat was hauled with ox teams over one hundred miles, to the
markets on the Mississippi River. Dressed pork brought from 1
to 1 1/2 cents per pound. Sheep brought 50 cents per head and the
young lambs were thrown in to make the bargain good. Labor was a
very cheap commodity -- from $5 to $8 per month was the scale -- and
in winter a man worked for his board. Cord wood was cut on the
bluffs of the river for 25 cents per cord and sold to the
steamboats. Cows sold for from $5 to $8 per head and other things in
about the same ratio.
BARTER AND EXCHANGE
Money was so scarce
that a goodly part of our business was barter and exchange. We were
almost destitute so far as money was concerned. Yet we had plenty of
the necessities of life at that time, for the demand upon society
was not to be compared with the present day. The first money that we
had, that amounted to anything like a surplus, was obtained upon the
return of the miners, who went to California in 1849 to 1850. About
twenty-five men went to the gold mines in the two years mentioned;
some remained and made their homes there. Several died of disease
and exposure, while others returned, but only three of them brought
any money. The amount that came into Colony Township was about
$30,000, which, when it came to be used in our community, started us
on the road to prosperity. The California emigration started a rise
in the price of cattle, bringing as high as $150 per yoke. Cows were
also yoked and driven across the plains to the Pacific coast.
The writer
remembers one nugget of pure gold, free from dross, quartz or any
foreign material, that was brought to the Town of Colesburg by
Horace Mallory; it weighed over 4 1/2 pounds and its value at the
Philadelphia mint was over twelve hundred dollars. The people named
the nugget Solomon's Moccasin Sole, it being shaped like the sole of
a round-toed shoe. As gold was given in California by the ounce in
exchange for miners' supplies, The Government coined at the San
Francisco mint a $50 gold piece, for the convenience of handling,
guaranteed to be so many ounces of fine gold of the value of $50.
This was not a Government coin, as it did not contain any alloy. It
was only guaranteed to be so many ounces. The piece was octagonal in
shape and was called by our people a "slug." Some of the slugs were
brought home by the miners.
FINANCIAL CRASH OF 1857 AND
WILD CAT MONEY
But alas! Our
prosperity, after flourishing a few years, came to a sudden halt.
The great financial crisis of 1857 stopped all progress. It seemed
the gold and silver had taken wings and flown away. Our country was
flooded with worthless paper currency, issued by private banks that
had sprung up like Jonah's gourd. All over the then western states
private banking, then not restricted by law, issued an unlimited
quantity of paper money. It was brought from the states of Michigan,
Wisconsin and Illinois, scattered over Iowa with no security behind
it and no law by which the quality parties could be punished. So
that, we found ourselves stranded and it was quite a task to get
hold of gold or silver to pay taxes, which had to be paid in coin of
the country. All articles of manufacture remained unsold.
Products of the soil were disposed of for less than nothing or were
not sold at all. All manner of business came to a standstill. Little
improvement was made within the state. It was about all a man could
do to make a living and hold on to what he had. Up until the
Government issued currency to carry on the war of the great
rebellion, prices remained very low. Just before the close of the
war of the great rebellion, prices remained very low. Just before
the close of the war, in 1864 and 1865, prices of everything went
skyward. Hogs sold as high as $17.35 per hundred, and cattle, horses
and sheep at about the same ratio. Common calico reached the
enormous price of 60 cents per yard; coffee, 65 cents per pound, and
sugar, three pounds for a dollar. Gold and silver were not in
circulation. The Government resumed specie payment in 1879; when
everything dropped to the lowest possible price; again our people
labored under adverse conditions for some six or seven years, or
until the silver coinage by the Sherman Act relived the situation.
In 1893 our
people went through another financial depression, which closed our
factories and stopped the consumption of our products. Until 1896
the same conditions continued; then prosperity reigned until the
present time, October, 1907. Now, again, we are going through
another similar condition and we cannot tell when there will be
another rally in prices. The writer predicts that the financial
crisis will rival the condition of 1857. I have followed the carious
conditions down to the present time, in order to show how regularly
they have occurred -- 1857, 1863, 1893, 1907. Four great financial
crises that have existed in the last fifty years! Is there no
remedy!
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~ source: History of Delaware County, Iowa and its People, Illustrated, Volume I. Captain John F. Merry Supervising Editor. The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1914, Chicago. Call Number 977.7385 H2m. Page 189-193. |