Radio Script #898

Little Talks on Common Things
September 12, 1971

This broadcast marks the beginning of the 24th consecutive year of Little Talks on Common Things, and this is the 898th broadcast. Two weeks from today the 900th broadcast will go on the air. By this time we can safely say that Little Talks is the oldest continuous radio program in the United States that has never changed sponsor. I am sure that there are still going programs that started before this one, but they have changed sponsors.

From the beginning Little Talks has been sponsored as a public service by the Keyes Fibre Company.

Since the first broadcast of Little Talks in the fall of 1948, this program has put more than 1,600, 000 words on the air. They haven’t been very important words. They have discussed no topics of world crisis; they didn’t follow our astronauts to the moon; they have avoided the pros and cons of Vietnam. They have been non-partisan in politics, undenominational in

The broadcasts have been, and as long as they last will continue to be, concerned with the social history of Maine, especially of the Kennebec Valley. By social history, we mean the way people of former times in this region lived, earned their livings, met changing conditions, and how some of them made names for themselves. Of course we have paid attention to leaders, the men and women of fame who made their homes in Maine, but we have been much more concerned about the common people, many or them unnamed.

As we begin this 24th year, I want to tell you about an account book kept a hundred years ago in our neighboring town of Unity. I do not know the name of the man who wrote the items in this old trading journal, but I do know, as you will in a few minutes, something about his business and the way he dealt with folks.

How do these old account books come into my hands? In various ways, by loan or gift, out of old homes and attics, even out of barn haymows. This one was bought at an auction last summer for 25 cents and was given to me by the buyer. About its origin there is no clue. I only know it was owned in the family of Kenneth Tozier.

The people of this book evidently had a general store. The accounts began on January 15, 1870, when he charged to Rufus Reynolds five pounds of salt pork, 1/2 bushel of meal and 1/2 pound of candles. Others who were his customers were Leroy Harding, Isaac Bonney, Samuel Ricker, Alfred Hodgkins, and Ambrose Sayward.

Like all such accounts, this book reveals prices of a hundred years ago. How we should like to see some of the meat prices return – roast beef 9 cents a pound, round steak 11 cents, mutton 15 cents, and smoked ham 5 cents. You could then get fresh haddock for 4 cents a pound, halibut for 8 cents, smoked herring for a cent apiece. The price of salt fish was not much different from what we sold it for in the Bridgton store 40 years later in 1910. Salt pollock was then 6 cents and salt cod 8 cents. Forty years earlier, over in Unity, pollock was 5 cents and cod 6 cents. Those round crackers, now called Boston crackers, and in my boyhood called common crackers, were in 1870, still being sold by the dozen just as they had been in James Stackpole’s Waterville store in 1800. In January 1870, before hens had started their more lavish spring, laying eggs were 20 cents a dozen but by April they were down to a cent a piece. Butter was 18 cents a pound, and cheese was 20 cents.

I was surprised to note that this merchant sold dry beans by the pound. In 1910, we were selling them by the quart, although not measured like green beans and peas. In 1910 beans were one of the few such commodities that were weighed for their measure just as green vegetables are today. A quart of dry beans weighed a pound and fourteen ounces. In 1910 we knew that a peck of potatoes was supposed to weigh 15 pounds, but we never weighed a peck for sale in the store. We used a peck measure.

This matter of handling dry measure by the old wooden measures from a quart to a half a bushel and its change to selling such things by weight has differed not only in time, but in different parts of the country. In Maine, in 1971, we still buy oranges by the dozen, or at least by count, for few of us can afford a whole dozen at one time. In California, where oranges are raised, they are sold to the stores by weight. Bananas, however, nowhere go by the dozen, even in Maine.

Of course, the old Unity store sold dry goods. Cambric was 12 cents a yard, colored print 10 cents, red flannel 40 cents. As for ready-made clothes, a man’s suit could be bought for $1 and a hat for $1.00. In summer one could get a straw hat for 25 cents. A pair of long, cotton stockings cost 20 cents.

Our Unity merchant sold a lot of boots and shoes. His most expensive item in that line was a pair of calf boots for $5. His best kid boots, high button style, for women were $4.75. Ladies could, however, get low shoes for $1.40 and a better pair for $2.15. Boys’ shoes were $1.35 and girls’, $1.25. A pair of calf slippers cost $1.10. What the merchant called thick boots for men were $4.50 and serge boots were $2.75. A pair of rubbers cost $1.12.

Of course the old stores sold crockery and earthenware. Ninety cents would buy 1/2 dozen cups and saucers; plain but servicable dinner plates were 18 cents each, and a platter big enough to hold a turkey could be bought for a dollar. You could get a chamber pot for a quarter, but if you wanted a decorated one with a cover you had to pay fifty cents.

Silk handkerchiefs that were real big came at a dollar each in 1800, were not in so much demand 70 years later when these accounts were kept. But the Unity merchant sold many cotton handkerchiefs for ten cents with a few special ones at fifteen cents. In 1870 men wore celluloid collars, and half a dozen cost 25 cents. Thread was sold by the hank at five cents. That Unity farmers then raised wool is shown by the merchant’s sale of sheep wool at a dollar a box. Nails, all sizes, were five cents a pound, lime 17 cents, shot 6 cents, and beef tallow for candles 13 cents. One good old patent medicine was available as long ago as 1870. Johnson’s liniment at 30 cents a bottle.

Not every laborer was getting as much as a dollar a day. In August 1870, this Unity merchant credited Hezekiah Hart with three days work at 77¢ a day. How he arrived at that odd rate of 77¢ is a mystery. The rate of 75¢ or 3/4 of a dollar,was common but why were the extra two cents tagged on?

While Johnson’s liniment was identified by name, that was not true of other remedies. One 25¢ remedy was called simply pain killer. One other was however given a name, Allen’s Balsam at a dollar a bottle.

How many of you remember the old sulphur matches made at the turn of the century by the Portland Star Match Co.? They came in a l0ng, paper-wrapped package called 1/8 of a gross, and in 1910, we sold the package for 8 cents. Inside the package were 18 tissue wrapped packages each containing four cards of the old sulphur matches. The safe match has to be detached from the card of about ten matches. A gross of matches was 12 dozen, or 144, of those four-card tissue wrapped packages, each with 40 matches, so that a full gross was 5,760 individual matches. That conveniently sold 1/8 gross package had 720 matches. Eight cents for that 1/8 gross meant 90 matches for one cent. In 1870 a package held not 1/8 but 1/4 of a gross, or 1,440 matches, and they cost much more than they did 40 years later in 1910. The Unity merchant’s price of 1/4 gross was 60 cents.

Kerosene lamps had come into use by 1870. A lamp burner cost 20 cents, to a chimney 10 cents, and a wick one cent. Kerosene fuel the lamp was expensive compared to its later price. In 1870, it cost 40 cents a gallon.

As for a number of miscellaneous articles in that Unity store, you could buy a pair of shears for 75 cents, a fine comb for 15 cents, a pound of yellow ochre for five cents, and a basket for a quarter.

To give you some idea of the larger purchases, note what Watson Blaisdell bought on a February day in 1870, 6 gal. molasses, 1/2 gal. kerosene, 1 lb. tea, 1/4 lb. cream tartar, 1 bu. meal, 1-1/2 lb. lime, 2 hanks thread, 2 skeins silk, 1 yd. waterproof, a paper of needles, 1/2 fig tobacco, and a package of snuff.

Candles were sold by weight, 20 cents a pound. As for tools, a good axe cost $1.75, and its handle 50 cents; a buck saw was $1.50, a shovel $1.25.

Our Unity man sold a lot of what he called Bread Preparation at 25 cents a package. It must have been more than the hard cakes of concentrated yeast, for they cost much less. But I confess I never heard of it. Does any listener know what that 1870 Bread Preparation was?

Flour was something that constantly fluctuated in price, even a hundred years ago during 1870 our Unity merchant sold St. Louis flour at prices ranging from $5.60 to $6.50 a barrel. The better bread flours rose during that year to $8.50.

Those Unity accounts make plenty of mention of powder and fuse for blasting, but no mention of dynamite. That general store even sold furniture: a bedstead for $5, a rocking chair for $2.75, and kitchen chairs for 75 cents. A pretty good table could be bought for $2.50.

Those old-time dealers even put out some articles on loan. In October this account carried the item:  ” A. B. Merrick, to one flour barrel lent last August 30 cents.” Like most merchants of the time, this one also loaned money. Few country villages had a bank in those days, and the man who kept the general store was frequently the village banker. So we read in his account book: “William Rolf, to cash lent $4.60. The merchant also accepted goods to be sold on commission or to be returned if unsold after a specified time. “W-;-tt; Cates, 3 cultivators left on sale, for which I am to pay him $12 each and sell for $13 each, and return to him any not sold after one year.”

How would you like to go to a store tomorrow and buy what William Foster did in 1870 and at the prices he paid? This is what Foster got: 6 lbs. beef steak, $1.00, a bushel of wheat, $1.50, a gal. cider, 40 cents, 5 lbs. mutton, 50 cents, a dozen plates, $1.75, a barrel of flour, $5.00, 4 lbs. salt pollock, 20¢, 5 yds. alpaca 50 cents, a pair child’s shoes 50 cents, a tin dish 12 cents, and a bottle of sweet oil, 17¢.

In May and June the dealer had a run on valourhats at 35 cents. Among other things he sold during those months were ticking for pockets, a looking glass, a butcher knife, a coil of rope, a box of store polish and a shirt bosom.

They were something besides rendezvous for gossip and checker players, those old country stores. They supplied the needs of a thrifty, industrious people. And with that we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1971