How People Used To Live

The Department of Agric-ulture is aliout to publish au Interèstlng report eomparing the oost of living earlu in this eentury witn what it is now, saya the Washington Star. It exhibits vlvidly the contrast between tlie powrty of primitive agricultura amd ie progress ta civilization iind wealtth resulting from high tlevelopmont of all the possrbiüties of bind and labor in rural and industrial arts and industries. The email wages paM im those üays are as surprising as the prfces of coinmodities of all sorts. Game Tvae abundant early in the eentury and therefore cheap. Venison cost only three and one-eighth cents a pound. Bear meat was sliglitly higher. Pigons were in extraordmary abundance, selling at little more tlian a cent apiece. Elderly readers will romember the flights of floiks of pigeons which darkened the skies even as late as iifty years ago. gbad were yery cheap, costing only four cents eacü. uwing iu me plentiful supply of game, tanncfl skins w-ere low in prlce. A deerskin fetehed atout $17 wtoole, a bearskin was worth from i?l to $2. Jlilk sold for two cents a quart, and Imtter for thirtecn cents a pound. Appli-s were from twelvL' nd a-hal!' to twonty-five cents a bushel, but by 1S23 they had reaehed fifty cents. . Favm wagea iwene only about onethii-d of what tlwy are now, rangimg from tnirty-three cents to fifty cents a day. From $4 to $3 a montli was the usual eompensation of wllgrown lacls. One hundred years ago the remuneration for a boy for doins "chores," such as cntting wood and foddering hoi-ses, for one year, was ordinarily $5. The use of a pair of oxen for a day cost twenty-five cenfcí, whüe the uee oí a cow for one year cost í?3. It cost sixty cents to make a pair of shoes. Th price of a pair of moecaeliia was twEnty-s?ven cents. Board was only $1 a week. That was the day of individual and isolated effort ant-edating tlie era of aggregatie] in fa-itories, clasBlfieat'.on aml división of labor Baving pro-esses and appliaiiíes. Prices of farm productB flnctuated greatly, aceordlng to local scarcity, which could not he rnitigated by distribution from regions of plenty. If there wviv Mg crops, tbey could not be sold ; if partial allures, tlliiere was almost nothing to eell. Every losality in its industries and producís existed for and hy itsolf, inwillig 110 relation with other oommunities ; therefore, tlie surplus produ - tion of e&;h farm was Kinall, the inducement to produce beiag wanting asnd there was vry little money to ïrchaso anytliing more than the bare iiecessaries. The industrious iamily had an abundance of everything it could grow, eructo clothing as the loom of the housshold could produce, such furniture as could be made on the platee or in the neighborhood, and little else.