Consumers in the Bush by Douglas McCalla

Author:Douglas McCalla
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2015-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

STORIES ABOUT PRICES

In table 32 we summarize the prices of four principal local products. From the range of prices within individual samples we are able to tell at least four stories about prices in the rural economy. One, visible in prices for flour, a major provincial export, is the influence of international trends. In the pre-1861 cases for which there are prices, there was a difference of from $1.00 to $1.80 between the lowest and highest price per hundredweight during the course of twelve months. In each, the difference reflected general trends in the market – Upper Canadian wheat prices rose from 1808 to 1809 and from 1828 to 1829, fell during 1842 and into 1843, and rose sharply during 1854.49 A second, clearest in the prices for butter, is seasonality. In seven cases, butter prices varied by 2.5 cents per pound or more during the year. Except in 1854, when all prices surged during an inflationary boom, butter cost more in winter and early spring, then its price dropped in summer as local supplies increased. A third is that descriptions might cover distinct products. Whether that was true for butter (salted vs fresh) is not indicated in accounts. But for boards there are enough descriptive entries to show that distinct prices typically represented different products. Fourth, price differences could have represented variations in the quality of the product, visible to the buyer even if not explicitly recorded in the accounts.

Fresh pork and pickled pork were effectively distinct products, and (as the table indicates) pork was sold both by the barrel and by the pound. Converting the price of barrels of pork into a price per pound suggests that much of what was sold by the pound was also pickled. Thus, at Tett’s in 1842, a barrel cost $12; if it contained the standard 208 pounds, that was equal to just under 6 cents per pound, the low end of the price range per pound there. In later samples, pork in the barrel was worth from 7 cents to 8.5 cents per pound.50 It was common to slaughter hogs late in the year, which would have tended to make for seasonal fluctuations in pork supply. But there are few suggestions of a seasonal pattern for prices. A possible case is three pork purchases totalling over 500 pounds at Sherin’s in November 1861, all at 4 cents per pound, the lowest price in any sample. A more likely explanation, however, is that these transactions involved fresh pork.51

A striking feature of the prices in table 32 is their long-term consistency. There are outlying prices, but the ranges at different stores generally overlap. This is in part a function of the years of our samples, which avoid extremes, such as the mid-1830s, when wheat prices were very low, and the two highest peaks of the century, during the War of 1812 and in 1855–56.52 Still, the pattern contrasts with prices for imported goods, many of which, as we have seen in earlier chapters, cost substantially less in 1828–29 than in 1808–09.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.