(Look Back with Bob Enoch - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

DAY BOOK OF 1822 – Relic of Good Old Days When Butter Was Six Cents Per Pound – And Eggs 4 Cents a Dozen – One Nutmeg, However, Cost You Ten Cents.

The State Journal reporter had the privilege recently to inspect a relic of old times, doubly interesting in these days of a not-far-off Centennial. It was an old daybook used in a “general store,” operated in the dim and distant days of 1822. Its pages furnished a revelation as to the prices which were current then. The daybook is that kept in those days by Daniel Kilgore & Co., at Cadiz, O.

It is noticeable that things that are high in price now [this was written in 1910], were low then, and vice-versa.

The first item in the book is: “Four pounds of butter, 25 cents!

Think of it, you who are now paying that much and more for a single pound – and have been paying for it for so long you’ve almost forgotten when you began! The next item is scarcely less startling:

“Three dozen eggs, 12 1/2c!” A short while back we were paying three times that for one dozen. Now they are 24 or 25 cents [per dozen].

The next item shows the other side of the picture – “One yard of calico, 44c.” Now calico is only a few cents a yard. The discrepancy is as great, but the advantage is with us of the Twentieth century this time.

Back swings the pendulum with the next entry – “one pound of lard, 4c!” Where can you get lard at that figure now? Don’t all answer at once.

“100 cigars, 25c.” How’s that smokers? Golden days, truly, were they not? Even stogies are no longer three for a nickel, with us, and the one-cent smoke was never smokeable. But – four for a cent! And cigars, at that!

Five bushels of oats were sold for 94 cents – less than 19 cents a bushel is pretty cheap, but what do you say to 12 bushels of wheat for $4.80! You farmers, who [today] talk about dollar wheat, what have you to say to the 40c variety, as it sold in the good old days of 1822?

Next – ladies, it’s your turn now – there is recorded the sale of a straw bonnet for $2.50. It is difficult to draw a comparison in this case as straw bonnets vary. Intrinsic value has ever had little to do with the selling price of millinery. Probably, this article was as dear at that price as are any of the expensive monstrosities of today.

Loaf sugar was quoted at 25 cents a pound. Here again, we of the present day, have the bulge on our forefathers. Loaf sugar has vanished into the limbo of things obsolete. It must have been an expensive process that produced it.

“Fourteen pounds of bacon, 87c!” is the next entry. A little less than six cents a pound – pretty cheap! We lose there, but catch up to a certain degree on the next item – “One nutmeg, 10c.”

Last, but not least, anyway you take it, is this entry: “Whiskey, one gallon, 25c.” Isn’t that calculated to “jar” the drinking man of the present age? A gallon of good whiskey for the price of a half-pint of modern “forty-rod!” No wonder prohibition, as a national issue, had not been heard of!

Our ancestors had to pay for their milder drinks, however, especially coffee, to judge by the last item: “One pound coffee, 37 ½ c!”

It is noticeable, in running over the entries, that the things that have fallen in price since 1822, are the things we import or manufacture, and that the things that have risen in price since the same date nearly a hundred years ago – are the things the farmer raises.

The Parkersburg Daily State Journal,

July 16, 1910

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Bob Enoch is president of the Wood County Historical and Preservation Society. If you have comments or questions about Look Back items, please contact him at: roberteenoch@gmail.com, or by mail at WCHPS, PO Box 565, Parkersburg, WV 26102.