From other sources we learn that, if you kept house, you had to pay
fifty cents per pound for potatoes,--one might weigh a pound. Apples
were sold at fifty cents a piece, dried apples at seventy-five cents a
pound. Fresh beef cost fifty cents a pound, milk was a dollar a quart,
hens brought six dollars a piece, eggs nine dollars a dozen, and
butter brought down from Oregon, was sold at the rate of two dollars
and fifty cents per pound. Flour was in demand at fifty dollars a
barrel, and a basket of greens would readily bring eight dollars. A
cow cost two hundred dollars. A tin coffee pot was worth five dollars,
and a small cooking stove was valued at one hundred dollars. A cook
commanded three hundred dollars a month, a clerk two hundred dollars a
month, and a carpenter received twelve dollars a day. Lumber sold for
four hundred dollars per thousand feet, and for a small dwelling house
you had to pay a rental of five hundred dollars per month. It must be
remembered that people were pouring into San Francisco from all parts
of the world in search of gold, that there were few if any persons to
till the ground, and that many of the articles in demand for life's
necessities were brought either across the Isthmus of Panama or around
by Cape Horn.
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