ounds. Beef then cost about 2/3 of a
cent a pound instead of 40 cents as in 1914. A sheep was sold in 1585
at $1.60, a large swine at $5, and pigs at 26 cents apiece. Pork cost
2 cents a pound; hens sold in England at 12 cents a piece and geese and
ducks for the same; at Wittenberg geese fetched only 6 cents in 1527.
Eggs might have been bought at 2 cents a dozen.

{466} [Sidenote: Groceries]

Wholesale prices of groceries, taken mostly from an English table drawn
up about 1580, were as follows: Oil was $140 the ton, or 55 cents a
gallon; train-oil was just half that price; Newfoundland fish cost then
$2.50 the quintal dry, as against $7.81 in 1913. Gascon wines (claret)
varied according to quality, from 16 cents to 24 cents a quart. Salt
fetched $7.50 a ton, which is very close to the price that it was in
1913 ($1.02 per bbl. of 280 lbs.). Soap was $13 the hundredweight.
Pepper and sugar cost nearly the same, about $70 the hundredweight, or
far higher than they were in 1919, when each cost $11 the
hundredweight. Spices also cost more in the sixteenth century than
they do now, and rose throughout the century. By 1580 the wholesale
price per hundredweight was $224 for cloves, the same for nutmegs, $150
for cinnamon, $300 for mace. Ginger was $90 the hundredweight, and
candles 6.6 cents the lb. as against 7.25 cents now.

[Sidenote: Drygoods]

Drygoods varied immensely in cost. Raw wool sold in England in 1510
for 4 cents per lb., as against 26 cents just four hundred years later.
Fine cloth sold at $65 "the piece," the length and breadth of which it
is unfortunately impossible to determine accurately. Different grades
came in different sizes, averaging a yard in width, but from 18 yards
to 47 yards in length, the finer coming in longer rolls. Sorting
cloths were $45 the piece. Linen cost 20 cents a yard in 1580; Mary,
Queen of Scots, five years later paid $6.50 the yard for purple velvet
and 28 cents the yard for buckram to line the same. The coarse clothes
of the poor were cheaper, a workman's suit in France costing $1.80 in
1600, a child's whole wardrobe $3.40, and a soldier's uniform $4.20.
The prices of the poorest women's dresses ranged from $3 to $6 each.
In 1520 Albert Duerer paid in the Netherlands 17 cents for one pair of
shoes, 33 cents for another and 20 cents for a {467} pair of woman's
gloves. A pair of spectacles cost him 22 cents, a pair of gloves for
himself 38 cents.

[Sidenote: Meta