Comment by dleary
11 hours ago
> c) I've heard that the ratio between the cost of nails and the price of lettuce is still more or less the same as it was in the 1770s.
This feels like it can’t be correct.
Nails were expensive and difficult to obtain in the American colonies, so that abandoned houses were sometimes deliberately burned down to allow recovery of used nails from the ashes. This became such a problem in Virginia that a law was created to stop people from burning their houses when they moved. [0]
And nails were a significant expense in Thoreau’s cabin in _Walden_, c.a. 1850s
Maybe lettuce was a lot more expensive back then than I realize, though. I assume that produce is close to “free”, since you can grow it yourself.
Prior to the invention of refrigerated train cars, fresh lettuce wasn't available at any price in certain parts of the country outside of harvest season.
Great point, I wasn't thinking of that.
So, especially in the northern cities, maybe the lettuce:nails ratio held true.
That makes it feel like a trick question, though. I wonder what the situation looked like for hardy vegetables like potatoes, onions, corn, squash.