Starvation Prices in Richmond

From the Richmond Examiner, May 2.

With the removal of General Winder’s tariff, the prices of country produce and fish flew back with a recoil in proportion to the heavy pressure which had been removed.  Eggs sold yesterday morning for seventy-five cents per dozen, and butter for a dollar and a half a pound.  High as these prices appear, they are not exorbitant in comparison with the prices demanded for butchers’ meat, bacon, groceries, dry goods, wood, etc.  Butchers’ meat was held according to quality, at between thirty-five and a half and fifty cents a pound; bacon (hog round), thirty-five cents; common brown sugar, forty cents; and firewood, from country carts, is sold at the rate of twelve dollars a cord.  In the way of dry goods, we give a few instances: Unbleached cotton is sold from twenty-five to thirty-seven and forty cents a yard, according to the conscience of the dry goods man; bleached cotton from thirty to forty cents per yard, and often sold for sixty-two and a half cents a yard; spool cotton, two dollars a dozen; Irish linen, from seventy-five cents to one dollar and a quarter a yard, and domestics at fifty cents a yard.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Wednesday Morning, May 21, 1862, p. 2