Driving a hard bargain
Richmond Newsboys Overcharging; Scarcity at the Produce Markets
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch June 11, 1862:
Flotation of Newspaper boys.
The practice among newsboys of overcharging strangers and residents in the city for the Dispatch having become so common, we earnestly request that any carrier or newsboy detected in charging more than five cents for the Dispatch may be handed over to the Provost guard and his papers taken from him.–A few arrests of this kind will put a stop to the shameful impositions perpetrated by paper venders on the public.
A subscriber could get the Dispatch for 6 and 1/4 cents per week.
The editors sound hungry for a good meal. Also from the Richmond Daily Dispatch June 11, 1862:
The markets.
–The supplies of country produce, or indeed of any kind of produce, are getting much smaller than we think is warranted by the state of affairs by which we are surrounded. A person having anything for sale at the markets can get what he chooses to demand for it, and now-a- days, if ever, is realized the old saying that an article is worth just what it will bring. Of varieties in vegetables there are but few, and the same thing may be said of meat. The odor of savory viands delighted the nostrils; while the sight of fat capons, canvas backs, juice sirloins, portentous roasts, luscious bivalves, and all the good things, the thought whereof maketh the mouth water, exercises a wonderful influence on the gastric regions, and causeth one to obey the Scriptural injunction, “sit down and eat,” with unusual alacrity, when he can get near a table whereon they lie; but at this particular juncture, and in this latitude, such dishes are rare.
