A pound of tea, surely a luxury item, required

as much as a day's pay to obtain. A bushel of potatoes

might cost a half-day's wages, and a pair of boots from

two to five day's pay, an amount equal to a full month's

house rent.

 In general, material life in the 1860s was

sparse by today's standards. The types of products

generally offered to consumers were plain and basic;

and if adequate in quantity, they were not available in

overwhelming abundance.

 The United States of 1860 was, of course,

primarily an agricultural nation, although manufacturing

was growing rapidly and the nation had become something

of a sea power. Machines had been introduced into

several kinds of production, in the making of clothing

and shoes and in food processing, for example. Some

mechanization had taken place in agriculture, notably

with the introduction of the reaper, the thresher, the

cotton gin, and the all-steel plow. Steam had been

applied to water and land transportation. But the

products of the nation were products of the soil, in

the main. Hard manual labor and common sweat were the

principal instruments of progress, and the relatively

few machines in existence were in the hands of producers,

not consumers. Within the next century, the face of

the country and the nature of production would change

entirely.5


 5Qualitative changes in the nature of production