August 7, 1862 , Savannah Republican (Georgia)
Mr. Editor–There are some facts connected with the Savannah market to which I desire to call the attention of the people of Georgia and South Carolina, who live convenient to this city:
Sweet potatoes are selling here at 25 cents a quart, or $8 per bushel; green corn at 5 cents an ear, or six ears for 25 cents; peaches, for from 15 to 40 cents a quart; watermelons of ordinary size at 50 to 75 cents, and the largest, weighing from twenty to thirty pounds, at $1 and $1.25 each; chickens, (half-grown) at $1 a pair; butter at 70 and 75 cents a pound; lard at 40 cents a pound; eggs at from 40 to 60 cents a dozen.
Again: Pine wood sells for $7 a cord, and oak wood $9 a cord.
I have enumerated some of the leading articles, with their prices, in order to show the people around Savannah what profits they are allowing to slip through their fingers for want of a little energy.
I am informed that peaches sell in Macon and Augusta at $1 per bushel. I also learn that thousands of bushels in and around Aiken, S. C., are rotting for want of a market. This fruit could be picked in the afternoon and sold in this market the following morning. Why do […..] a penny both to their own and our advantage? They have the fruit, and we have the money, as is shown by the ready sales of fruit here at such extortionate prices. Why will not the producer engage some reliable agent here and supply the market?
Equally astonishing is the fact that the prices of wood should rule so high where two railroads and one river leading into the city are lined with millions of cords, which could be sole here for more than a hundred per cent profit. A little energy would put money in the purses of many whose produce and wood are now selling for but little and rotting on their land.
Buyer.