IROtf. NAILS. 



such a fact might account for the price. Or the rise in the 

 cost of labour may explain it. Or the general state of the 

 country may account for it. It will be observed that the 

 highest average prevails in the ten years which immediately 

 precede the outbreak of the Civil War. 



The price of wrought iron continued to be very high, and 

 the facts prove that the cost of working the article was con- 

 siderable, and that the art of the iron manufacturer was still 

 in its infancy. Wrought iron could be procured on an average 

 at no lower price than 36 i$s. a ton, and the cost of the 

 material must have seriously crippled the agriculturist. And 

 though after the first decade, and on making allowance for the 

 dear period referred to above, the cost of iron is almost 

 stationary, a comparison of the cost at which this necessary 

 article was procured at an earlier period, as disclosed in the 

 volumes of this work already published, with the rates sub- 

 joined to this chapter, will show that as far as implements and 

 tools are concerned the seventeenth-century farmer was no 

 better off in this respect than his fourteenth or fifteenth- 

 century ancestor, and though there is no record of his 

 grievances, that he had as much reason to grumble at the 

 excessive cost of iron in dry seasons and the loss he conse- 

 quently incurred as those farmers of old had whose complaints 

 have been quoted. 



NAILS. The commonest entry in the accounts are of lath 

 nails purchased for the lath and plaster buildings which were 

 so common at the time, or more rarely for ceilings. During 

 the first twenty years they are regularly bought and stored. 

 Afterwards the note of their purchase is irregular, and finally 

 they almost disappear, though they are found in three 

 London entries for the years 1698-1700 inclusive. Lath 

 nails are generally bought by the thousand, or by the sum 

 of 10,000. 



Lath nails are found in forty-seven years during the period 

 before me. The price varies very little, the decennial 

 averages as far as they are represented standing as follows : 



