Provisions at the South.
--The
Mobile Advertize, in an article on the prices and the currency, gives some facts that contrast strangely with the
Richmond market.
It says:
‘
Three weeks ago we paid $22.50 per hundred for folder.
Yesterday we bought the same article at $10. A month since bacon was selling at $6. The present price is $3.50 to $4.00. We paid a month ago for
corn meal $10; yesterday we bought the best article for $5.00. Even flour has tumbled down $75 a barrel, although it is still unreasonably dear.
We notice a decided improvement in the vegetable and meat markets.
Customers do not throng to the market as they used to do.--We saw meat in the market yesterday morning that has been there since Saturday--a certain sign of two important facts; that money is scarce, more prized, and not so readily parted with as formerly, and that the supply of meat is not short of the demand.
The fishermen even are becoming more moderate.
We have never seen the market so abundantly supplied as since the 1st of April. We boarded a large oyster boat at the wharf a few days ago. It had the remains of its cargo on board--10,000 oysters.
We asked the price--$3 a basket.
How many in a basket?
Over 200.
That is $1.50 a hundred.
The oyster-shops ask $3.00 a hundred.
The oyster boat had been two days at the wharf, and the skipper said he had been trying all day to sell out, and was debating between throwing them away or giving them to the
Free Market.
We advised the latter course by all means.
’
Certainly there are signs of lower prices.
And they appear thus early in the operation of the late laws of Congress.
We did not anticipate any marked effect of this legislation until the fives were ruled out like the larger notes and the new tax law had gone into effect.
If such things be in the green, what may we not hope for in the dry?--Money is going to be scarce, and prices are, in our opinion, sure to fall.
The effect of the tax upon the planter has been marked in one respect.
He is sending produce to market which he never thought it worth his while to take the trouble of before.
Fodder, shucks, bacon, corn, peas, &c., are coming in more freely than at any time during the war, and the prices of all these articles are coming down.
Starvation is an obsolete idea.--There has always been enough in the
South for man and beast.
It only needed a golden key to unlock the treasure.
Funding and taxation have supplied it.
