The Great Flour Paradox
While Seattle’s flour prices hit an all-time low, the price of wheat begins a strange climb upward.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The important feature of the market is a farther decline in the price of flour. One of the leading brands of Washington patent flour, which has been selling at a higher rate, has dropped 50 cents per barrel. The present price is the lowest figure ever touched by patent flour in the Sound country. All California brands have been reduced from $3.75 to $3.50 per barrel, and a general reduction of all brands is expected in a day or two. A curious paradox in the market is that on the same day on which flour is marked down, wheat advances. Export quotations responded again to the firmer feeling in the market, making the price 50 and 53 cents for club and bluestem, respectively. The advance in wheat is caused by firm futures.
“The present price is the lowest figure ever touched by patent flour in the Sound country.”
Then as now, Seattle’s economy was tightly wound into the volatility of global commodity markets. Today’s concern is housing costs, but 1893 residents were equally obsessed with the baseline costs of bread and grain—proving that the city has always been a place where affordability is the primary civic anxiety.
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