Hard Times in the North Dakota Trade
A collection of desperate and defiant letters from business owners across the country captures the economic misery of 1893.
These are trying times for the retail yard dealer of the East. The daily mail is generally productive of some queer missives. Not long since, a prominent Tacoma firm received a letter from a North Dakota firm: 'There is no use being cross because we do not pay you the note. We will tell you plainly that we cannot pay anything at present. We do not get hold of enough currency to buy beefsteak. There is absolutely no money in this section of the country; we have not taken in $60 in three weeks. We could not sell a bill of lumber for 10 cents on the dollar for cash. You folks don't know anything about hard times; we don't have half enough to eat.' Another dealer in Missouri solved the financial question by simply going fishing for months, warning creditors not to send him any more mail.
“We do not get hold of enough currency to buy beefsteak. There is absolutely no money in this section of the country.”
These letters capture the visceral, individual cost of the Panic of 1893—a massive economic depression. Reading the raw frustration of a business owner who can't even afford beefsteak provides a human scale to the impersonal statistics of historical economic collapse.
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