Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/164

at Lily Lake and made a road to it. This road ran around the rear of Fort Howe hill and a continuation of it led out to the marsh. There was a branch leading from it to the head of the millpond where in early days there was a brick yard—for brick making was another industry started by our enterprising business pioneers. They had a second brick yard near the old mill pond^{[errata 1]} and a third at "Bluff Head" near the falls.

The wages of the ordinary laborers employed by Simonds and White were generally 2s. 6d. (or half a dollar) per day and they boarded themselves. Few of them, however, received any money but took up their wages in goods delivered at the company's store. By all odds the item most frequently charged against them was the popular beverage of the day, New England rum. The writer of this article had the curiosity to examine the charges for rum contained in one of the old day books for a period of one month—the month being selected at random, and it appeared that twelve men then in the company's employ consumed about half a gallon of rum per day. Apparently there was a marked difference in individual habits, for while four of the men averaged half a pint each per day, the other eight consumed on an average only half a pint each in three days. Tea, the great modern beverage, was rather an expensive article and appears to have been used very sparingly, rum on the contrary retailed at 8 pence a pint and was used almost universally. It is evident that human nature was the same then as now. The men frequently drank to excess and some of them probably would have been utterly unreliable but for the fact that the company were masters of the situation and could cut off the supply. They generally doled out the liquor by half pints and gills to their labourers.

The popular idea that the climate of this province was much more severe in ancient than in modern days