A Brief History of the BEAR CREEK COMMUNITY, Mower County, Minnesota Part 4 of 5 Nearly all the men settlers travelled far and near in search of work the first winter, but seldom found a chance to work for any kind of money compensation. It is well known to the writers that strong and young men considered it a great luck to find a chance to cut and split rails and cut cord wood a whole day for 25 to 50 cents, and some of them had to walk 6 miles in the morning to the work and of course that same distance back to their homes in the evening. During the first winter there was a general scarcity of flour or meal for bread. One woman told the writer that as far as she knew, there was not so much wheat for flour in the settlement that a loaf of bread could be baked. In this flour famine Ole Finhart undertook to drive to Decorah, Iowa with his yoke of oxen to buy flour, but there was not one pound to be gotten. All he could get was a sack of corn meal, and this sack was divided among the destitute families. The settlers of mixed nationalities among and about the Norwegian colonists were mostly all as poor in money wealth as the Norwegians. None hired men or women for money wages. Kari Hovda, later Mrs. Ole Finhart told often that she worked several months for an American family in the new village Frankford without any compensation except her board-said she was glad to get her board. After a couple of years girls as kitchen servants were paid from 50 cents to one dollar and fifty cents a week and it may be added that these servant girls were used or rather abused by their employers as slaves or beasts of burden. A hired girl was janitor, water carrier, clothes washer, floor scrubber, house cleaner, nurse and in some houses she had to calcimine rooms with lime mixture. Her hours of work were not limited to a certain number of hours but in most cases she had to get out of bed at four o'clock in the morning and work till late in the night, often till 12 in the night. Her bedroom was never heated. In some homes she had to sleep in a rustic bedstead in the garret where snow often drifted in and covered her bed cover. It was an exception to the rule if a Norwegian hired girl was allowed to mix with the Yankee family in the sitting room except when she had to come in to work. She was not permitted to serve the family at the table. She was only allowed into the door of the dining room with the food she had cooked or prepared. There she was met by the lady of the house or some other appointed or privileged lady waiter who took the food from her hands and served it. These conditions lasted for more than ten years. The Norwegian girls and her parents had to submit to these hardships and indignities on account of poverty, but it was often expressed by parents of the poor girls, "If we were no so penniless and hard up, we would rather have our daughters feed pigs and milk cows than to be degraded servants of the Yankees." When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the cost of cotton goods rose to fabulous prices. A yard of calico cost as high as 50 cents. This rise in the price of cotton goods made the life of a working girl desperate. Her weekly wages did not rise with prices on her most necessary wearing apparel. She never received more than two dollars a week and she had to be a very competent and able girl to get two dollars. Most of them had to work for the old wages, one dollar or one dollar and fifty cents. The second winter in the Bear Creek settlement, 1855 and 1856 nearly all the men population went down the Mississippi River toward Rock Island, Illinois, and into the woods to cut cord wood. They all found work and got fair pay. It was a lucky venture. They worked till late in the spring and returned to Bear Creek with their hard earned savings. This relieved the money stringency for all the families in connection with the wood choppers and most of these and others with them repeated the enterprise the next winter. At this time the Bear Creek settlers began to have some farm products to sell. Wheat grew abundantly on their few acres of breakings. The herd had increased in cows, oxen and sheep. The food shortage had at this time disappeared. The great question now was a marketing place for what farm products they could sell. There were no railroads in Minnesota at this time and the nearest steamboat station was Winona on the Mississippi River, and the distance from Bear Creek to Winona was about 60 miles. Roads to Winona there were none, and no bridges, so to get there with a yoke of oxen before a primitive lumber wagon with a load of wheat on was a perilous and slow undertaking. If rain had softened the ground, it often took the ox teamster two weeks to reach Winona and back home. During the winter season a journey of this kind was impossible. It could only be done during the bare ground season. The price of a bushel of wheat at this time was about 50 cents and the pay was generally in merchandise at the stores owned by the wheat buyer. The nominal price of the wheat was not governed by a continental or world's market, but by the speculative notion of the grain buyer, and the price of the goods in the stores on which the farmer had his order was just as arbitrary in the opposite direction as on the wheat. The goods were always of job lot qualities such as could not be sold in the market in eastern towns and cities. As an example to illustrate this, the writer will state his own experience. In the summer of 1861, I bought a pair of heavy, low, split leather shoes; and paid two dollars for them in wheat at 50 cents a bushel. In other words, I gave four bushels of wheat for my shoes. Another instance of this period: In 1863 I bought a small cook stove, worth not more than four dollars at first cost or wholesale price. For this I gave 40 bushels of wheat-there were no kitchen utensils with it-the money price of the stove was said to be thirty-seven dollars. I paid with wheat. The price of wheat in this case shows that wheat was almost doubled in nominal value from what it, was 4 or 5 years ago, but my stove was more than six hundred per cent above its actual value. The Civil War was in progress and that had reduced the value of paper money and increased the cost of iron and labor . In the villages about the Bear Creek settlement, small stores were started, but their trade was mostly a bartering business. The farmer's wife or daughter carried butter and eggs to these stores. Eggs were sold for from 5 to 8 cents a dozen and butter from 8 to 10 cents a pound. The pay for butter and eggs was always in goods in the store. The farmer’s wife or daughter accepted for her burden of products, coffee, tea, sugar, needles, calico, thread, etc. The price on products sold by the farmer and the goods received in payment was not regulated by a competitive market, but by the more or less avaricious disposition of the shopkeeper. He fixed the price on the butter and eggs, and likewise the price on his merchandise. The new settler had no choice. He had to do the bartering unconditionally or carry his butter and eggs home. In 1861 the Civil War broke out and new difficulties and hardships arose in the face of the new settlers in Bear Creek and all over the state of Minnesota. The banking business became chaotic. Up to this time, banks were founded on chattel and real estate securities. Now on account of the confused conditions and uncertain result of the war, property values could not be fixed by any recognized market standard. Banks quoted good one day were found insolvent the next. Gold coins were in a few weeks withdrawn from circulation by the rich money corners of the Eastern States. To relieve the money situation, the Federal Government legalized large issues of paper money, popularly known as green backs-(legal tender). This class of paper money was not backed by government gold but by the honor and credit of the United States. Green backs, i. e. legal tender bills, were simply evidence of indebtedness of the United States to the bearer and the history about them shows they were redeemed with gold and silver by the United States Treasury. During the successes and reverses in the war struggle, the gold value of the legal tender fluctuated in the hands of money speculators. During the most uncertain conditions of the war, a gold dollar could hardly be bought for four legal tender dollars. Foreign and domestic merchandise rose and fell in price as the gold market fluctuated. There were stamp duties and taxes on every article of value, private and public documents, and on services of men and , animals.