Archive for the ‘Market Gossip’ Category

19
Dec

Christmas Trimmings

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The Fort Dodge Messenger: Dec. 19, 1906

Christmas Trimmings

One of the windows on Central avenue which is attracting attention is the Downing Electrical company. It is attractively lighted with small red and green electric lights around the edges. In the west window is a display of oil paintings which is the work of Mrs. Sam McClure of this city.

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Evergreen, evergreens, everywhere form the basis of display in the windows and elsewhere at the Taft grocery store.

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A pretty color effect with ribbons of different shades arranged to work back and forth by an mechanical contrivance attracts attention at Billie Boggs’ jewelry store.

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“Mery (sic) Christmas” in the west window and “Happy New Year” in the east one, both worked out in letters of evergreen enhance the attractiveness of the Thompson and Kehm displays.

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Every moving toy balloons attract attention at the Hurlbut jewelry store.

14
Dec

What They Say

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The Fort Dodge Messenger: Dec. 14, 1906

What They Say

“A white Christmas would make trade better for everybody. Unless snow comes it will hardly seem like Christmas at all and if the streets and ground are bare of snow it is certain the merchants will have less trade than if a good covering of white would come.”

-William Mulroney.

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“All of the business men along the street are wishing for a fall of snow this week. They think the holiday trade will be heavier if there is snow on the ground. At any rate sales on boy’s sleds will be light if the snow doesn’t come.”

-S.A. Smith

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I was out to Storm Lake this week ice-boating. it’s great sport. Got skating and all the other winter sports beat a whole city block. We  went a distance of two miles in four minutes once, and some other records almost as good.”

-George Somers

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“If there is one person who ought to write plainly, it is a doctor. It is so easy to make a mistake in reading illegible writing, and because of the similarity of the scientific names of the various drugs and compounds, the prescription clerk is as liable to read one thing as the other, if the writing is not plain and readable. I know one physician in the city who writes his prescriptions on a typewriter, which is an excellent way, and sure to make mistakes in reading impossible.

-Dr. H.G. Ristine

2
Mar

Market Gossip

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The Fort Dodge Messenger: March 2, 1907

Market Gossip

Good news for the housewife. Eggs have declined in price. They are now retailing around twenty-two cents per dozen as against twenty-seven and twenty-eight cents at this time last week. The hens have again gone to work and the strike has been ended. The breaking of the Chicago market price also has had an effect upon the local market. More eggs are being brought in now so that the farmers will feel the decline as much as if the output of eggs remained the same as under the old price. Farmers are getting twenty cents per dozen now as against twenty-five cents last week. One grocer said that the price would probably decline to fifteen cents per dozen if warm weather continues.

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“The pure food law has not made a particle of difference with me,” remarked a Central Avenue grocer this morning between spells of work. “Before the beginning of the year I don’t think I had over twenty dollars worth of impure good in the store. But the fellow that it has hit hard is the Chicago mail order houses. I see that Sears Roebuck has gone out of the grocery business and that the other mail order concerns are thinking of doing the same. You see they cannot sell pure food at the prices they advertise. There is no question about that. I should think they would have to close down in their drug departments, too, from the same cause.

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A dealer in butter was kicking about the way some women of this city complain about the keeping qualities of the butter sent them and laid the blame upon the housewife’s shoulders. Said he: “Just a few minutes ago, a woman telephoned to me and asked that some more butter be sent up to the house in exchange for some I sent her three or four days ago. She said that the first butter was already very rancid. I asked her where she kept it and she told me in the cellar. Further questioning brought out the fact that the cellar is very warm because of a furnace heating plant. Instead of keeping her butter out of doors where it would keep sweet and nice for weeks, that woman keeps it in a warm cellar where any butter no matter how fresh, would not keep for more than three or four days. Tell ’em to keep their butter where it is cool and then it will keep fresh.”