first Silicon Valley

[DARPA]

Interesting story about the prices in San Francisco during the Gold Rush (1849).

At that time, the average earnings of a professional worker in New York was one or two dollars a day, the cost of the hotel rooms in San Francisco reached $ 10 000 per month (about $ 300,000 today). Edward Gould Buffum, author of the book "Six months to a gold mine" (1850) tells of breakfast for two with bread, cheese, butter, sardines, and two bottles of beer for $ 43 (about $ 1,200 today). A piece of bread could cost a dollar, and the bread and butter - two ($ 56 today). In terms of today's prices a dozen eggs cost $ 90; ax $ 1,500; $ 1,200 a pound of coffee, and boots as much as $ 3,000.

And the most money earned is not the miners, and the people supplying them with goods. A woman could earn $ 18,000 by selling pies prospectors, merchants and one of the 1,500 newspapers are delivered to California, which sold for one dollar. There began the history of Levi Strauss jeans and a car manufacturer Studebaker John, who made a fortune selling cars miners.