How many nails does a cup of chai tea cost?
What? Nails aren’t legal tender anymore?
Yes, there was a time when people in the U. S. (and other parts of the world) used nails to barter with.
I don’t think much about construction nails until one is protruding, and I catch my hand or the toe of my shoe on it.
Nails have been around for millennia, dating from as far back as 3,400 BC, but historians theorize they were likely around before that. Some of these early nails were made of bronze, but the ones made of iron would have rusted into dust.
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| Bronze Nail |
Nails were made one at a time by a blacksmith or nailer. After heating a square iron nail rod, it was hammered to a taper on the end to create a point. Heated once again, the nail was cut free of the rod, then placed in a hole in an anvil or a nail header, where the head would be formed with several glancing blows of a hammer. This was the slow production method until late in the 18th century. These were wrought iron type nails.
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| Roman Iron Nails |
Because the laborious process took so long for each one, nails were a valuable commodity. They were so precious and hard to come by in the Colonies that people would burn down their home before they moved or torch old buildings for the nails. In Virginia, they passed a statute that prohibited this practice. During bad weather, in the evenings, or during the winter, families would make nails for their own use or for barter.
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| Wrought Iron Nail |
In the last decade of the 1700s and the first decade in the 1800s, nail cutting machines were invented. This enabled nails to be cut from iron plates, but they still had to be headed one by one. These were type A nails.
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| Heading a Nail |
Eventually, a machine was invented in the 1810s which both cut the nails and created the head. This sped up the process and brought down the price. These were type B nails.
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| Author Image |
During the 1880s, the Bessemer process for making inexpensive soft steel revolutionized nail making. The use of iron for nails quickly diminished. A faster and cheaper nail making method was invented—the wire-cut nails. By 1886, ten percent of nails in the United States were made from steel wire. Six short years later, steel-wire nails had outpaced the old iron ones, and by 1913, ninety percent of U. S. nails were wire nails.
These are still the type of nails used today. With the advent of wire nails, this costly object could be produced at speeds unfathomable before and for much cheaper. Thus, nails lost their monetary value.
Which sadly means, I can’t buy a chai with my handful of nails.
Happy Reading!
Mary lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband of thirty-seven years and one cat. She has three adult children and three incredibly adorable grandchildren. Find her online at: Books2Read Newsletter Blog FB FB Readers Group Amazon GoodReads BookBub
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nail_(fastener)
https://monroeengineering.com/blog/nailed-it-the-history-of-nails/
https://www.harpgallery.com/blog/the-humble-nail-a-key-to-unlock-the-past/
https://www.oldhousefix.com/history-of-american-nails/
https://www.uvm.edu/~tvisser/nails/NailHistoryVisser.pdf
https://inspectapedia.com/interiors/Nails_Hardware_Age.php
