James Fenimore Cooper spends a surprising amount of space analyzing a real estate transaction in The Pioneers. The novel takes place in upstate New York, north of the Catskills, in 1793. These passages are from chapter XVI, and is an exchange between Jotham Riddel and the town patriarch, Judge Marmaduke Temple.
“So, Jotham, I am told you have sold your betterments to a new settler, and have moved into the village and opened a school. Was it cash or dicker?”
The man who was thus addressed occupied a seat immediately behind Marmaduke, and one who was ignorant of the extent of the Judge’s observation might have thought he would have escaped notice. He was of a thin, shapeless figure, with a discontented expression of countenance, and with something extremely shiftless in his whole air, Thus spoken to, after turning and twisting a little, by way of preparation, he made a reply:
“Why part cash and part dicker.”
Dicker here has the sense of barter. But, as well shall see, Jotham’s sale was mostly dicker.
“I sold out to a Pumfretman who was so’thin’ forehanded [well-to-do]. He was to give me ten dollar an acre for the clearin’, and one dollar an acre over the first cost on the woodland, and we agreed to leave the buildin’s to men. So I tuck Asa Montagu, and he tuck Absalom Bement, and they two tuck old Squire Napthali Green. And so they had a meetin’, and made out a vardict of eighty dollars for the buildin’s.”
Jotham and his buyer agree to arbitration to assess the value of the buildings. Each party chooses one arbiter, and the two arbiters between them choose a third. A tidy solution, if you ask me.
“There was twelve acres of clearin’ at ten dollars, and eighty-eight at one, and the whole came to two hundred and eighty-six dollars and a half, after paying the men.”
(12 ac · $10/ac of cleared land) + (88 ac · $1/ac of woods) + ($80 of structures) – (3 arbiters · $X/arbiter) = $286.50, so each arbiter received a 50-cent fee.
“Hum,” said Marmaduke, “what did you give for the place?”
“Why, besides what’s comin’ to the Judge, I gi’n my brother Tim a hundred dollars for his bargain; but then there’s a new house on’t, that cost me sixty more, and I paid Moses a hundred dollars for choppin’, and loggin’, and sowin’, so that the whole stood to me in about two hundred and sixty dollars. But then I had a great crop oft on’t, and as I got twenty-six dollars and a half more than it cost, I conclude I made a pretty good trade on’t.”
It would seem that Jotham has indeed flipped his property after one growing season for a $26.50 profit, but I wonder how much is “comin’ to the Judge,” and for what? Property taxes?
“Yes, but you forgot that the crop was yours without the trade, and you have turned yourself out of doors for twenty-six dollars.”
“Oh! the Judge is clean out,” said the man with a look of sagacious calculation; “he [the buyer] turned out a span of horses, that is wuth a hundred and fifty dollars of any man’s money, with a bran-new wagon; fifty dollars in cash, and a good note for eighty more; and a side-saddle that was valued at seven and a half—so there was jist twelve shillings betwixt us.”
Jotham has accepted $207.50 in goods in lieu of cash (by his estimate), and a promissory note for $80, against a sale price of $288. At this point, he seems to be saying that that he will receive the balance of a dollar, or maybe a dollar and a half (12 shillings); it’s not quite clear. In a footnote later, Cooper writes, “In New York the Spanish dollar was divided into eight shillings, each of the value of a fraction more than sixpence sterling.” But he way I read it, the seller owes Jotham a balance of 50 cents, but in turn Jotham still owes the arbiters $1.50.
“I wanted him to turn out a set of harness, and take the cow and the sap troughs. He wouldn’t—but I saw through it; he thought I should have to buy the tacklin’ afore I could use the wagon and horses; but I knowed a thing or two myself; I should like to know of what use is the tacklin’ to him!”
Jotham has the horses and the wagon but no gear to hitch them to it.
“I offered him to trade back agin for one hundred and fifty-five. But my woman said she wanted to churn, so I tuck a churn for the change.”
I read this to mean that Jotham took the butter churn instead of the remaining cash, so no money changed hands at all. Except for those arbiters.
“And what do you mean to do with your time this winter? You must remember that time is money.”
“Why, as master has gone down country to see his mother, who, they say, is going to make a die on’t, I agreed to take the school in hand till he comes back, It times doesn’t get worse in the spring, I’ve some notion of going into trade, or maybe I may move off to the Genesee; they say they are carryin’ on a great stroke of business that-a-way. If the wust comes to the wust, I can but work at my trade, for I was brought up in a shoe manufactory.”
Even if the numbers don’t true up, they make more sense than the arithmetic in my friend Steve LaRocque’s Perfectly Good Airplanes.