COMMERCIAL.

The country store of the earliest times was a more emphatic collection of multitudinous varieties of articles, if possible, than the later place of local public traffic. Then, as now, the local store was the principal resort of the great commonalty. Men of special vocations sometimes took a stock of products to the lower country and bartered for goods to bring back and distribute among their neighbors, and the itinerant merchant, or pedlar, reaped a much better harvest than now; but the country store was a popular necessity and well patronized. At first there was less trading in domestic luxuries; the goods in store represented the common necessities. Since the popular idea of necessity does not fully exclude the illusory principle, we have to admit rum, gin, brandy, etc., into the former list of domestic staples. Cash and barter were entertained by every tradesman, to whom the populace largely looked for advantageous exchanges of substance. The progress of the settlement was attended by the extension, and to some extent by the classification, of trade till the time when Hopkinton assumed the commercial importance described in a previous article.

The currency employed in the transaction of business was at first nominally English, though Spanish milled dollars were in circulation. One of the inconveniences of the early settlers of New England was a scarcity of money. The different provincial governments sought to relieve the public financial burdens by the issue of Bills of Credit, a currency mentioned in the records of this town as “old tenor.” Such a circulating medium in such a time could only depreciate in value, but, following a custom obtaining in the old country, the purchasing value of these bills could from time to time be fixed by the local legislatures. About the year 1750, it was established throughout the provinces that £1 in the currency of the Bills of Credit should be equivalent to two shillings and eight pence lawful money, and that six shillings should be equal to one dollar.

The preliminary events of the Revolution involved the establishment of a system of Continental currency. At the time of the first issue of a paper circulating medium, in 1775, the Continental notes were nearly at par with gold, but they soon fell to comparative nothingness in value. The effect of this collapse in monetary matters was amply illustrated in the public transactions of the town of Hopkinton. At a town meeting held in 1781, it was voted that the price of a day’s work on the highway, by a man, should be $30; the price of a day’s work by a yoke of oxen, $30; the price of a plow and cart, $10 each. The salary of the Rev. Elijah Fletcher, second minister of the town, was also voted to be $4000 for the year, but the reverend pastor preferred to accept £70 in gold equivalents, and declined the larger nominal sum. The success of the American cause, and the permanent establishment of the public credit, gave a correspondingly improved aspect to local affairs, and in later times this town has experienced fluctuations in prices in common with the general country.

During the period of Hopkinton’s greater importance as a commercial station, a bank was maintained here for a few years. The institution was known as the Franklin Bank, and was incorporated in 1833. The grantees were Horace Chase, Nathaniel Gilman, Isaac Long, Jr., William Little, Joseph Stanwood, Matthew Harvey, Andrew Leach, Moses Gould, Ebenezer Dustin, Timothy Chandler, Stephen Darling, and James Huse. The operations of this bank seem to have been exceedingly bungling during the short term of its existence, and it finally settled with its creditors at ninety cents on a dollar. The Franklin Bank occupied the building now used by the Hopkinton Public Library.

The standard of quantities to be recognized in commercial transactions has, from remote times, been a subject of legal regulation. The weights and measures first used in this town were the standards of older communities. In a record made in the year 1804, the town of Hopkinton declared the local standard to be as follows:

WEIGHTS OF IRON.
156 lbs.
128 lbs.
124 lbs.
17 lbs.
WEIGHTS OF BRASS.
14 lbs.
12 lbs.
11 lb.
1½ lb.
12 oz.
11 oz.
1½ oz.
1¼ oz.

For the use of the above weights the town recognized “two small scale beams with brass dishes,” and also “one large scale beam with boards, and strung with iron wires.” The wooden dry measures were specific as 1 half-bushel, 1 peck, 1 half-peck, 1 two-quart, and 1 quart; while the copper liquid measures were started to be 1 gallon, 1 two-quart, 1 quart, 1 pint, 1 half-pint, and 1 gill.

By legal requirement, the standard of weights and measures is regulated by a town sealer to this day, such officer being chosen annually at the town-meeting in March, but the modern improvements and facilities for determining quantities have made a practically dead letter of the present law requiring his selection.

For many years a public hay-scales occupied a site in the rear of the Congregational meeting-house. It was simply an immense scale beam and platform, the whole apparatus being covered with a roof. It long ago passed away to give place to the modern hay-scales.