As has already been said, Mrs. Adams managed her husband's money affairs at home. A short extract from one of her business letters to him may be interesting, and will show how a matter always troublesome was in such times doubly so: "The safest way, you tell me, of supplying my wants, is by drafts; but I cannot get hard money for bills. You had as good tell me to procure diamonds for them; and when bills will fetch but five for one, hard money will exchange ten, which I think is very provoking; and I must give at the rate of ten, and sometimes twenty, for one, for every article I purchase. I blush whilst I give you a price current; all meat from a dollar to eight shillings a pound; corn twenty-five dollars, rye thirty, per bushel; flour two hundred dollars per hundred pounds; potatoes ten dollars per bushel, &c. I have studied, and do study, every method of economy; otherwise a mint of money would not support a family. I could not board our sons under forty dollars a week at school. * * * We have been greatly distressed for grain. I scarcely know the looks or taste of biscuit or flour for this four months; yet thousands have been much worse off, having no grain of any sort." Nor were things then at the worst; for in October, 1780, we find "meat eight dollars, and butter twelve, per pound; corn one hundred and twenty dollars, and rye one hundred and eight, per bushel; tea ninety dollars, and cotton wool thirty, per pound." But our readers must not suppose that this was entirely owing to a scarcity of products; these prices are in "continental money," seventy dollars of which would hardly command one of "hard money."