Rural furnishing merchants of the South provided supplies on credit payable after the harvest. Rather than establishing and calculating credit charges as an annual interest rate applied to the amount borrowed, merchants posted two prices on each item. The cash price was charged if the customer did not request credit; the credit price was charged, but, of course, deferred, when a loan was involved. For example, on July 1, 1878, the average cash price of corn in middle Georgia was 78 cents per bushel according to a survey conducted by the Georgia State Department of Agriculture. On the same date the credit price was $1.04 per bushel payable on November 1, 1878. In effect, the farmer would pay 26 cents in November as interest on a four-month loan of 78 cents. Computed as simple interest, this amounts to 33.3 percent for one-third of a year or 100 percent per annum. ‘“Time is money,’” an official of the Georgia Department of Agriculture remarked after reporting these figures, “in this case time costs much money.”

The Georgia surveys

The 1878 GDA survey was the first to report cash and credit prices for corn on a specific date. The practice of conducting such retail price surveys annually was begun in 1881 and continued through 1889. The day on which price observations were to be collected was changed from July 1 to May 1 of each year. The observations were obtained by means of a questionnaire directed to the department's crop correspondents.