Document: Ordinance fixing the rates at which certain imported articles of merchandise are to be sold

[The director and council of New Netherland. To all those who shall hear and see these presents read, greetings, make known that in the month of September last their deputies and the delegates of the respective colonies and courts of New Netherland enacted, published and posted divers ordinances and regulations[1] touching the great and excessive dearness][2] of all sorts of merchandise, provisions, grain and laborers' wages, which well-intentioned orders and regulations, published, enacted and made known to all by the preceding edicts, the director-general and council still understand shall be promptly observed and obeyed without any connivance, dissimulation or favor or pain of the fine more fully expressed in the edicts; however, whereas the recently arrived passengers, merchants and traders were not informed beforehand in the matter of recording their merchandise, and therefore have recorded their merchandise according to the previous custom; also, considering the great dangers of the sea, the heavy insurance and the long time the goods and merchandise lay in the ships by which they have been subjected to water damage, all of which being considered by the director-general and council, they have decided that the merchants presently could not survive with a 100% markup from the entries in the Company's invoice. Therefore, in order not to annul completely the previously enacted ordinance, the director-general and council have for the present time thought it best and necessary to appraise some goods and merchandise as follows:

A pair of men's shoes, size 8 to 12 at f3,5A pair of Icelandic stockings at 36 stiversA firkin of soap at 20 guildersA can of salad oil at f1,10A pound of candles at 12 stiversAn anker of distilled spirits at f32An anker of wine vinegar at f16An ell of duffel cloth to be sold to Christians no higher than f3,10A pound of nails at f30An anker of Spanish wine at f40An anker of brandy at f44 A hogshead of French wine at f110

What further concerns the goods and merchandise neither specified nor appraised herein, and some which cannot be appraised, such as assorted linens, cloth manufactured at Haerlem and Leyden, worsted stockings etc., the kinds of which are some finer and some better than others; also, all materials and necessities required for farms and households - all too many and too numerous to be mentioned here - the director-general and council order that the true invoice of the actual first cost thereof and of all other merchandise, by whatsoever name called, shall be shown and exhibited to the purchasers upon demand, and the seller may ask from the buyer, for the present time, in consideration of existing dangers and heavy insurance, 120 percent over and above the first and actual cost, and no more upon penalty and fine more fully set forth in the previously enacted edicts. The director-general and council hereby give notice that this ordinance and regulation shall continue only for the present time and further order from the fatherland and no longer. Thus done in the meeting of the director-general and high council in Fort Amsterdam in New Netherland, this 19 November 1653.