One of the aspects of today's world that I very much do value and appreciate is the fact that prices, on average, tend to be significantly lower - and, at the same time, we also earn a lot more money than our grandparents did. Sure, there is a lot that is nasty, ugly and utterly empty about today's music and popular culture and it is sometimes awfully tempting to want to step into a time machine and go back. Nevertheless, speaking strictly in terms of our material standard of living, it is we, not our grandparents, who are fortunate enough to live in a "Golden Era."
Looking at prices in old advertisements can be deceptive. At first glance, it looks like everything was much less expensive because the dollar values quoted are so much lower than the prices of today. But, in reality, it is not that prices have gone up so much as the fact that value of our currency has gone down - as these vintage "shopping trips" will demonstrate.
Ignoring short-term events such as wars and economic downturns, over the long run, prices of most items we buy have fallen while wages have steadily increased. One major reason for this is that technological advances result in more economical methods of making things. Technology also makes it possible for workers to be more productive. A man operating a backhoe can dig up more dirt in a few hours than ten men with shovels could in an entire day - and this makes it possible for today's backhoe operator to earn more money with less effort than his great grandfather could earn doing the same work with a shovel.
The tool I will be using to adjust prices for inflation is this nifty Cost of Living Calculator from the American Institute For Economic Research. This calculator lets you pick any year between 1913 and 2007 and tells you what a given dollar amount in one year was worth in another. If you have access to vintage advertisements, you can use this calculator to make your own vintage shopping trips.
For today's shopping trip our time machine will take us back to the year 1923. According to the calculator, $1 in 1923 had about the same purchasing power as $12.12 in today's money.
But before we step into our time machine, if we are going to go shopping, it helps to have some money in our pockets. And, as we all know, money doesn't just appear in one's pocket by magic. For most people, it is necessary to have a job and a paycheck first. So it is also important to know how much people were paid back in 1923.
Unfortunately, there is no similar calculator to compare wages. But I did find a website that quotes the 1920 census as showing that, in the year 1920, the average annual wage in the United States was about $1,500. Plug that into the Cost of Living Calculator and that ends up being roughly $18,180 in today's currency. By contrast, according to this chart by the Social Security Administration, the average wage in the United States in 2006 was $38,651.
In other words, the average wage in the United States in 1920 was only 47 percent of what it was in 2006. So when we go on our shopping trip and convert 1923 prices into today's money, imagine that you are paying those prices while bringing in 53 percent less money per year than you currently do. Also, keep in mind that, in 1920, married women usually stayed home to take care of the house and kids. So not only were the wages significantly lower, two income households were nowhere near as common as they are today.
Time Travel Shopping Trip
Our time machine drops us off on a cold winter day at a modest but respectable middle class home somewhere in America. The mid-winter sales circular from Montgomery Ward is sitting on a table offering sale prices on all sorts of items. But we must hurry and decide what we are going to buy - the special prices end on February 28, 1923.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the big Chicago mail order houses Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck were, for all intents and purposes, the Wal-marts of their day. Just as small town merchants today complain that they are unable to sell as low as Wal-mart, 100 years ago similar merchants complained about how "unfair" it was that Montgomery Ward and Sears were siphoning off all their customers by offering prices that were sometimes even less than what the merchants themselves had to pay for similar items. But during the period this catalog was current, the world was beginning to change for the big mail order houses. The advent of the automobile and better roads made it easier for rural families to make more frequent shopping trips into town. A new company, J.C. Penny, started opening stores in towns all across the country offering low prices without the wait and shipping charges associated with mail order. By the end of the decade, Montgomery Ward and Sears were both busy opening hundreds of retail stores of their own.
Here is an in-house Montgomery Ward brand electric vacuum cleaner. It does not have any fancy attachments - what you see in the drawing is what you get.
If you pay for it in cash and have standard city electricity, you can buy it on sale for $29.95. (An extra dollar will get you a model that has a 32 volt motor for homes where farm lighting plants made by Powerlite or Delco are in use). In today's money the vacuum will cost you $363.08. If you don't have or want to spend all that money at once, Wards will let you put down $5 and pay it off for $5 more every month. In today's money, that works out to $60.61 per month.
Today, you can easily pay over $363 for a high end vacuum cleaner. But a Montgomery Ward store brand model of anything was hardly a high end product and it did not have any of the special features higher priced modern vacuums do. I have no way of knowing or comparing specs such as suction power, durability, etc. But a quick look at the Wal-mart and Target websites shows several models of vacuum cleaners made by Hoover and Eureka in the $75 - $150 range that I would guess are just as good, if not better, than the 1923 Monkey Ward model.
If paying a couple of hundred dollars extra for a product such as a vacuum cleaner which will, presumably, last you a number of years does not seem all that harsh, keep in mind that, for this shopping trip, your annual income is the 1920 national average of $18,180 in today's money - and prices of other things you will need to buy are also higher.
Unfortunately, unless you live in town, chances are that, here in 1923, an electric vacuum cleaner will be useless to you as electrification has yet to make its way to most rural areas. So here is a vacuum cleaner that does not require electricity. The ad says: "the suction force is produced by a revolving fan propelled by the rubber tired wheels." This model set you back $14.98 or $181.60 in today's money.
To find a comparable product for sale today I suspect one would have to go to a third world country. Here in the USA, even the most isolated farms have had electricity since at least the 1950s.
If you drive a Model T Ford, you can buy a battery for the $11.75 price displayed in red type at the top of the ad. That's $142.44 in today's money. Batteries for other makes of cars cost more - up to $17.75 for Dodge and Maxwell cars. That's $215.18 in today's money. And all batteries are guaranteed for whopping 18 months - unless you drive a Model T Ford, in which case the guarantee is only for 12 months.
I just made a quick visit to the website for Auto Zone and pulled up the price for a battery for the vehicle I drive. Two low-end batteries listed with 48 month warranties did not have price information available. A battery with a 72 month warranty costs $54.99. My guess is if one were to go to Wal-mart, the price would be even less, especially if one were to drop down to a 48 month warranty.
Batteries are one product where prices have fallen significantly while storage capacity and length of service has, at the same time, vastly improved. On future time travel shopping trips we will take a look at just how expensive it was for rural households to operate their battery-powered radio sets in the late 1920s and 1930s.
Here in 1923, every penny counts. And since married women usually stay at home, they have the time to save money by making their own clothes.
For $4 down - $48.49 in today's money - one can buy this Damascus Vibrating Shuttle sewing machine on a $4 monthly installment plan until it is paid off at a price of $29.95 or $363.08 in today's money. If you are able to pay in cash, the price is only $27.95 or $338.83 in today's money. The machine is manually powered by the large pedal at the bottom.
I know next to nothing about sewing machines, so I am not not the best person to compare features. Wal-mart's website offers a machine at $39.87 and another one at $56.70 and I suspect that both are capable doing of everything that the vintage Wards machine was able to. For $179 Wal-mart offers a machine that is advertised as being "computerized" - whatever that means.
True, today's sewing machines are rather bland looking and don't come with the attractive cabinet made of "genuine quarter sawed veneered oak." But since they are electrically powered and do not need a huge pulley system, they can be easily stored away out of view when they are not in use instead of taking up space that could be used for some other piece of furniture.
Here is a machine to wash the clothes made by the sewing machine. It is called the Cyclone Vacuum Washer and is strictly mechanical. It claims that your clothes will last twice as long as they are not rubbed. Instead, "this machine washes by suction, one of the most efficient methods of washing ever discovered. The vacuum cups plunge down into the water and at the same time rotate forcing hot suds through every fiber of the cloth. This loosens the particles of dirt. Then, when the cups are withdrawn, a suction is created which draws the dirt right out of the clothes. "
Oh, yes - it is necessary to manually heat up and add the water to the machine before you use it. I am not sure if the rinsing is done in a separate tub or not. To operate the machine, you will need to stand besides it and move the handle back and forth until your clothes are clean. And afterwards you will need to manually run the clothes one at a time through a wringer.
This washer sells for $13.95 or $169.11 in today's money. I couldn't find a modern washer online for $169 - though I'll bet one can buy a used one for less than that. BestBuy.com has washers starting at $269 and all you have to do is load the clothes and soap and come back later. The water is added and drained automatically and the machine does all the work.
This tea kettle caught my attention because I recently purchased a kettle at Target for about $9. The $1.89 price tag in 1923 works out to $22.91 in today's money.
My cheapo $9 Target teapot is stainless steel whereas the 1923 Monkey Ward cheapo teapot is only made out of aluminum. I did see some other tea kettles in Target approaching $20 but the primary difference between them and the one I bought was the higher priced ones tended to be more attractively designed. All of them, however, had a 2 quart capacity whereas smallest Montgomery Ward kettle listed was 5 quarts and they even offered one that was 8 quart.
I don't think I have ever seen a 5 quart, let alone an 8 quart, tea kettle for sale. I guess back then housewives needed two gallon kettles in order to heat up enough water for their manual Cyclone Vacuum Washers.
Unfortunately, the size difference makes a price comparison between modern kettles difficult. Today, however, the only the cheapest low end tea kettles are all aluminum.
At last, we finally find a product that appears to be a bargain even when compared with today's prices. The $1.69 for a 5 foot ladder works out to $20.49 in today's money. The $1.98 for a 6 foot ladder works out to $24. That strikes me as being a pretty low price for a step ladder. Home Depot's website offers a 6 foot fiberglass step ladder for $39.
Not everything was more expensive back then. The price of a house, for example, was significantly less than what it is today even after adjusting for inflation. This is true despite the advent of labor saving devices and low cost materials that are standard in modern construction. On the other hand, it was a lot more difficult to buy a house. Mortgages were usually issued only if a person had 40 or 50 percent equity in the house and the duration of the average mortgage was much shorter than today's standard 30 years. The advent of cheap and easy credit and long-term mortgages has made it possible for a larger pool of potential buyers to bid prices up.
Work requiring manual labor or skills that are not easy or possible to replace by technology usually cost less in the 1920s. One of the challenges in restoring certain vintage buildings is the high price one has to pay for the skilled craftsmen that are necessary in order to do the job right. In the early 1900s such craftsmen were plentiful and they were often low paid European immigrants from families who had handed the craft down from father to son for generations. Today, such craftsmen are very expensive as their numbers are few. In order to hire them, one has to be competitive with the pay scales of all of the other professions they could potentially work in.
Looking at old photographs and listening to vintage records, I have often envied those who were able to experience the pre-World War II decades first hand. But the reality is that the average person today enjoys conveniences and a level of material prosperity that our grandparents, even during the boom years of the 1920s, couldn't have even imagined.
The focus of Radio Dismuke and this blog is to celebrate those aspects of the 1920s and 1930s that I think were vastly better and which, to various degrees, have disappeared from our popular culture. It is easy for enthusiasts of the early 1900s to acquire a highly romanticized view of the period and overlook certain aspects of it that were not so great compared with our own era. Since we have no choice but to live in the age into which we are born, I think it is important to recognize the aspects of modern life which are worthy of appreciation and admiration so that we can consciously enjoy them rather than taking them for granted.
I am occasionally asked, if such a choice were possible, whether I would prefer to live back then or to stay in the present. My answer is neither. I am greedy: I want a future that combines the best of both eras. In order to get there, however, it is necessary for our culture to rediscover the many wonderful things from previous eras which have been largely forgotten or lost. One of the purposes of Radio Dismuke is to help contribute to that necessary process of rediscovery.
My cheapo $9 Target teapot is stainless steel whereas the 1923 Monkey Ward cheapo teapot is only made out of aluminum. I did see some other tea kettles in Target approaching $20 but the primary difference between them and the one I bought was the higher priced ones tended to be more attractively designed. All of them, however, had a 2 quart capacity whereas smallest Montgomery Ward kettle listed was 5 quarts and they even offered one that was 8 quart.
I don't think I have ever seen a 5 quart, let alone an 8 quart, tea kettle for sale. I guess back then housewives needed two gallon kettles in order to heat up enough water for their manual Cyclone Vacuum Washers.
Unfortunately, the size difference makes a price comparison between modern kettles difficult. Today, however, the only the cheapest low end tea kettles are all aluminum.
At last, we finally find a product that appears to be a bargain even when compared with today's prices. The $1.69 for a 5 foot ladder works out to $20.49 in today's money. The $1.98 for a 6 foot ladder works out to $24. That strikes me as being a pretty low price for a step ladder. Home Depot's website offers a 6 foot fiberglass step ladder for $39.
Not everything was more expensive back then. The price of a house, for example, was significantly less than what it is today even after adjusting for inflation. This is true despite the advent of labor saving devices and low cost materials that are standard in modern construction. On the other hand, it was a lot more difficult to buy a house. Mortgages were usually issued only if a person had 40 or 50 percent equity in the house and the duration of the average mortgage was much shorter than today's standard 30 years. The advent of cheap and easy credit and long-term mortgages has made it possible for a larger pool of potential buyers to bid prices up.
Work requiring manual labor or skills that are not easy or possible to replace by technology usually cost less in the 1920s. One of the challenges in restoring certain vintage buildings is the high price one has to pay for the skilled craftsmen that are necessary in order to do the job right. In the early 1900s such craftsmen were plentiful and they were often low paid European immigrants from families who had handed the craft down from father to son for generations. Today, such craftsmen are very expensive as their numbers are few. In order to hire them, one has to be competitive with the pay scales of all of the other professions they could potentially work in.
Looking at old photographs and listening to vintage records, I have often envied those who were able to experience the pre-World War II decades first hand. But the reality is that the average person today enjoys conveniences and a level of material prosperity that our grandparents, even during the boom years of the 1920s, couldn't have even imagined.
The focus of Radio Dismuke and this blog is to celebrate those aspects of the 1920s and 1930s that I think were vastly better and which, to various degrees, have disappeared from our popular culture. It is easy for enthusiasts of the early 1900s to acquire a highly romanticized view of the period and overlook certain aspects of it that were not so great compared with our own era. Since we have no choice but to live in the age into which we are born, I think it is important to recognize the aspects of modern life which are worthy of appreciation and admiration so that we can consciously enjoy them rather than taking them for granted.
I am occasionally asked, if such a choice were possible, whether I would prefer to live back then or to stay in the present. My answer is neither. I am greedy: I want a future that combines the best of both eras. In order to get there, however, it is necessary for our culture to rediscover the many wonderful things from previous eras which have been largely forgotten or lost. One of the purposes of Radio Dismuke is to help contribute to that necessary process of rediscovery.
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