. . . . . How Americans spend money 1900 to 1960 [Vol. II]

1900
During the year 1900 Carnegie owned 58½ per cent of the stock of his great steel company. That year it make a profit of 40 million dollars. Carnegie’s personal gain that year, whether or not be took it in dividends, was therefore well over 23 million dollars – with no income taxes to pay. During the five years 1896-1900 his average annual income, computed on the same basis, was about 10 millions. And these figures include no other income which he may have had from any other property.
At the time that Carnegie was enjoying this princely income, tax free, the average annual wage of all American workers was somewhere in the neighborhood of four or five hundred dollars; one economic calculator has arrived at a figure of $417 a year, another makes it $503. Remember that these figures are averages, not minimum incomes.
In short, Andrew Carnegie’s annual income was at least twenty thousand times greater than that of the average American workman.
(Authors footnote): To translate these figures into the terms of 1950 one must make allowance for the dwindling value of the dollar. This it is difficult to compute; for through statisticians may arrive at precise index figures for the rise in prices, money was spent in such different ways then, and nominally identical goods were in fact so different, that any index figure is suspect. For convenience I shall assume in this book that the 1900 dollar bought three times as much as the 1950 one, which is at least close to the reality. Translate the wages of 1900 into these terms and we find that the average 1900 wage, in terms of what it would buy in 1950, was somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,200 to $1,500 – which looks considerably less appalling than $400 to $500.
But if we multiply the worker’s wage in this way we should likewise multiply Andrew Carnegie’s. And we find that in terms of 1950 purchasing power his income came to more than 60 millions, tax free, in 1900, and to more than 30 millions per year for the five year 1896-1900. [23 pg 25]

What, one might ask, did a family with a 1900 income of $20,000 (equivalent to something like $60,000 net today, or $100,000 before taxes) have in common with a family with a 1900 income of only $2,500 (equivalent to something like $8,500 today before taxes)? Or what did an ill educated but canny speculator in street railway stocks, who delightedly leaped into sudden wealth and bought the best trotting horse in town, but still was free with the toothpick, have in common with the members of old families who were trying to maintain a polite mode of life of which he had no inkling? Yet for all their variety, most of the members of this group- which we might very loosely identify as the upper middle class – did have one thing in common, as we look back at them today. Though many of them suffered intermittently from acute financial worry, their general position seems to people of similar status today to have been amply comfortable.
On reason for this becomes apparent the moment one begins to translates 1900 income into 1950 income. Assuming that the cost of living tripled in the i8nervalk one figures at first that, let us say, the holder of a professorship which paid $3,000 a year in 1900 would have to receive $9,000 a year in 1950 to be as well off; but this calculation takes no account of income taxes: actually, the 1950 professor would have to receive $9,000 after taxes, or probably between $10,000 and $11,000 before taxes, to be as well heeled as his predecessor was. The chances are slim that the salary of is professorship has jumped at that rate. The same thing holds for a great many salaried jobs in businesses and other professions; and for the income from any but the most cannily chosen and carefully watched securities. By and large, salaried people and those living on inherited means or on savings have lost financial ground as a result of our progressive inflation.
[23 pg 39]
You may be sure that some of theses houses were occupied in 1900 by families with incomes of well under ten thousand dollars a year – the equivalent of 40 thousand or less before taxes today. (1950) This is a handsome income, but it won’t command the nineteen fifties anything lie so much space o the finest street of a big city. How did these families manage?
Here are the answers. They employed a cook at perhaps $5 a week, a waitress at $3.50 a week, a laundress at $3.50 a week; the waitress and laundress shared the upstairs work. They could add the once a week services of a cleaning woman to come in at %1.50 a day, and also the very part time muscle of a choreman who served several other houses, and they would still be able to keep up the house (and get most of their laundry done at tone, too) at a total annual cost of perhaps $800 a year – the equivalent of say $2,400 today. Some of the clothes for the women of the family were bought ready made in the stores, or were made by professional dressmakers who had their own establishments, but the chances are that most of them were run up at home by dressmakers and seamstresses who came in at $3.50 to $1.50 a day. … Even when one added the cost of materials bought by the yard, clothes thus make were not expensive. This family probably owned no carriage, but got about on foot and by trolley – or, in bad weather or on festive occasions, by hired cab. [23 pg 41]

…thirteen British purchasing officers ranging this country buying horses and mules also hired men to tend the animals on the long voyage to South Africa. [for the Boer War] An advertisement for muleteers in the New Orleans Picayune gave the going rate: “$15 for the run and 75 cents a day coming back.” [??]

Harry [Truman] graduation from Independence high School. Harry had tried a little gambling himself the summer after graduation, while traveling east by train to visit his favorite Aunt Ada, Matt’s younger sister, in southern Illinois. It was his first time away from home alone, and on the return trip, stopping in St. Louis to see still more of Matt’s people, a great aunt named Hettie Powell and her family, he was taken to a horse race and urged by a cousin and three other young men to put in one of the five dollars they bet on a long shot called Claude. As Harry learned afterward, Claude was a well known “mud horse” – the worse the track, the better he ran. Just as the race was to start, rain came in torrents. Not only did Claude finish first, he paid 25 to 1. Harry had never felt so rich in his life, but he was not to bet on a horse again for another forty years. [14 pg 67]
One should add, too, by way of a footnote, that such a way of living could be approximated by people who had much smaller incomes with which to gratify their genteel tastes. A college professor on a salary of $2,000 to $3,000, for example – roughly equivalent to $6,500 to 10,500 today before taxes – had to watch every penny and forego many satisfactions which he felt were the natural right of well educated people, but he could afford a fair sized house and at least one maid. In 1896, when Professor Woodrow Wilson of Princeton was trying to persuade Professor Frederick Jackson Turner to join the Princeton faculty, Mrs. Wilson set down a reasonable budget for a professor on a $3,500 salary. It included food and lights, $75 a month; rent, $42 a month; coal, $12 a month; water, $4 a month; and servants, $29 a month. This was for two servants, and was presumably figured at a rate of $3.50 a week per servant.
By dint of the most scrupulous economy it was even possible for a family with an income of only $1,500 (read perhaps $4,800 today) to play a part as a “member of society” in a town of 20,000 people, living in a modest two story house on the best street in town, employing a full time colored maid who came in for the day at $4 a week, entertaining graciously though modestly, and being invited to the most enviable functions of the local elite. Such a family could afford no travel at all; for us in the automobile age it is difficult to realize how circumscribed geographically was their life. But within limits they could follow, without great discomfort, the pattern of the prosperous. [23 pg 42]
Yet we must remember that the Commonwealth Avenue family’s ample life in their big house was made possible by the meager wages of the maids who lived in narrow rooms at the very top of the house, four flights above the level on which they did most of their interminable work; by the meager wages of dressmakers and seamstresses, of the carpenters and masons who had built the house, of the workers in factories and stores who produce and sold the goods they used; and that the space and service which were at the disposal of even the $1,500 family were likewise made possible by low wages. [23 pg43]

Wages. The average annual earnings of American workers, as I had already said, were something like $400 to $500 a year. For unskilled workers they were somewhat less under $460 in the North, under $300 in the South. A standard wage for an unskilled man was a dollar and a half a day – when he could get work. That qualification is important: one must bear in mind that according to the census of 1900, nearly 6½ million were idle (and therefore, in most cases, quite without income) during some part of the year, that of these, nearly 2 million were idle four to six months out of the twelve. [23 pg 49]

The Yale Harvard game had been played at Yale field, with 20,000 people in the bleachers, and speculators offering seats at prices from $10 to $20. [23 pg 23]

1901
In February [J.P.] Morgan, representing all of those interests in steel products and railroads that were threatened by Carnegie’s ever expanding empire, offered to buy Carnegie Steel and quickly accepted Carnegie’s price of $480,000,000. [13 pg 61]

John Truman’s run of luck on wheat futures had ended. He began losing heavily that same summer of 1901, and to recover his losses kept risking more and more until he had gambled away nearly everything he and Matt owned – as much as $40,000 in cash, stocks, and personal property, including 160 acres of prime land on Blue ridge given to Matt by her father.
The situation could not have been much worse. At age fifty one, John Truman was wiped out. The Waldo Avenue house had to be sold. For a while the family lived in another part of town, trying to keep up appearances, but eventually they had to pack and leave Independence altogether. They moved to a modest neighborhood in Kansas city, where John took a job for wages, something no Truman had done before, He went to work as a night watchman at a grain elevator. It was the best job he could find, at pay comparable to that of a farm hand. For a man of such fierce pride, and tho those who loved him, it could only have been a painful time. [14 pg 66]

Harry [Truman] takes a job as construction time keeper on Santa Fe railroad. The Santa Fe was doubling its tracks into Kansas City. Harry worked ten hour days, six days a week for $30 a month, plus board, which meant living with the labor gangs in their tent camps along the river, eating greasy food, and listening to their talk. On an hourly basis the pay was not much better than at Clinton’s drugstore. The talk included profanity and raw observations on life of a kind he had never imagined.
He keep tabs on everybody’s time – mule drivers, blacksmiths, and the common laborers who were mostly hoboes, four hundred men in total – and saw that they were paid off every two weeks, a transaction customarily performed on Saturday nights in a saloon, so the men would drink up their earnings and thereby guarantee a return to work Monday morning, a strategy that, Harry observed sadly, nearly always worked. [14 pg 68]

1902
[E. Deeds writes] to Kettering offering him a position [as electrical engineer] at $50 a week. Kettering accepted but said that until the end of the term he could only come to Dayton for weekends. He was finishing up his university course. Deeds started his salary at once. When Kettering turned up at the NCR factory after the second week he pulled one of the company checks for $50 out of his pocket and handed it to Deeds with the remark:
“There has been a clerical mistake. I got two checks for $50.”
Kettering, with his mind concentrated on science, had not read the Deeds letter carefully and believed that he was to get $50 a month. To a young man who had been teaching school and working as pole-setter this was a lot of money. [6 pg 78]

In the formal claim she [Harriet Louisa] filed in 1902 more than thirty five years after the war, it is recorded that Union forces under five different officers came to the fam on five different occasions, beginning with General Lane in May 1861. All that they took or destroyed is itemized. If the record is accurate, then Lane was accountable only for fifteen mules and thirteen horses valued at $4,525.
But by Harriet Louisa’s own recollection on numerous occasions before and after the report was filed, as well as the stories repeated by those of her children who were witness to the same events, this is what happened:
Lane and his Kansans proceeded to shoot four hundred Hampshire hogs, then cut out only the hams, leaving the rest to rot. Harriet Louisa was ordered to bake biscuits, which he did “until her hands blistered.” some of the soldiers passed the time playing cards in the yard, sitting in the mud on her best hand sewn quilt. Others, “out of sheer cussedness,” blasted away at her hens. [14 pg 30]

Robert A. Woods of the South End House in Boston, a scrupulously careful observer, reported in 1902 that unskilled laborers in Boston were making from $9 to $12 a week – when work as available; skilled labor artisans in general were making $13.50 to $19.50 – again with “some lost time”; but cigar makers, by contrast were making $15 to $25, with “little lost time.” [23 pg 47]

In Boston, Robert A. Woods reported in 1902 that the average wage of shopgirls in the North and West Ends was from $5 to $6 a week. In the South, in 1900, nearly a third of the male employees over sixteen years of age in the cotton mills were getting less that $6 a week. Nor was this anywhere near the bottom of the scale. Investigating the condition of Italian workers in Chicago at about this time, the federal Bureau of Labor found one class of unskilled laborers who averaged as little as $4.37 a week. Woods reported further that in the garment ships of Boston, women were earning from $5 a week down to $3 a week, and added that “women sewing at home cannot earn more than 30 cents or 40 cents in a long day”; and he was echoed by Jacob A. Riis in New York, who reported in 1900 that he had seen women finishing “pants” for 30 cents a day. Try translating that into the terms of today: even after you have multiplied it by three to take account of the triple cost of living, you arrive at the noble sum of 90 cents a day, which is $5.40 a week, which is $280.80 for a full working year!
HOURS: The average working day was in the neighborhood of 10 hours, 6 days a week: total, 60 a week. In business offices there was a growing trend toward a Saturday half holiday, but if anybody had suggested a five day week he would have been considered demented. At the time when the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union was established in 1900, the hours in this trade, in New York, were 70 a week. [23 pg 49]
In 1902 [The Saturday Evening Post] sold 314,671 copies per issue, and brought in an advertising revenue of $360,125. (See 1922) [23 pg 104]

1903
On Friday, April 24, Harry Truman applies for a job National Bank of Commerce. He was hired as a clerk in the vault starting at $20 a month, which was about what his father was making at his night watchman’s job, and there he stayed for two years. [14 pg 68]
The vault was where Harry spent his days – “the zoo,” as the clerks called it – was below street level, downstairs from the bank’s cavernous main lobby with its Corinthian columns and brass spittoons. He cleared checks drawn on country banks, sometimes handling as much as a million dollars a day, while keeping all notations in longhand. It was not work calling for much initiative or imagination or that he especially cared for… In time he was earning $40 a month, which made him the family’s number one breadwinner. [14 pg 69]

Since starting at the bank, Harry had been living at home, or what for the time being passed for home in Kansas City, spending little more than carfare and lunch money, which, according to the pocket account book he kept, came to about 50 cents a day. Once, throwing economies to the wind, he spent $11 for “Ties Collar Cuffs Pins, etc.” Later $10 went for “Music,” piano lessons with Mrs. White, which he soon had to drop. He would sometimes say later that he quit because playing the piano was “sissy”. The truth was the lessons had become more than he could afford.
His one indulgence was the theater, which he loved and for which he was willing to splurge, sometimes as much as two dollars. [14 pg 71]

A Lord & Thomas advertisement in 1903 – it was by then “the largest advertising agency in America” – it was by then “the largest advertising agency in America” – showed a picture of a file stocked with the arcane wisdom of over twenty years of advertising research. “It is to us, and indirectly to our 527 clients, what the compass, is to the mariner at sea… the precise knowledge this $100,000 cabinet affords is what compels us to pay $72,000 yearly for a staff of Copy Writers…” [24 ]pg 136]

In the following list are given the “trade values agreed upon by the
Experiment Stations of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New
Jersey and Vermont, after a careful study of prices ruling in the
larger markets of the southern New England and Middle States.”

Trade values of fertilizing ingredients in raw materials and chemicals
for 1904:

Cents per lb.
Nitrogen in Nitrates 16
Nitrogen in Ammonia Salts 17½
Organic Nitrogen in dry and fine ground fish, blood,
and meat, and in mixed fertilizers 17½
Organic Nitrogen in fine ground bone and tankage 17
Organic Nitrogen in coarse bone and tankage 12½
Phosphoric Acid soluble in water 4½
Phosphoric Acid soluble in ammonium citrate 4
Phosphoric Acid in fine ground bone and tankage 4
Phosphoric Acid in coarse bone and tankage 3
Phosphoric Acid (insoluble in water and in ammonium
citrate) in mixed fertilizer 2
Potash as high-grade sulphate and in mixtures free
from muriate (chloride) 5
Potash as muriate 4¼

For example, in calculating the commercial value of the plant food in
a fertilizer we will take the formula mentioned on page 205, namely:

Ammonia 2 to 3 per cent.
Available Phosphoric Acid 8 to 10 “
Total Phosphoric Acid 11 to 14 “
Total Bone Phosphate 23 to 25 “
Actual Potash 10 to 12 “
Sulphate of Potash 18 to 20 “

This fertilizer is evidently a mixture of bone meal and sulphate of
potash and the plant food contained in it is as follows:

Nitrogen 1.65 per cent.
Available Phosphoric Acid 8 “
Insoluble Phosphoric Acid 3 “
Potash 10 “

One hundred pounds of the mixture would contain:

Pounds. Value per
100 lbs.
Nitrogen 1.64 value at 17½¢ .29
Available Phosphoric Acid 8 ” ” 4¢ .32
Insoluble Phosphoric Acid 3 ” ” 2¢ .06
Potash 10 ” ” 5¢ .50
—–
Total $1.17

In one ton the whole value would be twenty times this or $23.40. Add
to this $8, which is about the average charge for mixing, bagging,
shipping, selling and profit, and we find that $32 is probably the
lowest figure at which this fertilizer could be purchased on the
markets, and very likely the price would be higher as we have taken
the lowest guaranteed per cent. of plant food for our basis of
calculation.
Fertilizers are generally mixed and sold to the farmer on the ton
basis.
LOW GRADE MIXTURES
Most dealers, to meet a certain demand, furnish mixtures ranging from
$15 to $25 per ton. These mixtures are necessarily low grade and are
more expensive than the higher priced high grade mixtures.

For example:

A certain potato fertilizer on the market, which we will call mixture
A, has the following guaranteed analysis:

Ammonia 7 to 8 per cent.
Available Phosphoric Acid 6 to 7 “
Actual Potash 5 to 6 “

A ton of this would contain:

Pounds.
Nitrogen 115.4 value at 17½¢ $20.19
Available Phosphoric Acid 120 ” ” 4¢ 4.80
Potash 100 ” ” 5¢ 5.00
—– ——
Totals 335.4 $29.99

Add to this the average charge for mixing, bagging, selling, profit,
etc., $8, and the cost will be $37.99.

The selling price of this fertilizer would probably be not less than
$40. Now suppose the farmer thinks this a high priced and expensive
fertilizer and looks about for something cheaper. He finds a low grade
potato fertilizer, which we will call mixture B, that has the
following guarantee:

Ammonia 3½ to 4 per cent.
Available Phosphoric Acid 3 to 3½ “
Actual Potash 2½ to 3 “

Just one-half the guarantee of the high grade mixture A. A ton of this
contains:

Pounds.
Nitrogen 57.7 value at 17½¢ $10.10
Available Phosphoric Acid 60 ” ” 4¢ 2.40
Potash 50 ” ” 5¢ 2.50
—– ——
Totals 167.7 $15.00
Add average charge for mixing, etc. 8.00
——
$23.00

The selling price of this would very likely be not less than $25.

This seems at first sight to be cheaper and more reasonable. But let
us see.

In a ton of mixture A he gets 335.4 pounds of plant food for $40, or
at an average cost of twelve cents per pound, while in a ton of
mixture B he gets 167.7 pounds of plant food for $25, or at an average
cost of fifteen cents per pound.

To put it another way, in a ton of the high grade mixture A, he gets
335.4 pounds of plant food for $40. To get the same amount of plant
food, 335.4 pounds, in the low grade mixture, B, it will be necessary
to buy two tons at a cost of $50.

A low grade fertilizer is always expensive even if the plant food is
furnished by high grade materials. [44]

1904
I finally compromised on from two hundred to three hundred acres of land, with a total expenditure of not more than $60,000 for the building of my factory. It was to produce butter, eggs, pork, and apples, all of best quality, and they were to be sold at best prices. I discoursed at some length on farms and farmers to Polly, who slept through most of the harangue. She afterward said that she enjoyed it, but I never knew whether she referred to my lecture or to her nap. [45]

There were probably twenty‑seven or twenty‑eight hundred people in the village, most of whom owned estates of from one to thirty acres, varying in value from $10,000 to $100,000. [45]

The farm belonged to an unsettled estate, and was much run down, as little had been done to improve its fertility, and much to deplete it. There were two sets of buildings, including a house of goodly proportions, a cottage of no particular value, and some dilapidated barns. The property could be bought at a bargain. It had been held at $100 an acre; but as the estate was in process of settlement, and there was an urgent desire to force a sale, I finally secured it for $71 per acre. The two renters on the farm still had six months of occupancy before their leases expired. They were willing to resign their leases if I would pay a reasonable sum for the standing crops and their stock and equipments.
The crops comprised about forty acres of corn, fifty acres of oats, and five acres of potatoes. The stock was composed of two herds of cows (seven in one and nine in the other), eleven spring calves, about forty hogs, and the usual assortment of domestic fowls. The equipment of the farm in machinery and tools was meagre to the last degree. I offered the renters $700 and $600, respectively, for their leasehold and other property. This was more than their value, but I wanted to take possession at once. [45]

A ride of forty‑five minutes brought us to Exeter. The service of this railroad, by the way, is of the best; there is hardly a half‑hour in the day when one cannot make the trip either way, and the fare is moderate: $8.75 for twenty‑five rides,—thirty‑five cents a ride. [45]

William Thompson, forty‑six years of age, tall, lean, wiry, had been a farmer all his life. His wife had died three years before, and a year later, he had lost his farm through an imperfect title. Understanding machinery and being a fair carpenter, he then came to the city, with $200 in his pocket, joined the
Carpenter’s Union, and tried to make a living at that trade. Between dull business, lock‑outs, tie‑ups, and strikes, he was reduced to fifty cents, and owed three dollars for room rent. He was in dead earnest when he threw his union card on my table and said:— “I would rather work for fifty cents a day on a farm than take my chances for six times as much in the union.”
This was the sort of man I wanted: one who had tried other things and was glad of a chance to return to the land. Thompson said that after he had spent one lonesome year in the city, he had married a sensible woman of forty, who was now out at service on account of his hard luck. He also told of a husky son of two‑and‑twenty who was at work on a farm within fifty miles of the city. I liked the man from the first, for he seemed direct and earnest. I told him to eat up the fifty cents he had in his pocket and to see me at noon of the following day. Meantime I looked up one of his references; and when he came, I engaged him, with the understanding that his time should begin at once.
The wage agreed upon was $20 a month for the first half‑year. If he proved satisfactory, he was to receive $21 a month for the next six months, and there was to be a raise of $1 a month for each half‑year that he remained with me until his monthly wage should amount to $40,—each to give or take a month’s notice to quit. This seemed fair to both. I would not pay more than $20 a month to an untried man, but a good man is worth more. As I wanted permanent, steady help, I proposed to offer a fair bonus to secure it. Other things being equal, the man who has “gotten the hang” of a farm can do better work and get better results than a stranger. [45]

The transient farm‑hand is a delusion and a snare. He has no interest except his wages, and he is abreeder of discontent. If the hundreds of thousands of able‑bodied men who are working for scant wages in cities, or inanely tramping the country, could see the dignity of the labor which is directly productive, what a change would come over the face of the country! There are nearly six million farms in this nation, and four millions of them would be greatly benefited by the addition of another man to the working force. There is a comfortable living and a minimum of $180 a year for each of four million men, if they will only seek it and honestly earn it. Seven hundred millions in wages, and double or treble that in product and added values, is a consideration not unworthy the attention of social scientists. To favor an exodus to the land is, I believe, the highest type of benevolence, and the surest and safest solution of the labor problem.
Besides engaging Thompson, I tentatively bespoke the services of his wife and son. Mrs. Thompson was to come for $15 a month and a half‑dollar raise for each six months, the son on the same terms as the father. [45]

My plan involved not only finding, raising, and distributing water, but also the care of waste water and sewage. Inquiring among those who had deep wells in the village, I found that good water was usually reached at from 180 to 210 feet. As my well‑site was high, I expected to have to bore deep. I contracted with a well man of good repute for a six‑inch well of 250 feet (or less), piped and finished to the surface, for $2 a foot; any greater depth to be subject to further agreement.
It took nearly three months to finish the water system, but it has proved wonderfully convenient and satisfactory. During seven years I have not spent more than $50 for changes and repairs. We struck bed‑rock at 197 feet, drilled 27 feet into this rock, and found water which rose to within 50 feet of the surface and which could not be materially lowered by the constant use of a three‑inch power‑pump.
The water was milky white for three days, in spite of much pumping; and then, and ever after, it ran clear and sweet, with a temperature of 54° F. Well and water being satisfactory, I cheerfully paid the well man $448 for the job. [45]

Meantime I contracted for a tank twelve by twelve feet, to be raised thirty feet above the well on eight timbers, each ten inches square, well bolted and braced, for $430,—I to put in the foundation. This consisted of eight concrete piers, each five feet deep in the clay, three feet square, and capped at the level of the ground with a limestone two feet square and eight inches thick. These piers were set in octagon form around the well, with their centres seven feet from the middle of the bore, making the spread of the framework fourteen feet at the ground and ten at the platform. The foundation cost $32. A Rider eight‑inch, hot‑air, wood‑burning, pumping engine (with a two‑inch pipe leading to the tank, and a four‑inch pipe from it), filled the tank quickly; and it was surprising to see how little fuel it consumed. It cost $215. [45]

The trenches for the pipes were opened by a party of five Italians whom a railroad friend found for me. These men boarded themselves, slept in the barn, and did the work for seventy‑five cents a rod, the job costing me $169. [45]

Opening the sewer trenches cost a little more, for they were as deep as those for the water, and a little wider. Eight hundred feet of main sewer, a three‑hundred‑foot branch to the house, and short branches from barns, pens, and farm‑houses, made in all about fourteen hundred feet, which cost $83 to open.
The sewer ended in the stable yard back of the horse barn, in a ten‑foot catch‑basin near the manure pit. A few feet from this catch‑basin was a second, and beyond this a third, all of the same size, with drain‑pipes connecting them about two feet below the ground. These basins were closely covered at all times, and in winter they were protected from frost by a thick layer of coarse manure. They were placed near the site of the manure pit for convenience in cleaning, which had to be done every three months for the first one, once in six months for the second and rarely for the third; indeed, the water flowing from the third was always clear. This waste water was run through a drain‑pipe diagonally across the northwest corner of the big orchard to an open ditch in the north lane. Opening this drain of forty rods cost $30. Later I carried this closed drain to the creek, at an additional expense of $67. The connecting of the water pipes and the laying of the sewer was done by a local plumber for $50; the drain‑pipe and sewer‑pipe cost $112; and the three catch‑basins, bricked up and covered with two‑inch plank, cost $63. The filling in of all these trenches was done by my own men with teams and scrapers, and should not be figured into this expense account. It must be borne in mind that while this elaborate water system was being installed, no buildings were completed and but few were even begun; the big house was not finished for more than a year. The sites of all the buildings had been decided on, and the farm‑house and the cottage had been moved and remodelled, by the middle of October, at which date the water plant was completed. An abundant supply of good water is essential to the comfort of man and beast, and the money invested in securing it will pay a good interest in the long run. My water plant cost me a lot of money, $2758; but it hasn’t cost me $10 a year since it was finished. [45]

Opening the sewer trenches cost a little more, for they were as deep as those for the water, and a little wider. Eight hundred feet of main sewer, a three‑hundred‑foot branch to the house, and short branchesfrom barns, pens, and farm‑houses, made in all about fourteen hundred feet, which cost $83 to open.
The sewer ended in the stable yard back of the horse barn, in a ten‑foot catch‑basin near the manure pit. A few feet from this catch‑basin was a second, and beyond this a third, all of the same size, with drain‑pipes connecting them about two feet below the ground. These basins were closely covered at all times, and in winter they were protected from frost by a thick layer of coarse manure. They were placed near the site of the manure pit for convenience in cleaning, which had to be done every three months for the first one, once in six months for the second and rarely for the third; indeed, the water flowing from the third was always clear. This waste water was run through a drain‑pipe diagonally across the northwest corner of the big orchard to an open ditch in the north lane. Opening this drain of forty rods cost $30. Later I carried this closed drain to the creek, at an additional expense of $67. The connecting of the water pipes and the laying of the sewer was done by a local plumber for $50; the drain‑pipe and sewer‑pipe cost $112; and the three catch‑basins, bricked up and covered with two‑inch plank, cost $63. The filling in of all these trenches was done by my own men with teams and scrapers, and should not be figured into this expense account. It must be borne in mind that while this elaborate water system was being installed, no buildings were completed and but few were even begun; the big house was not finished for more than a year. The sites of all the buildings had been decided on, and the farm‑house and the cottage had been moved and remodelled, by the middle of October, at which date the water plant was completed. An abundant supply of good water is essential to the comfort of man and beast, and the money invested in securing it will pay a good interest in the long run. My water plant cost me a lot of money, $2758; but it hasn’t cost me $10 a year since it was finished. [45]

The house was to be heated by a hot‑water system; and I afterward let this job to a city man, who put in a satisfactory plant for $500. [45]

The mason had finished his estimate, which was $560. After some explanations, I concluded that it was a fair price, and agreed to it, provided the work could be done promptly. The carpenter was not ready to give me figures; he said, however, that he could get a man to move the house for $120, and that he would send me by mail that night an itemized estimate of costs, and also one from a plumber. [45]

THE HORSE‑AND‑BUGGY MAN
August 3 found me at Four Oaks in the early afternoon. A great hollow had been dug for the cellar, and Thompson said that it would take but one more full day to finish it. Piles of material gave evidence that the mason was alert, and the house‑mover had already dropped his long timbers, winch, and chains by the side of the farm‑house.
While I was discussing matters with Thompson, a smart trap turned into the lot, and a well‑set‑up young man sprang out of the stylish runabout and said,—
“Dr. Williams, I hear you want more help on your farm.”
“I can use another man or two to advantage, if they are good ones.”
“Well, I don’t want to brag, but I guess I am a good one, all right. I ain’t afraid of work, and there isn’t much that I can’t do on a farm. What wages do you pay?”
I told him my plan of an increasing wage scale, and he did not object. “That includes horse keep, I suppose?” said he.
“I do not know what you mean by ‘horse keep.’”
“Why, most of the men on farms around here own a horse and buggy, to use nights, Sundays, and holidays, and we expect the boss to keep the horse. This is my rig. It is about the best in the township; cost me $280 for the outfit.”
“See here, young man, this is another specimen of farm economics, and it is one of the worst in the lot.
Let me do a small example in mental arithmetic for you. The interest on $280 is $14; the yearly depreciation of your property, without accidents, is at least $40; horse‑shoeing and repairs, $20; loss of wages (for no man will keep your horse for less than $4 a month), $48. In addition to this, you will be tempted to spend at least $5 a month more with a horse than without one; that is $60 more. You are throwing away $182 every year without adding $1 to your value as an employee, one ounce of dignity to your employment, or one foot of gain in your social position, no matter from what point you view it.
“Taking it for granted that you receive $25 a month for every month of the year (and this is admitting too much), you waste more than half on that blessed rig, and you can make no provision for the future, for sickness, or for old age. No, I will not keep your horse, nor will I employ any man whose scheme of life doesn’t run further than the ownership of a horse and buggy.”
“But a fellow must keep up with the procession; he must have some recreation, and all the men around here have rigs.”
“Not around Four Oaks. Recreation is all right, but find it in ways less expensive. Read, study, cultivate the best of your kind, plan for the future and save for it, and you will not lack for recreation. Sell your horse and buggy for $200, if you cannot get more, put the money at interest, save $200 out of your wages, and by the end of the year you will be worth over $400 in hard cash and much more in self‑respect. You can easily add 1200 a year to your savings, without missing anything worth while; and it will not be long before you can buy a farm, marry a wife, and make an independent position. I will have no horse‑and‑buggy men on my farm. It’s up to you.”
“By Jove! I believe you may be right. It looks like a square deal, and I’ll play it, if you’ll give me time to sell the outfit.”
“All right, come when you can. I’ll find the work.”
That day being Saturday, I told Thompson that I would come out early Monday morning, bringing with me a rough map of the place as I had planned it, and we would go over it with a chain and drive some outlining stakes. I then returned to Exeter, found the carpenter and the plumber, and accepted their
estimates,—$630 and $325, respectively. The farm‑house moved, finished, furnished, and heated, but not painted or papered, would cost $2630. Painting, papering, window‑shades, and odds and ends cost $275, making a total of $2905. It proved a good investment, for it was a comfortable and convenient home for the men and women who afterward occupied it. It has certainly been appreciated by its occupants, and few have left it without regret. We have always tried to make it an object lesson of cleanliness and cheerfulness, and I don’t think a man has lived in it for six months without being bettered.
It seemed a good deal of money to put on an old farm‑house for farm‑hands, but it proved one of the best investments at Four Oaks, for it kept the men contented and cheerful workers. [45]

Speaking of fences reminds me that I must order the cedar posts. Have you any idea how many posts it will take to fence this farm as we have platted it? I suppose not. Well, I can tell you. Twenty‑two hundred and fifty at one rod apart, or 1850 at twenty feet apart.
These posts must be six feet above and three feet below ground. They will cost eighteen cents each.
That item will be $333, for there are seven miles of fence, including the line fence between me and my north neighbor. “What do you buy cedar posts for, when you have enough better ones on the place?” asked Thompson. [45]
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, down in the wood yonder there’s enough dead white oak, standing or on the ground, to make three thousand, nine‑foot posts, and one seasoned white oak will outlast two cedars, and it is twice as strong.”
“Well, that’s good! How much will it cost to get them out?”
“About five cents apiece. A couple of smart fellows can make good wages at that price.”
“Good. We will save thirteen cents each. They will cost $93 instead of $333. I don’t know everything yet, do I, Thompson?” [45]

Wednesday, the 7th, I went to see the new team. I found a pair of flea‑bitten gray Flemish mares, weighing about twenty‑eight hundred pounds. They were four years old, short of leg and long of body, and looked fit. The surgeon passed them sound, and said he considered them well worth the price asked,—$300. I was pleased with the team, and remembered a remark I had heard as a boy from an itinerant Methodist minister at a time when the itinerant minister was supposed to know all there was to know about horse‑flesh. This was his remark: “There was never a flea‑bitten mare that was a poor horse.” In spite of its ambiguity, the saying made an impression from which I never recovered. I always expected great things from flea‑bitten grays.
The team, wagon, harness, etc., added $395 to the debit account against the farm. [45]

On the 26th, when I reached the station at Exeter, I found Thompson and the gray team just starting for the farm with the second load of wire fencing. I had ordered fifty‑six rolls of Page’s woven wire fence, forty rods in each roll. This fence cost me seventy cents a rod, $224 a mile, or $1568 for the seven miles. Add to this $37 for freight, and the total amounted to $1605 for the wire to fence my land. [45]

This settled the fence matter between Jackson and me. The men who cut the posts took the job of setting them, stretching the wire, and hanging the gates, for $400. This included the staples and also the stretching of three strands of barbed wire above the woven wire; two at six‑inch intervals on the outside, and one inside, level with the top of the post. Thus my ring fence was six feet high and hard to climb. I have a serious dislike for trespass, from either man or beast, and my boundary fence was made to discourage trespassers. I like to have those who enter my property do so by the ways provided, for “whoso climbeth up any other way, the same is a thief and a robber.”
The ring fence was finished by the middle of October. The interior fences were built by my own men during soft weather in winter and spring; and, as I had already paid for the wire and posts, nothing more should be charged to the fence account. In round numbers these seven miles of excellent fence cost me $2100. A lot of money! But the fence is there to‑day as serviceable as when it was set, and it will stand for twice seven years more. One hundred dollars a year is not a great price to pay for the security and seclusion which a good fence furnishes. There was no need of putting up so much interior fence. I would save a mile or two if I had it to do again; however, I do not dislike my straight lanes and tightly fenced fields. [45

Wood was to be the principal fuel at Four Oaks, since it would cost nothing, and there must be ample shelter for a large amount. The granary would have to be built well and substantially, but it was not large. The power‑house also was a small affair. The whole cost of these five buildings was $8550. The itemized amount is, horse barn, $2000, forage barn, $3400, granary, $2200, woodhouse, $400, power‑house, $550. [45]

The cottage was moved to its place on the line, and the last of the seeding on the north forty was done.
Ten tons of fertilizer were sown on this forty‑acre tract (at a cost of $250), and it was then left to itself, not to be trampled over by man or beast, except for the stretching of fences or for work around some necessary buildings, until the middle of the following May. [45]

My order called for thirty‑four hundred three‑year‑old apple trees of the highest grade, to be delivered in good condition on the platform at Exeter for the lump sum of $550. The agreement had been made in August, and the trees were to be delivered as near the 20th of October as practicable. Apple trees comprised my entire planting for the autumn of 1895. [45]

On the 10th the horse stable was far enough advanced to permit the horses to be moved, and the old barn was deserted. A neighbor who had bought this barn at once pulled it down and carted it away. In this transaction I held out several days for $50, but as my neighbor was obdurate I finally accepted his offer. The first entry on the credit side of my farm ledger is, By one old barn, $45. The receipts for
October, November, and December, were:—
By one old barn
$45.00
By apples on trees (153 trees at $1.85 each)
283.00
By 480 bushels of potatoes at 30 cents per bushel
144.00
By five old sows, not fat
35.00
One cow
15.00
Three cows
70.00
Two cows
35.00
Three cows, two heifers, nine calves
187.00
Forty‑three shoats and gilts,
average 162 lb., at 2 cents per lb
139.00
‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑
Total
$953.00 [45]

November and December of 1895 gave us rain and snow fall equal to twelve and a half inches of water. Plans at Four Oaks had to be modified.
There was no more use for the ploughs. Nos. 10 and 11, and much of the home lot were left until spring. I had planned to mulch heavily all the newly set trees, and for thiscarloads of manure (at a cost of $72); but this manure could not be hauled across the sodden fields, and must needs be piled in a great heap for use in the spring. The carpenters worked at disadvantage, and the farm men could do little more than keep themselves and the animals comfortable. They did, however, finish one good job between showers. They tile‑drained the routes for the two roads on the home lot,—the straight one east and west through the building line, about 1000 feet, and the winding,carriage drive to the site of the main house, about 1850 feet. The tile pipe cost $123. They also set a lot of fence posts in the soft ground. [45]

Building progressed slowly during the bad weather, but before the end of December the horse barn, the woodshed, the granary, the forage barn, and the power‑house were completed, and most of the machinery was in place. The machinery consisted of a fifteen horse‑power engine, with shafting running to the forage barn, the granary, and the woodshed. A power‑saw was set in the end of the shed, a grinding mill in the granary, and a fodder‑cutter in the forage barn. The cost of these items was:—
Engine and shafting
$187.00
Saw
24.00
Mill
32.00
Feed‑cutter and carrier
76.00
nothing
‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑
Total
$319.00

I gave the services of my two carpenters, Thompson and Sam, during most of this time to Nelson, for I had but little work for them, and he was not making much out of his job.
The last few days of 1895 turned clear and cold, and the barometer set “fair.” The change chirked us up, and we ended the year in good spirits. [45]

But first I must add a few items to the debit account. Moving the cottage cost $30. I paid $134 for grass seed and seed rye. The wage account for six men and two women for five months was $735.
Their food account was $277. Of course the farm furnished milk, cream, butter, vegetables, some fruit, fresh pork, poultry, and eggs. There were also some small freight bills, which had not been accounted for, amounting to $31, and $8 had been spent in transportation for the men. Then the farm must be charged with interest on all money advanced, when I had completed my additions. The rate was to be five per cent, and the time three months. [45]

I saw Nelson the same day and contracted with him for an ice‑house capable of holding four hundred tons, for $900. The walls of the house to be of three thicknesses of lumber with two air spaces (one four inches, the other two) without filling. As a result of the conference with Thompson, I had, before the first of March, a wood‑house full of wood, which seemed a supply for two years at full steam; an ice‑house nearly full of ice; two serviceable bridges across the brook; the wire fencing almost completed; and eighty loads of gravel,—about one‑third of what I needed. The whole cash outlay was,—
300 tons of ice at 30 cents per ton
$90.00
80 tons of gravel at 25 cents per load
20.00
Fence staples
19.00
‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑
Total
$129.00

The conference with Sam Jones, the hen man, was deferred until my next visit, and my plans for the cowbarn, dairy‑house, and hog‑house were left to Nelson for consideration, he promising to give me estimates within a few days. [45]

I have the highest regard for this domestic fowl, and I would not for a great deal impose a too arduous task upon her. I feel like encouraging her in her peculiar industry, for which she is so eminently fitted, but not like forcing her into strenuous efforts that would rob her of vivacity and dull her social and domestic impulses. No; if the hen will politely present me with one hundred eggs a year, I will thank her and ask no more. Some one will say: “How can you make hens pay if they don’t lay more than eight dozen eggs a year? Eggs sometimes sell as low as twelve cents per dozen.”
Four Oaks hens never have laid one‑cent eggs, and never will. They would quit work if such a price were suggested. Ninety per cent of the eggs from Four Oaks have sold for thirty cents or more per dozen, and the demand is greater than the supply. The Four Oaks certificate that the egg is not thirty‑six hours old when it reaches the egg cup, makes two and a half cents look small to those who can afford to pay for the best. To lack confidence in the egg is a serious matter at the breakfast table, and a person who can insure perfect trust will not lack patronage. If, therefore, a hen will lay eight dozen eggs, she is welcome to say to an acquaintance: “I have just handed the Headman a two‑dollar bill,” for she knows that I have not paid fifty cents for her food.
[45]

Corn has sold for eighty cents a bushel since I began this experiment, yet at that time I fed as much as ever and was not tempted to sell a bushel, though I could easily have spared five thousand. When it went down to twenty‑eight cents, I did not care, for corn and oats to me are simply in transition state,—not commodities to be bought or sold. They cost me, one year with another, about the same.
An abundant harvest fills my granaries to overflowing; a bad harvest doesn’t deplete them, for I do not sell my surplus for fear that I, too, may have to buy out of a high market. I have bought corn and oats a few times, but only when the price was decidedly below my idea of the feeding value of these grains. I can find more than twenty‑eight cents in a bushel of corn, and more than eighteen cents in thirty‑two pounds of oats. But I am away off my subject. I began to talk about the hen plant, and have wandered to my favorite fad,—the factory farm. [45]

“I’ll look out for that part of the job, but I want you to see that things are pushed, for I shall have a thousand eggs here by February 1st and another thousand by the 25th, and these eggs mean money.”
“What do you have to pay for them?”
“Ten cents apiece,—$200 for two thousand eggs.”
“Well, I should say! Are they hand‑painted? I wouldn’t have had to quit business if I could have sold my eggs at a quarter of that price.”
“That’s all right, Sam, but you didn’t sell White Wyandotte eggs for hatching. I’ve contracted with two of the best‑known fanciers of Wyandottes in the country to send me five hundred eggs apiece February1st and 25th. I don’t think the price is high for the stock.” [45]

That’s what I was getting at. You think we might, by good luck, raise twenty‑five pullets from each hundred eggs. I’ll cut that in the middle and be satisfied with twelve, or even with ten. At that rate the two thousand eggs that cost $200 will give me two hundred pullets to begin the egg‑making next
November. That’s not enough; we ought to raise just twice that number. I’ll spend as much more on eggs to be hatched by the middle of April or the first of May, and then we can reasonably expect to go into next winter with four hundred pullets. They will cost the farm a dollar apiece, but the farm will havefour hundred cockerels to sell at fifty cents each, which will materially reduce the cost.” [45]

The mason’s work for the incubator house and the foundation wall for the brooder house cost $290. The lumber bill for these two, including doors and windows, was $464. The five incubators, $65, and the hot‑water heater for the brooder house, $68, made the total $897. Add to this $400 paid during two months for eggs, and we have $1297 as the cost of starting the poultry plant. [45]

I left the job as a whole to Nelson, and he made some sort of contract with the mason. The agreement was that I should pay $4260 for the barn complete. The machinery we put into it was very simple,—a water heater and two cauldrons for cooking food. All three cost about $60.[45]

It means at least three hundred and fifty pounds of butter a year, and in this case the butter means at least thirty cents a pound, or more than $100 a year for each cow. This is all profit, if one wishes to figure it by itself, for the skimmed milk will more than pay for the food and care. [45]

“I have purchased twenty three‑year‑old Holstein cows, in calf to advanced registry bulls, and they are to be delivered to me March 10. I shall want you to go and fetch them. I also bought a young bull from the same herd, but not from the same breeding. These twenty‑one animals will cost, by the time they get here, $2200. [45]

It is not easy to overestimate the value of swine to the general farmer; but to the factory farmer they are indispensable. They furnish a profitable market for much that could not be sold, and they turn this waste material into a surprising lot of money in a marvellously short time. A pig should reach his market before he is nine months old. From the time he is new‑born until he is 250 days old, he should gain at least one pound a day, which means five cents, in ordinary times. During this time he has eaten, of things which might possibly have been sold, perhaps five dollars’ worth. At 250 days, with a gain of one pound a day, he is worth, one year with another, $12.50. This is putting it too low for my market, but it gives a profit of not less than $6 a head after paying freight and commissions. It is, then, only a question of how many to keep and how to keep them. To answer the first half of this question I would say, Keep just as many as you can keep well. It never pays to keep stock on half rations of food or care, and pigs are not exceptions. In answering the other half of the question, how to keep them, I shall have to go into details of the first building of a piggery at Four Oaks. [45]

I wished to get the hog industry started on a liberal scale, and scoured the country, by letter, for the necessary animals. I found it difficult to get just what I wanted. Perhaps I wanted too much. This is what I asked for: A registered young sow due to farrow her second litter in March or April. By dint of much correspondence and a considerable outlay of money, I finally secured nineteen animals that answered the requirements. I got them in twos and threes from scattered sources, and they cost an average price of $31 per head delivered at Four Oaks. A young boar, bred in the purple, cost $27. My foundation herd of Chester Whites thus cost me $614,—too much for an economical start; but, again, I was in a hurry. [45]

1905
Like most men of very limited formal education, and particularly men of European background, Carnegie held college professors in awe, To discover that college professors might teach for several decades and not achieve a salary above four hundred dollars a year, with no provisions for retirement, was for Carnegie a shocking revelation. Office clerks at Carnegie Steel earned as much or more. [13 pg 92]

After several months with Aunt Emma, he [Harry Truman] moved to an altogether respectable boardinghouse kept by a Mrs. Trow on Troost avenue here, for room and board (breakfast and dinner), he paid five dollars a week.
Another young boarder was a messenger at the Bank of Commerce named Arthur Eisenhower from Abilene, Kansas. (Arthur’s younger brother, Dwight David, was still at home in high school.) “Harry and I had only a dollar a week left over for riotous living,” Arthur would recall.
Refused another raise at the Bank of commerce, Harry quit and went to work for the Union National Bank at 9th and Baltimore, in Kansas City’s famous ten story new York Life Building, with its giant bronze eagle over the main entrance. The pay was better – $75 a month – and the Union National a pleasanter place to work. As an assistant teller, he was soon making $100 a month, truly, as he said, a magnificent salary. [14 pg. 73]

[Michael J. Meehan] was selling theater tickets at 71 Broadway and making bout $5,000 a year. (See 1920) [22 pg 6]

The first nickelodeons appeared – crude motion pictures theaters, often improvised in vacant stores. [23 pg 106]

Lasker paid what then seemed prodigious salaries to his copywriters, and took good care to advertise the fact. One of them was John E. Kennedy, an ex-mounted policeman engaged in 1905 at $28,000 a year. Claude C. Hopkins worked for Lasker on a commission basis, earning in one notable year $185,000. By the age of thirty lasker was in full control of Lord and Thomas and a millionaire. Hopkins was able to boast that he had made one million dollars out of advertising Pepsodent alone. [24 pg 136]

….a dip into Munsey’s – the issue for October 1905, with 138 pages of advertisements – reveals hardly any attempts at psychological, warfare. First in the magazine, inevitably, is Pears’ Soap, with a challenging sentence attributed to Bacon:
Cleanliness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to God, to society and to ourselves.
Sapolio’s variation on this theme is: “You can’t be healthy, or pretty, or even good, unless you are clean.” The issue contains four advertisements for revolvers, smith and Wesson having switched their target from burglars to cougars. A full page advertisement by Otis elevators shows a grandmother sitting confidently in a an ornamental cage while a child aged about four presses the appropriate button, just as confidently. “Now Grandma, no more stair climbing,” says the caption.
The announcement of the victor Talking Machine company cries, “Loud enough for dancing!” It incorporated the picture of the dog listening to “his master’s voice” – a trademark which was to inspire a change of name by the firm. The Columbia Phonograph company announces that its new model is “sixteen times louder than all other talking machines” – a dubious inducement, perhaps. From the “original home of the ostrich in America,” in south Pasadena, comes an offer of a 17 inch plume for $5. Postum is still condemning the coffee habit. Coca Cola is content with a mere quarter page. A notable feature of the issue is the number of firms anxious to sell diamonds on credit. But the prize goes to the advertiser who offers, “ball bearing garters” for men – “assures ease of movement”; with a consolation prize to the advertiser of a pyrography set for burning a picture of Maxine Elliot on to a plush cushion. [24 pg 146]

“Four thousand pounds of manure from the horse stable were placed out
of doors in a compact pile and left exposed from April 25th to
September 22d. The results were as follows:”
—————————-+————-+————–+———-
| April 25. | Sept. 22. | Loss | | | per cent.
—————————-+————-+————–+———-
Gross weight | 4,000 lbs. | 1,730 lbs. | 57
Nitrogen | 19.6 ” | 7.79 ” | 60
Phos. acid | 14.8 ” | 7.79 ” | 47
Potash | 36 ” | 8.65 ” | 76
Value of plant food per ton | $2.30 | $1.06 |
—————————-+————-+————–+———-
This shows a loss of more than half the bulk of the manure and more
than half the plant food contained in it. [44]

At the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station, five tons
of manure from the cow stable, including three hundred pounds of
gypsum which was mixed with it, were exposed in a compact pile out of
doors from April 25th to September 22d. The result was as follows:

—————————-+————-+————-+———-
| April 25 | Sept 22 | Loss | | | per cent.
—————————-+————-+————-+———-
Gross weight | 10,000 lbs. | 5,125 lbs. | 49
Nitrogen | 47 ” | 28 ” | 41
Phos. acid | 32 ” | 26 ” | 19
Potash | 48 ” | 44 ” | 8
Value of plant food per ton | $2.29 | $1.60 |
—————————-+————-+————-+———-

When distributed over the field in small piles and allowed to remain
so for some time, losses from fermentation take place, and the rain
washes plant food from the pile into the soil under and immediately
about it. This results in an uneven distribution of plant food over
the field, for when the manure is finally scattered and plowed in,
part of the field is fertilized with washed out manure while the soil
under and immediately about the location of the various piles is
often so strongly fertilized that nothing can grow there unless it be
rank, coarse weeds. [44]

“It (Cowpeas) is now grown in all the States south of the Ohio River, and in
1899 there were planted nearly 800,000 acres to the crop. Basing our
estimate on the amount of nitrogen stored in the soil by this crop, it
is fair to say that fully fifteen million pounds of this valuable
substance were collected and retained as a result of the planting of
the cowpea alone. This at fifteen cents per pound (the market price of
nitrogen) would be worth something more than $2,000,000 for nitrogen
alone.”–Year Book of the Department of Agriculture, 1902. [44]

BUY ON THE PLANT FOOD BASIS
The farmer generally buys his fertilizer on the ton basis. A better
method is to buy just as the fertilizer manufacturers buy the raw
materials they use for mixing, namely, on the basis of actual plant
food in the fertilizer. The dealers have what they call the “unit
basis,” a “unit” meaning one per cent. of a ton or twenty pounds of
plant food. A ton of nitrate of soda, for instance, contains 310
pounds or 15½ units of nitrogen, which at $3.20 cents per unit would
cost $49. Buy your mixture of a reliable firm, find out the actual
amounts of the plant foods in the mixture and pay a fair market price
for them. [44]

1906
Harry Truman quit the bank to help his father on the farm. Harry also keep the books, listing which crops were sold to whom and for how much:
Potatoes, Oct. 1906
Ben Vest 2 bu[shels] @ 7p. Paid 1.40
Mrs. Allen ½ bu Paid .35
H.M. Dyer 5 bu Paid 3.50
Hogs and cattle
Aug 23 9 hogs to K.C. 74.38
24 1 “ “ “ 15.93
Oct 18 1 cow “ “ 32.85
Nov 4 Difference on horse trade 3.00
Miscellaneous
Oct 18 Phillips 8 bu Apples Paid 2.00
Nov 2 Jno. Sweeten 6 ½ bu on a/c 1.65
Sept 16 5/4 bu green beans 6.80
Nov 4 12 bu turnips Mr. Brown 3.00 [14 pg...]

The annual report for the 1906 season of the New York to Ardsley run of the public coach Pioneer, operated by the Coaching club of New York, was both dismal and disconcerting. It showed a net deficit of $6,845.98, and while this was a slight improvement over the previous year (when the deficit had soared to $7,309.01), the seemingly inexplicable downward trend to passenger traffic had continued unabated. The amount derived from the sale of eats had declined to an all time low of $1,863.
Favorite runs were to the Westchester Country Club, then at Pelham, to the Getty House in Yonkers, and to the Ardsley Club at Ardsley, overlooking the Hudson. This last run, a distance of twenty six miles, timed for two and a half hours each way with a three hour stopover, was about the longest that could be done comfortably in one day, leaving ample time for conviviality and a leisurely luncheon before the trip back. The fare was $3 one way, $5 for the round trip – and the entire coach, seating twelve exclusive of the coachman and the guard, could be booked for $60. (The seats inside were not for sale, Though preferred by sensible folk in the days when stagecoaches were a necessity, the inside seats were now reserved of the road men who supervised the states and for an occasional lady’s maid.)
Poster (for the 1895 season) Advertised the fare at $2.50 Box seats $1.00 extra. Passengers luggage up to 50 lbs free. Parcels carried at moderate rates, and punctually delivered anywhere on the road.
It reach its peak in 1903, when a profit of $3,609.84 provided a festive occasion for the underwriters, but then came the sharp decline from 1904 to 1906, and the call for the special meeting on Feb. 16, 1907.
(The production of autos had been rising fantastically, even during the prevailing depression: 4,192 had been produced int 1900, 33,500 in 1906, and there was no end in sight. On one could deny that the blasted things were becoming an infernal nuisance on the road, and did no good to point out that the hard surfacing of roads beyond city limits would inevitably bankrupt the nation. [16 pg 78]

1907
(Advertisement) Pepsi-Cola at all soda fountains 5 cents a glass – at your grocer’s 5 cents a bottle. [24 pg 28]

1908
Harry M. Williams started in as chemist in the testing department [NCR] at $16 a week. [about the same time]: Carl W. Beust’s first pay was $6 a week as messenger and office boy in the Patent Department…Herbert E. Paul; began as assembler at 13 cents an hour… L.S. McCallister’s first position with the Company was as $12 a week clerk in the Wilmington office. [6 pg 256]

1909
The ex-presidents who followed Grant saved money from their salary, which was raised to $75,000…, and while avoiding positions in business, they did supplement their incomes through the practice of law. [1. Pg 18]

In 1909-1910 his price per car had been $950. It went down to $780, to $690, to $550, to $490, to $440, to $360; … [23 pg 101]

In 1909 The New York Evening Post commented on the contrast between the editorial pages, which were full of stories about ruin, failure and sudden death, and the advertising pages, peopled by a race of radiant, vigorous optimists, whose projects never went away.
What a reconstructed world of heart’s desire begins with the first page advertisement. Here no breakfast food fails to build up a man’s brain and muscle. No phone records fail to amuse. No roof paint cracks under cold or melts under the sun. No razor cuts the face or leaves it sore. Illness and death are banished by patent medicines and hygienic shoes. Worry flies before the model fountain pen. Employers shower wealth upon efficient employees. Insurance companies pay what they promise. Trains always get to Chicago on time. Babies never cry; whether it’s soap or cereal, or camera or talcum, babies always laugh in the advertising supplement. A happy world indeed, my masters! [24 pg 147]

[Lantz} investigated, in 1909, the approximate total damage by rats in the cities of Washington and Baltimore. From the data he obtained, he calculated the annual damage in the two cities as amounting to $400,000 and $700,000 respectively - which, considering the populations, amounted to an average loss of $1.27 a year per person. On the same basis, the urban population of the United States, at the time 28,000,0000 people, sustained an annual direct injury of $35,000,000 a year. In Denmark, the estimated rat cost is about $1.20 a person; in Germany, eighty five cents a person; in France, a little over a dollar. Add to this the inestimable depreciation of property and the costs of protection. [27 pg 152]

According to the New Haven’s books, and by the admission of its own officials, the road was spending more than four hundred thousand dollars a year to influence newspapers and magazines in favor of its policies. (President Mellen stated that this was relatively less than any other railroad in the country was spending). There was a professor of the Harvard Law School, going about lecturing to boards of trade, urging in the name of economic science the repeal of laws against railroad monopolies—and being paid for his speeches out of railroad funds! There was a swarm of newspaper reporters, writing on railroad affairs for the leading papers of New England, and getting twenty‑five dollars weekly, or two or three hundred on special occasions. Sums had been paid directly to more than a thousand newspapers—$3,000 to the Boston “Republic”, and when the question was asked “Why?” the answer was, “That is Mayor Fitzgerald’s paper.” Even the ultra‑respectable “Evening Transcript”, organ of the Brahmins of culture, was down for $144 for typing, mimeographing and sending out “dope” to the country press. There was an item of $381 for 15,000 “Prayers”; and when asked about that President Mellen explained that it referred to a pamphlet called “Prayers from the Hills”, embodying the yearnings of the back‑country people for trolley‑franchises to be issued to the
New Haven. Asked why the pamphlet was called “Prayers”, Mr. Mellen explained that “there was lots of biblical language in it.”
And now we come to the “Outlook”; after five years of waiting, we catch our pious editors with the goods on them! There appears on the pay‑roll of the New Haven, as one of its regular press‑agents, getting sums like $500 now and then—would you think it possible?—Sylvester Baxter! And worse yet, there appears an item of $938.64 to the “Outlook”, for a total of 9,716 copies of its issue of Dec. 25th, nineteen hundred and nine years after Christ came to bring peace on earth and good will towards Wall Street! [53]

1910
By 1910 Carnegie was more than willing to agree with the Times as to how “supremely difficult” the art of spending was. He had given away $180,000,000 of his fortune, but he had almost the same amount still left in his possession. The capitalistic system at 5 per cent worked faster than he could. [13 pg 93]

1911
When the New York American offered Van Loan a position on the newspaper’s sports staff, he turned it down, recommending [Damon] Runyon for the job. Al accepted immediately, and when he learned that his starting salary was to be $40 a week he was flabbergasted. “Why, managing editors don’t get that much out where I come from,” he remarked. [8 pg 92]

[ca.] Damon considered Cobb the greatest newspaperman in town and, when it was reported that Cobb’s salary was $90 a week, Damon said this was a fantastic wage, but pointed out that it only justified his ranking Irvin as the incomparable reporter of his time. [8 pg 98]

[ca.] When he had money, Damon liked to eat in Broadway’s best restaurants and to drink in quantity, a habit that quickly dissipated the strength of his wallet. Near the end of the week he was forced to budget himself to thirty cents a day, but he had evolved a routine for seeing him through his days of impoverishment. He went to Coddington’s for breakfast, where he’d order a five cent glass of beer, and took his first nourishment for the day from the free lunch counter. Lunch time would find him at Dowling’s, with two five cent glasses of beer and a snack from the free lunch counter. In the afternoon he usually dropped into Frank Geraghty’s for a beer and a taste of the salami. Dinner was usually at Mack’s – two glasses of beer, and several liberal helpings of pickles, a plate of herring, and hard-boiled eggs. Despite the limitations of his salary, Damon knew what level he wanted to live on, and he refused to compromise, nor would he forego the luxuries he couldn’t afford. [8 pg 102]

Carnegie created the Carnegie Corporation of New York in November, 1911, and transferred to it the bulk of his remaining fortune, $125,000,000, “to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge among the people of the United States.” As United States Steel had been the supercorporation in industry, so the Carnegie Corporation of New York became the first supertrust in philanthropy. [13 pg 93]

Later in the year Vivian was married to Luella Campbell, the daughter of a nearby farmer, and moved off the home place, John made Harry [Truman] a full partner, as once Solomon Young had done for him. If, in a good year the farm cleared $4,00, then Harry might make as much as $2,000, or twice what he had earned at the bank. But by the same agreement Harry also assumed equal responsibility for John Truman’s debts, which were substantial. [14 pg 80]

Mark Twain was his [Harry Truman] patron saint in literature,…The year before, as he did not tell her, he had spent $25 of his own money for a twenty five volume set of Twain’s works. [14 pg 83]

1912
…steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, a man who dabbled in both politics and pension programs, tried to provide pensions for ex-presidents. To embarrass
Congress into giving a regular allowance to future ex-presidents and their widows, Carnegie offered them pensions of $25,000 a year until the government provided for them. The public, however, seemed to disapprove of a millionaire paying former heads of state, and Taft rejected the offer. [13 Pg 18]

Herman Rosenthal, a gambling house proprietor, was shot and killed while standing outside the Metropole Hotel, on forty-third Street, not far from Times Square. … Two weeks after the murder, Police Lieutenant Charles Becker, who had been able to make bank deposits of $65,000 on a salary of $2,250 since November 1911, was arrested and indicted for instigating the crime. [8 pg 97]

[ca.] Damon always had trouble with his feet. He blamed this unhappy condition on two unnatural forces in his past life: first, the long boyhood years he trod the streets of Pueblo in his bare feet, and second, the number of miles he was forced to tramp carrying a full pack during his soldiering days. … His interest in everything that concerned a pair of shoes was almost an obsession. One day, during his early life in new York, he was strolling along fifth Avenue when an object in a luggage store caught his eye. He stopped and stated into the window, transfixed for several minutes. It was a shoe trunk.
“To show you how a little thing can influence a man, I will tell you about the shoe trunk I bought when I first came to New York City,” Damon said, recalling the incident later.
“It was a beautifully made thing of some durable wood covered with shining yellow sole leather with lock and hasps of brass the rich color of newly minted gold, a work of art if ever there was one.
“It was lined with soft material like canton flannel and it had compartments for about eight pairs of shoes, each of which could be wrapped in pieces of that same flannel like material before being stowed away in a compartment. There was a tray that lifted out and under the tray was space for a pair of riding boots.
“The whole trunk was amazingly neat and compact and could easily be carried by the leather handle on top or one of the leather handles on either end…
“The price was 465 which is not much more than the price of a shoe shine nowadays but was then a neat sum of money. I venture the opinion that if the same trunk were manufactured now you could not buy it under two hundred dollars. And $65 was the exact amount I received one day from Bob Davis, then editor of Munsey’s, for a short story and it was the most money I had had in my pocket in a long time.
“Now I had never seen a shoe trunk before in my life. I had never even heard of one. I had one $3 pair of shoes, which was all I ever owned at one time and I was fresh in from Colorado where one pair of shoes at a clip was deemed ample by most citizens, though there were rumors of some with several pairs.
“My purchase of the thing puzzles me to this day.
“I have a vague feeling that the salesman may have been a trifle superior… as he informed me of the uses of the trunk and that my purchase was in a spirit of defiance of the big town generally – a gesture to show it that I was no neckyoke even if I was a new arrival and that I was not to be intimidated by a shoe trunk. Or maybe I wanted to empress the salesman with the idea that I had been accustomed to buying shoe trunks all my life.
“Anyway I plunked down the $65 and told him to stencil my initials in either end and deliver it to a home in flatbush where I was staying at the time, and incidentally was in the red for board and room deeper than even friendship justified. I shall never forget the expressions of amazement on the faces of my hosts when the shoe trunk arrived the next day, packaged like some great treasure six layers of wrapping thick, and were told what it was.
“They never said anything in criticism to me about it then or afterwards, though it seems to me that the sheer idiocy of the purchase of an expensive shoe trunk by an impecunious young man with practically his last dollar must have called for some discussion in private. I know I asked myself many a time, why the heck did you buy that trunk? I never found a satisfactory answer.
“But it served two purposes. It inspired me to greater industry than was my habit to get money to buy enough shoes to fill the trunk and, in the process of acquisition, I paid my board bill.” [8 pg 102]

Wheat was up to 90 cents a bushel.

The upkeep and repair of roads was a task performed by local men with their own teams of horses, either for hire or as a way to work off a six dollar school tax. The work was never ending and the job of overseer, an appointed political post, was one that paid two dollars a day and that almost nobody wanted. It was his father’s incurable love of politics that made him go after the job, Harry told Bess. “Politics is all he ever advises me to neglect the farm for.” ..
When John Truman got the job of overseer, others in Grandview took it as a sign that the Trumans were “strapped” and needed the money. [14]

It is not too much to say that the chief economic concern of a great body of women is how to get money to dress, not as they should, but as they want to. It is to get money for clothes that drives many, though of course not the majority, of girls, into shops, factories, and offices. It is because they are using all they earn on themselves that they are able to make the brave showing that they do. Many a girl is misjudged by the well‑meaning observer or investigator because of this fact—”She could never dress like that on $6, $8, or $15 a week and support herself,” they tell you. She does not support herself. She works for clothes, and clothes alone.
Moreover, the girl who has the pluck to do hard regular work that she may dress better has interest enough to work at night to make her earnings go farther. No one who has been thrown much with office girls but knows case after case of girls who with the aid of some older member of the family cut and make their gowns, plan and trim their hats. Moreover, this relieving the family budget of dressing the girl is a boon to fathers and mothers.
It is hard on industry, however, for the wage earner who can afford to take $6 or $8 helps pull down the wages of other thousands who support not only themselves, but others.
Moreover, to put in one’s days in hard labor simply to dress well, for that is the amount of it, is demoralizing. It is this emphasis on the matter which impels a reckless girl sometimes to sell herself for money to buy clothes. “I wanted the money,” I heard a girl, arrested for her first street soliciting, tell the judge. “Had you no home?” “Yes.” “A good home?” “Yes.” “For what did you want money?” “Clothes.”
“Gee, but I felt as if I would give anything for one of them willow plumes,” a pretty sixteen‑year‑old girl told the police matron who had rescued her from a man with whom she had left home, because he promised her silk gowns and hats with feathers.
This ugly preoccupation with dress does not begin with the bottom of society. It exists there because it exists at the top and filters down. In each successive layer there are women to whom dress is as much of a vice as it was for the poor little girls I quote above. It is a vice curiously parallel to that of gambling among men. Women of great wealth not infrequently spend princely allowances and then run accounts which come into the courts by their inability or unwillingness to pay them. It is curious comment on women in a democracy that it should be possible to mention them in the same breath with Josephine, Empress of the French. Napoleon at the beginning of the Empire allowed Josephine $72,000 a year for her toilet; later he made it $90,000. But there was never a year she did not far outstrip the allowance.
Masson declares that on an average she spent $220,000 a year, and the itemized accounts of the articles in her wardrobe give authority for the amount.
Josephine’s case is of course exceptional in history. She was an untrained woman, generous and pleasure‑loving, utterly without a sense of responsibility. She had all the instincts and habits of a demi‑mondaine; moreover, she had been thrust into a position where she was expected to live up to traditions of great magnificence. Her passion for ornament had every temptation and excuse, for it was constantly excited by the hoards of greedy tradesmen and of no less greedy ladies‑in‑waiting who hung about her urging her to buy and give. It is hard to believe that Josephine’s case could be even remotely suggested in our democracy; yet one woman in American society bought last summer in Europe a half‑dozen nightgowns for which she paid a thousand dollars apiece. There are women who will start on a journey with a hundred or a hundred and fifty pairs of shoes. There are others who bring back from Europe forty or fifty new gowns for a season! What can one think of a bill of $500 for stockings in one season, of $20,000 for a season’s gowns, coats and hats from one shop and as much more in the aggregate for the same articles in the same period from other shops; this showing was made in a recent divorce case.
What can one think of duties of over $30,000 paid on personal articles by one woman who yearly brings back similar quantities of jewelry and clothes. This $30,000 in duties meant an expenditure of probably about $100,000. It included over $1200 for hats, over $3000 for corsets and lingerie. This was undoubtedly exceptional; that is, few women of even great wealth buy so lavishly. Yet good round sums, even if they are small in comparison, are spent by many women in their European outings. They will bring from six to twelve gowns which will average at least $150 apiece, and an occasional woman will have a half‑dozen averaging from $450 to $500 apiece. One might say that eight to twelve hats, costing $25 to $50 apiece, was a fair average, though $800 to $1200 worth is not so rare as to cause a panic at the customhouse.
The comparative amounts which men and women spend affords an interesting comment on the relative importance which men and women attach to clothes. In one case of which I happen to know Mr. A. brought in $840 worth of wearing apparel: Mrs. A. nearly $10,000 worth, of which $7000 was for gowns. A man may have eight to ten suits of pajamas which cost him $10 apiece, a dozen or two waistcoats, a dozen or two shirts, a few dozen handkerchiefs and gloves, a dozen or so ties, eight or ten suits of clothes, but from $500 to $1000 will cover his wardrobe; his wife will often spend as much for hats alone as he does for an entire outfit! [56]

These imitations, (of fashions) cheap as they are, are a far greater extravagance, for their buyers, than the original model was for its buyer, for the latter came from that class where money does not count—while the former is of a class where every penny counts. The pity of it is that the young girls, who put all that they earn into elaborate lingerie at seventy‑nine cents a set (the original model probably sold at $50 or $100), into open‑work hose at twenty‑five cents a pair (the original $10 a pair), into willow plumes at $1.19 (the original sold at $50), never have a durable or suitable garment. They are bravely ornamented, but never properly clothed. Moreover, they are brave but for a day. Their purchases have no goodness in them; they tear, grow rusty, fall to pieces with the first few wearings, and the poor little victims are shabby and bedraggled often before they have paid for their belongings, for many of these
things are bought on the installment plan, particularly hats and gowns. Under these circumstances, it is little wonder that one hears, often and often among their class, the bitter cry, “Gee, but it’s hell to be poor!”—that one finds so often assigned by a girl as the cause of her downfall, the natural reason—”Wanted to dress like other girls”—”Wanted pretty clothes. [56]

A dollar mixed with brains is worth five in every place where dollars are used. Particularly is this true in the household. The failure to teach how to mix brains and dollars, and to inspire respect for the undertaking, annually drives thousands of girls into our already overburdened industrial system who would be healthier and happier at home and who would render there a much greater economic service. [56]

1913
Fourteen years after colonel Deeds first entered the NCR service Stanley C. Allyn’s name went on the payroll at $20 a week. [6 pg 84]

“Now it is all settled,” Carnegie wrote his Scottish solicitor, John Ross, in February, 1913. For years the newspapers of New York had run a box score on the philanthropic gifts of Carnegie vs. Rockefeller. Now the New Your Herald printed the final score: “Carnegie, $332 million; Rockefeller, $175 million.” It was no longer a contest. The public had lost interest, and so had Andrew Carnegie. [13 pg 93]

The income tax was made possible by a constitutional amendment proposed to congress by Taft, a President generally regarded as conservative, and was passed by congress and ratified by the states with little opposition; people realized that the time for it has come. And when it was first imposed – by a provision in President Wilson’s tariff act of 1913 – the rates were very low: only one percent on net incomes up to $20,000, with a modest surtax on larger ones. No single person paid on a net income of less than $3,000; no married person on an income of less than $4,000. Believe it or not, on a $10,000 net income a married man paid only about $60, on a $20,000 net income he paid only about $160. [23 pg 95]

Before 1913, the maximum weight for an individual parcel in the domestic mail was four pounds; if you wanted to mail twelve pounds of goods you had to send three separate packages, and the charge was $1.98 regardless of distance. The profitable business of carrying the nation’s parcels was conducted by private express companies – Adams Express, American Express, United states Express, and Wells, Fargo – which went back to pre-civil war days. [28 pg 134]

…inauguration of parcel post on January 1, 1913…The main argument for the system, oddly enough, had been to help the farmer by promoting shipments of his produce to the city. As his first parcel post package President Woodrow Wilson received eight pounds of New Jersey apples. This “farm-to-table” movement did not flourish, but the factory-to-farm movement did. [28 pg 135]

1914
Six months after Allyn is hired business slumped, the factory went on a 3-day work week, and his $20 a week pay was reduced to $12. [6 pg 88]

Mamma gave [H. Truman] the money to buy an automobile. It was a big, black, five-passenger 1911 model Stafford, hand built in Kansas city by a man named Terry Stafford. Only three hundred of the cars were ever make, It had a four cylinder engin, right hand drive, a high brass famed windshield, and Presto-Lite lamps nearly the size of the lamps on locomotives. On a good road Harry soon demonstrated, it could do 60 miles an hour. It was a rich man’s car. New, it sold for $2,350. Harry paid $650. The house needed paint; payments on loans and the cost of the lawsuit over his grandmother’s will had stretched the family’s finances to the limit. From all practical points of view such an automobile was a huge extravagance -$650 would have been more than enough to pay for two hired men for a year – but to Harry $650 for such an automobile was a “bargain.” While not the first in Grandview, it was certainly the fanciest. In Independence, not even George Porterfield Gates had anything like it. [14 pg 93]
When his manufacturing system was complete, in January, 1914, Ford made an announcement which echoed round the world.
At that time the going wage in the automobile industry averaged about $2.40 per nine hour day. Ford announced that he would pay his men a minimum of $5 per eight hour day. [23 pg 99]

June 28, 1914, Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated in the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia, triggering World War I. A continent way in the small town of New Bern, North Carolina, people worried how their lives would be affected. In fact, unforeseen at the time, the war would cause sugar shortages and the implementation of a government policy that would eventually play a role in the bankruptcy of Pepsi-Cola.
With the start of World War In, four of the world’s leading sugar producers were in opposition. An area of central Europe considered one of the prime agricultural zones for beet sugar was under attack. As a result, the market was shot an estimated one million pounds of sugar a month. Furthermore, off fighting the war was the labor supply that harvested the crop, and included among the war’s casualties were sugar refineries. Consequently, the world sugar supply dripped sharply.
The United States may have obtained the bulk of its sugar from cane grown in Cuba, but much of this source was being diverted to help offset the loss of central Europe’s sugar crop. Sugar dealers quickly took advantage of the situation: within two months of the start of the war, the price of sugar jumped to seven cents per pound – twice the cost of several months earlier.
Because sugar is not only the largest single ingredient by also the most expensive item in the recipe for Pepsi-Cola syrup, the rising price of sugar halted any further expansion of the Pepsi-cola company. The increase of just three and a half cents a pound upped the cost of producing syrup by 25 cents a gallon. Given that the license agreement signed by the bottlers and the parent company fixed the price of syrup at $1.25 a gallon, the increased cost for sugar would have to e absorbed somehow by one or both parties. It was well understood that charging more than a nickel for a bottle of Pepsi-cola would drastically cut sales. [25 pg 41]

1915
“To the house in Havana where black Jack Johnson, heavyweight champion of the world, was living on April 5, 1915, went Jack Curley, promoter of the title fight impending for that afternoon between Johnson and Jess Willard, the Kansas giant.
“Here’s the rest of your money, Champ,’ said Curley, tossing a bundle of currency on a table. There was $29,000 in the wad, Johnson’s guarantee for the fight, less $1,000 he had drawn in advance to buy his white wife, Lucille Cameron, a ring. [8 pg 108]

Cleveland had in the fall of 1915 six large stores where nothing costing over 10 cents is sold. These belong to three syndicates or chains. To show the extent to which this business has developed it may be stated that the largest of these syndicates, which controls three of the six Cleveland stores, has 747 branches in different parts of the country.
The number of saleswomen in a single store ranges from 12 to 70. The total number in the six stores was approximately 226. The shift in this branch of retail trade is large, as there are continual changes in the selling force. One store reported the number of new employees hired in six months as being about equal to the average selling force.
The managers of the five and ten cent stores without exception stated that they preferred to hire beginners who were without store experience. The hours of work are longer and the conditions under which the work is done are more trying than is usually the case in the larger department stores.
The girl who expects her application for employment in the five and ten cent store to be accepted must be 18 years old in order that she may legally work after six o’clock. It is better for her to be without previous selling experience (unless in other five and ten cent stores), as employers in these stores prefer to train help according to their own methods. [47]
The wages paid beginners in the department stores are fair as compared with other industries employing the same grade of help. Boys and girls when they first enter employment receive from $3.50 to $7, depending on the store where they get their first job. In addition to the salary most department stores give bonuses or commissions through which the members of the sales force may increase their compensation. [47]

PER CENT OF WOMEN EMPLOYEES OVER 18 YEARS OF AGE
EARNING $12 A WEEK AND OVER

Office employees, in retail and wholesale stores
31.8
Employees in women’s clothing factories
21.0
Saleswomen in retail and wholesale stores
21.0
Employees in men’s clothing factories
13.3
Employees in hosiery and knit goods factories
7.9
Employees in printing and publishing establishments
7.7
Employees in telephone and telegraph offices
6.3
Employees in laundries and dry cleaning establishments
4.4
Employees in cigar and tobacco factories
3.9
Employees in gas and electric fixtures concerns
3.2

If the data were for retail stores only and did not include wholesale stores, then office work, which now stands at the head of the list, would probably not make so good a showing, although the superiority over the selling positions is, from the wage‑earning standpoint, so marked that there seems to be no escape from the conclusion that on the whole women office workers are better paid than women in the sales force. On the other hand the proportion of saleswomen earning $12 and over is from nearly seven times as great to not far from twice as great as it is in the factory industries, if we except the workers in women’s clothing factories, whose earnings per week are better than those of the saleswomen. [47]

In general the wages paid in garment making compare favorably with those of other manufacturing industries. This is particularly true with respect to the earnings of women workers. A considerably larger
proportion of the women employed in the garment industry earn what may be considered high wages for industrial workers than in any of the larger factory industries of the city. The proportions of women receiving under $8 a week are lower in men’s and women’s clothing than in the other seven industries. In the proportion of women receiving $12 and over, women’s clothing ranks first and men’s clothing third. [47]

FOR FULL‑TIME WORKING WEEK, WOMEN’S CLOTHING, CLEVELAND, 1915

Workers Lowest Average Highest

Assorters, women $6.00 $8.25 $14.00
Hand sewers, women 6.00 10.00 20.00
Trimming girls 6.00 10.25 15.00
Operators,* women 7.00 12.00 30.00
Sample makers, women 6.00 12.75 15.00
Examiners, women 10.00 13.50 18.00
Models, suit and cloak 8.00 15.25 21.00
Forewomen 10.00 16.25 25.00
Operators,* men 9.00 17.75 50.00
Pressers, men 7.00 18.25 35.00
Cutters,§ men 9.00 19.25 30.00
Pattern graders, suit&cloak, men 8.00 22.00 27.50
Sample makers, men 13.00 22.50 25.00
Examiners, men 16.00 25.00 45.00
Head tailors, men 18.00 25.00 —
Foremen 14.00 30.00 75.00

AVERAGE WAGES FOR FULL‑TIME WORKING WEEK FOR SIMILAR WORKERS,
MEN’S AND WOMEN’S CLOTHING, CLEVELAND, 1915

Workers Men’s clothing Women’s clothing

Hand sewers, women $9.50 $10.00
Section operators, women 9.25 11.25
Examiners, women 7.00 13.50
Section operators, men 16.50 15.25
Pressers, under 12.00 15.75
Forewomen 11.00 16.25
Pressers, upper 18.00 19.50
Cutters, cloth 18.75 20.00
Examiners, men 17.75 25.00
Foremen 29.25 30.00
[47]

The weekly wages most commonly paid to each class of workers in dressmaking shops may be roughly stated as follows: apprentices, $2 to $4; helpers $6 to $9; finishers or makers $10 to $12; and drapers $18 to $20. Lining making, done in most shops by apprentices or helpers, pays from $4 to $6 a week. In one shop a specialist on linings received $12. Women cutters, found in two shops, and doing supervisory work similar to that done by drapers, earned from $15 to $25. Hemstitchers earn $10 to $14 and a guimpe maker in one shop earned $12. Errand girls were found at $3 and $6; stock girls at $8, $12, and $13; and shoppers at from $3.50 to $10.
Beginners in alteration departments are started at from $5 to $7. Regular alteration hands earn from $7 to $18, the average being $9 or $10. Fitters earn about the same as drapers in dressmaking shops, averaging from $15 to $18, with a range of from $10 to $25.
As a rule comparatively little time is lost through irregularity of employment. Workers average from 10 to 11 months’ work out of the year. Establishments usually close during the month of August and for one or two weeks in the spring. Workers in alteration department average 11 months of work. Dress alteration work is steady, while suit and coat alteration is irregular.
Apprenticeship in dressmaking comprehends a trying‑out period of from six months to a year. Most shops take apprentices, the proportion in the trade being one to every 12 workers; and an effort is made to keep these new workers if they are at all satisfactory. There is no standardized apprenticeship wage. Girls may serve without pay for six months, or may start at from 50 cents to $4 a week. At the end of six months they may be earning from $1.50 to $6. The lack of any wage standard in apprenticeship probably accounts for the fact that it is difficult to get girls to enter this trade. [47]

The data collected indicate that the wages of workers in retail shops are lower in general than the wages of workers in millinery departments in stores and in wholesale houses. Makers in retail shops earn from $3 to $16 a week, the average being about $8. Trimmers earn from $10 to $40, with an average of about $18. Out of 45 retail shops, only 22 paid as high as $10 to any maker; 15 paid as high as $12; six paid as high as $15; and only one paid over $15.
In millinery departments in stores, trimmers, who are generally designers, earn from $15 to $50 a week or more. The rate most commonly received is $25. Makers are started at from $4 to $6 and may advance to $15, with an average of about $10.
In wholesale houses designers earn from $25 to $60, or more. Makers start at about $5, and the usual range is from $10 to $15. Those employed in straight copying may earn between $15 and $20.
The 1914 report of the Industrial Commission of Ohio presents data showing that of the women 18 years of age and over employed in wholesale houses 37 per cent receive under $8, about 22 per cent receive between $8 and $12, while 41 per cent receive $12 and over. The girls under 18 years of age were, with one exception, receiving less than $4 per week.
Employment in retail shops averages about 32 weeks during the year; in the millinery departments of stores from 32 to 42 weeks; and in wholesale houses about 40 weeks. The proportion of workers employed the year round is very small. The majority of millinery workers are faced with the problem of tiding themselves over two dull seasons, aggregating from 12 to 28 weeks each year.
The millinery apprenticeship period lasts for two seasons of 12 weeks each. Almost all retail shops take apprentices in large numbers, there being one apprentice to every three or four workers in the trade. Few apprentices are found in stores and wholesale houses. The apprenticeship wage is extremely low. The usual rate is $1 a week during the first season and from $1.50 to $2 during the second. [47]

Earnings
No industrial workers in the city are paid better wages than those employed in the building trades.
More than one‑half of the skilled workers are in trades that pay an hourly wage of 50 cents or over.
The hourly rate in each occupation is shown in Table 25.

—UNION SCALE OF WAGES IN CENTS PER HOUR MAY 1, 1915

70 Cents
Bricklayers 70.00
Hoisting engineers on boom derricks, etc. 70.00
Stone masons 70.00
Structural iron workers 70.00

From 60 to 70 Cents
Marble setters 68.75
Inside wiremen 68.75
Plasterers 68.75
Slate and tile roofers 67.50
Parquet floor layers (carpenters) 62.50
Lathers, first class 62.50
Plumbers 62.50
Steam‑fitters 62.50
Stone‑cutters 62.50
Hoisting engineers, brick hoists 60.00
Elevator constructors 60.00

From 50 to 60 Cents
Tile layers 59.38
Lathers, second class 56.25
Carpenters 55.00
Cement workers, finishers 55.00
Sheet metal workers 50.00
Painters 50.00
Paperhangers 50.00
From 40 to 50 Cents
Asbestos workers 47.50
Composition roofers 42.50

Under 40 Cents
Cabinet‑makers and bench hands 37.50
Machine woodworkers 37.50
Electrical fixture hangers 37.50
Hod‑carriers 35.00

Union organization is a more powerful factor in determining wages in these trades than technical knowledge and skill. A high degree of skill in a given trade brings little advantage in the matter of wages.
By establishing a minimum scale below which no journeyman shall work, the union secures practically a flat rate of pay for most of the men in the trade. When there is much building work and good men are scarce, contractors sometimes pay higher wages to highly skilled workmen in order to secure their services. As a rule, however, their reward comes in the form of steadier employment. The less skilled man is the first to be laid off when business is slack, while the first‑class workman, for the reason that he is so hard to replace, is the last to be discharged.
Many unions, among them those of the carpenters, bricklayers, and painters, make no provision as to the wages of apprentices. Table 26 shows the wages in three of the building trades that have established a uniform scale for apprentices. Sheet metal apprentices are paid a bonus of $1 extra for each week served.

USUAL WEEKLY WAGES OF APPRENTICES IN THREE BUILDING TRADES

Year Inside wiremen Plasterers Sheet metal workers
First year $5.50 $5.50 to $6.25 $5.00
Second year 13.20 8.25 to 16.00 5.50 TO 6.00
Third year 17.60 13.75 TO 16.00 8.00 TO 9.00
Fourth year 22.00 19.25 [47]

The railroad unions are among the strongest and most aggressive in the country. The total union membership among train operating employees alone in the country is approximately 350,000. The unions are all modeled upon the same general plan. They are quite independent of each other, keep strictly to their agreements and oppose the sympathetic strike. They all maintain some form of life insurance. Four organizations have underwritten over $500,000,000 of insurance and one of them in a single year paid claims amounting to $1,135,000. The influence of these unions has been particularly effective in securing the passage of protective state and national legislation such as full crew laws,standardization of train equipment, employers’ liability laws, car limit laws, etc.
The hazardous nature of the work is indicated by a statement made by a prominent union official to the effect that the Trainmen’s Brotherhood paid a claim for death or disability every seven hours. A report to the Interstate Commerce Commission states that there is one case of injury in train or yard service every nine minutes. With the invention of safety devices the risk of accident has been greatly lessened, but railroading is still one of the most dangerous industrial occupations.
There is little chance of employment for applicants under the age of 21 years. In fact, many roads refuse to employ men below this age. Physical or sense defects which often accompany advancing years, and which would not disqualify a man in other occupations do so in railroad work. The average length of the working life is a little over 12 years.
Railroad employees are among the best paid workers in the country. A close estimate based on extensive wage investigations places the annual earnings of engineers at from $1,200 to $2,400 a year, with an average of $1,600. Conductors average about $1,350, firemen a little over $900, and other trainmen about $950. The usual working day is 10 hours, although this is often exceeded. Overtime is paid on a regular scale agreed upon by the companies and the union. [47]

Motor and Wagon Transportation

This section of the report takes up such occupations as those of teamsters, chauffeurs, and repairmen. There are no reliable data as to the number of men in the city employed in these occupations, but it is certain that it does not fall below 9,000. Notwithstanding the great increase in the use of automobiles and auto trucks in recent years the number of teamsters at the present time is in excess of 4,000 men. A very large proportion of the men employed in these occupations are of American birth.
The general conditions of labor such as wages, hours of labor, and so on, are the same for teamsters and chauffeurs. They earn about the same wages, belong to the same union, and work about the same hours. The wages range from 25 to 37 cents an hour. Earnings in the better paid jobs compare favorably with those in several of the skilled trades. Automobile repairmen earn from 30 to 45 cents an hour, and work from nine to 10 hours a day. The working day for teamsters and chauffeurs is somewhat longer, ranging from 10 to 12 hours. At the present time these occupations are only partially organized in trade unions.
The report recommends the establishment of a course in automobile construction and operation in the technical high schools. In view of the constantly increasing use of automobiles such a course would be of value to many boys besides those who enter employment as chauffeurs and truck drivers. [47]

1916
Closely related to housing is the question of wages and standards of living. Consider, for example, these four points and their relation to one another:
1. The minimum desirable house of four or five rooms cannot be provided in the United States, even under favorable conditions, for less than about $1,800 or $2,000 that is, for house and lot, with street improvements, essential public utilities and neighborhood recreation.
2. A house costing that sum cannot be offered on the basis of an economic rent of, say, 5 per cent or 6 per cent net, for less than $15 a month.
3. Unless a wage-earner with a normal family of wife and three dependent children has an income of $15 a week, or $800 a year, he cannot afford to pay as much as $15 a month for rent.
4. More than one half of all workingmen earn less than $800 a year. [59

The Girard estate in Philadelphia is an illustration of what I have in mind. There are now upon the Girard land, in South Philadelphia, 481 completed dwelling houses, one
apartment house containing four seven-room housekeeping apartments and four stores. The rents for the dwelling houses, including light, heat and hot water, range from $31 to $58 a month. This estate has invested between two and three million dollars in houses, apartments, stores, power plant, street mains and power-plant equipment for the service of community heating and lighting. There is also a public park, a free library, and a modern public school within the territory, the park having so far cost over $60,000. The net income from this enterprise amounts to 4 per cent per annum net upon the value of the ground and 5 per cent per annum net upon the cost of the buildings. A sinking fund has been established to make good any depreciation in the value of the improvements, and one half of one per cent of the cost of the buildings and the street improvements is set aside each year and invested. This deposit invested at 5 per cent will repay the entire cost of the buildings in forty-eight years. [59]

The following statement of the Woodlawn Company, Wilmington, Delaware, is another example of the financial basis on which permanent housing can be provided for the
wage-earning class, as a good business investment yielding 5 per cent interest net: The houses are built in solid rows, and the row contains four six-room houses, four four-room houses and six two-family houses. Some of the houses in the district differ from these, but most of them come within these four types. In the twenty rows which have been built there are 270 houses, with accommodations for 390 families. It has been
somewhat difficult to determine the exact cost of each type on account of building the several types at one tune, with contracts usually covering two rows of houses, but the cost, without the land, is about as follows: Six-room house, $1,775.00. Rents for $16.00
Four-room house, $1,425.00. Rents for $13.50 Two-family house, $2,475.00. First floor rents for $11.50 Second floor rents for $12.00 The houses are built of brick with slate and slag roofs. They are all sewer connected, have city water and gas, and some of them have electric wiring. A range, with waterboiler attached, is installed in each kitchen. Bathtubs and kitchen sinks are porcelain enameled. Stationary laundrytubs are installed in the second-floor flats. There are front and back yards, and parts of the tract have been set aside for park or playground purposes. The first houses were built in 1903 and the last ones in 1913. They were not built for sale, but are to be kept in the ownership of the Woodlawn Company. The six-room house is as large, if not larger than the majority of wage-earners want. There are more applications for four-room houses and flats than for any other kind. This development of the Woodlawn Company represents an investment of $583,000 and it has yielded an average net profit of about 5 per cent. [59]

The investigation began by the consideration of three main classes of facts: (i) What are Waterbury’s (Conn.) housing needs? (2) Where can these needs be met? (3) How can workingmen’s houses be provided in Waterbury? The data when collected showed that there were from 1,000 to 2,000 families to be provided for; that 35 per cent of these were skilled workingmen and 65 per cent unskilled; that the average weekly wage
of the skilled was about $20 and of the unskilled $14; that 54 per cent of the total were married men; and that the concensus of opinion with regard to the type or types of houses was that the one-family house should be preferred, if the
family could afford it. If not, a double house, or two onefamily houses built together, with separate yards, and that only when necessary the three- or four-tenement flat should be built. [59]

There is a call especially for four- and five-room houses with bath, the materials for which would cost not more than $800, and the construction, according to the usual estimate, about $800 more, making a total of $1,600. A lot 50 feet by 100feet, with improvements, would normally not run over $400, so that the total cost for house and lot would be approximately $2,000. I know of few other regular business opportunities
offering as good promise of useful service and profit. In conclusion, may I ask, is not this the real problem of housing: “How are we going to invest 25 per cent of the
workingmen’s wages a very large sum of money so as to get the maximum return for him, for his employer, for the legitimate building interests, and for the community at large?” [59]

LOW-COST HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS*
AKRON, OHIO (Goodyear Heights). Population (1916) i2o,ooo.f
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Begun 1912. Employer for
employees. 400 acres. 436 lots planned, averaging in size 50 by
100 or 125 feet. Sold on rental plan; two mortgages to be carried,
the first paid off in fifteen years and the second in twelve; 6 per
cent interest. No payments down necessary but possible then or
at any time. Special life insurance is carried by the tenant so that
in case of death the property is paid for by the insurance. Houses
are of good design, of wood with stucco or metal lath with brick
veneer, ranging in cost from $1,800 to $2,500. Warren H. Manning,
landscape designer; Mann & MacNeille, architects. Gardencity
principles have been applied. Parks, playgrounds and streetplanting
are provided, and each lot has its fruit trees.
AKRON, OHIO. Population (1916) 1 20,000.f Firestone Tire and
Rubber Company. Begun 1916. Employer for employees. 365
acres. Lots average 50 feet frontage and 120 feet in depth; 5^ lots
per acre. Sold on terms: 5 per cent discount allowed purchasers to
Nov. i, 1916, only; 5 per cent additional discount granted if house
is constructed within year; payments 5 per cent down and i per
cent per month, including interest and taxes. Minimum cost of
houses $1,500 to $2,000; $2,500 if fronting on boulevard. Singlefamily
detached type houses prevail. For 900 families. Natural
features of 13 acres reserved for park purposes; 6> acres for school
and church sites. Approximately $650,000 expended on improvements.
ALBANY, N. Y. Population 102,961. Albany Home Building
Company. Improved housing association. Begun 1910 by Chamber
of Commerce. Capital $100,000; 5 per cent dividend. Houses sold
on the instalment plan; better-paid workingmen.
BARRE, MASS. Population 1,700. Barre Wool Combing Company.
Begun 1908. Employer for employees. Two-family frame
houses of agreeable architecture.
BEVERLY, MASS. Population 18,650. United Shoe Machinery
Company. The company loans money to its employees for homebuilding
purposes.
BILLERICA, NORTH, MASS. (Billerica Garden Suburb, Inc.)
Population Billerica 2,000. Improved housing association, largely
for Boston and Maine Railroad employees. Begun 1914. 56 a’cres.
Capital $16,540; 5 per cent limited dividend. Rented on a basis of
one week’s wages per month, or sold on instalment plan. Arthur C.
Comey, landscape architect. An attempt has been made to form a
cooperative and copartnership garden-city association and to apply
garden-city principles.
BILLERICA, NORTH, MASS. Population Billerica 2,000. Talbot
Mills. Employer for employees. 140 company houses. Rents
range from $3.25 to $14 a month. Gardens are encouraged.
*Pased on list originally compiled by R. L. Davison.
fThe figures given for places under 30,000 population are based upon the
U. S. Census, 1910; places over 30,000, on U. S. Census, 1915-
BOUND BROOK, N. J. Population 4,000. Westerly Gardens Inc.
Begun 1913. 5 acres. The land given to the company by its owner,
Mr. George La Monte, the founder of the company. Macadamizing
streets, laying sewers and sidewalks cost nearly $9,000; grading and
filling cost almost as much, so that land improvements cost nearly
$18,000; twenty-one houses built at a cost of $80,708.54; total
investment in improvements and houses $98,418.62, from which
$6,450 was received in rent in 1914. Houses all of hollow tiles,
stuccoed on the outside. Provide for forty-nine families. Average
rent $14.50 a month. Total possible rent per year from existing
houses $8,604, equal to a gross income of 8.7 per cent on the investment.
John Nolen, landscape architect.
BRIDGEPORT, CONN. Population 116,075. Bridgeport Housing
Company. Begun 1916. Improved housing. 138 apartments, of
two to five rooms, to be rented.
BRIDGEPORT, CONN. Population 116,075. Remington Arms
Company. Begun ^1916. Employer for employees. High-priced
double houses and six-room row houses of monotonous architecture,
costing $3,500 per house. Types most in demand not provided.
Poor development from an architectural standpoint.
CINCINNATI, OHIO. Population 402,175. Improved housing
begun 1911 by J. G. Schmidlapp, who in 1913 organized the Cincinnati
Model Homes Company. Eight houses to the acre. Average
distance between detached buildings 12 feet. Capital and surplus
$500,000; 5 per cent limited dividend. At first it provided housing
for negro workers; later sections built for white workers as well as
negroes. Houses rented and sold on instalment plan; lowest priced
$2 a week for three rooms and bath; average rent $4.50 per week.
There are now eighty-eight houses, accommodating 326 families or
1,150 persons; thirty-four single-family row or terrace houses (Philadelphia
plan); thirty semi-detached houses for four families; eight
for two families; sixteen multiple dwellings for 155 families. All built
of brick; none over two stories high. There are a large number of
one-family or terrace row houses now under contract for sale to
white people on the rental plan, costing $1,900. They will sell for
$100 cash and $3.10 a week for ten years; the $600 then remaining
unpaid can be paid at pleasure.
COLDSPRING, N. Y. Population 2,549. J. B. and J. M. Cornell
Company. Houses built for employees at time of removal of works
from New York City in 1898. Attractive seven-room houses rent
for $12 to $15 a month.
CUMBERLAND MILLS, MAINE. Population 2,500. Employer for
employees. Good houses built in 1890; four to five rooms. Capital
invested in 1895, $150,000. Early houses sold on instalment. The
company now encourages housing by loaning money at a fair rate
of interest.
DERBY, CONN. Population 8,991. The Osborne Cottages.
Begun 1913. Built by Miss Frances Osborne for workingmen. Cost
of Cottage No. 4, four-family house, $9,631, or about $2,400 per
family; others at same rate approximately. Rented per family for
$15 to $17 per month. Group houses of frame construction, ranging
from two to four families per cottage. Lighted by gas and heated by
hot water. Murphy and Dana, architects. Grounds carefully
planted by owner when houses were built, but kept in order by
tenants.
DULUTH, MINN. (MORGAN PARK). Population Duluth 89,331.
U. S. Steel Corporation. Begun 1913-16. Employer for employees,
i ,600 acres. Houses 30 feet from street and 30 feet between houses.
Rented $3.75 per room for apartments; $4 per room for detached
houses. 200 detached houses, six to eight rooms; 350 apartments,
four to five rooms each. All houses of concrete, air-spaced. Apartments
have separate basements, hot-air heating, electric lighting,
fas,
fireplace. Morell and Nichols, planners. Two water systems,
treet planting, 6-acre playground, and community center. An
athletic field planned. Garden space around houses; planted with
grass and shrubbery. Other U. S. Steel Corporation mining towns
in various places have been well laid out and provide good houses
with rents varying from $1.50 to $2 a room per month for employees.
ELLSWORTH, PA. Population 2,084. Ellsworth Collieries Company.
Begun 1900. Houses for employees. Capital invested
$515,000. Net profit 5 per cent. Development in hands of real
estate company. 230 double houses built costing under $1,000
per family.
EVANSVILLE, IND. Population 71,284. Model Homes Building
Company. Improved housing association. Begun 1915. Capital
$50,000 (cost of development under consideration $36,000);
5 per cent limited dividend. Single- and two-family houses to be
built. Rents estimated at $8 to $15. Probably the outgrowth of
the campaign for an improved housing law in Indiana. The plan
proposes the layout of the block with a playground in the center.
FAIRFIELD, ALA. Population (1914) 1,200. U. S. Steel Corporation.
Begun 1910. Houses for better-paid employees only. 255
acres. 125.6 lots. Capital $500,000 and by Steel Corporation. Sold
on instalment plan. Cheaper, cost $1,250; range to $1,750. Jemison
Real Estate and Insurance Co. developed the town on cityplanning
principles with zone system, civic center, central park
area, etc.
FAIRFIELD, ILL. Population 2,479. Sexton Manufacturing Company.
Employer for employees. Fifteen four-room concrete cottages
rented to girls who work for the company. A dining-hall and
a reception-hall are provided. All cottages are heated from a central
heating-plant.
FLINT, MICH. Population 38,550. Civic Building Association.
Begun 1916. Improved housing. 400 acres. Lots 50 by 100 feet,
with some larger ones. Houses costing $2,000, $2,500, and $3,000
(for smaller ones), $6,000, $8,000, and $10,000. 3,000 houses to be
constructed within a year; 500 immediately. William Pitkin, Jr.,
landscape architect. Reservations for churches, two schools, a
business district, and a 2o-acre park.
FRAMINGHAM, MASS. Population 2,000. Dennison Manufacturing
Company. Houses built on the company’s land with money
furnished by cooperative bank.
GARY, IND. Population (1914) 50,000. U. S. Steel Corporation.
Begun 1908. Housing carried on by the Gary Land Company, a subsidiary
company of the U. S. Steel Corporation. Rents $12 a month
up. Houses only for the better-paid employees. Part of the town
which is not controlled by the company has been built up with
shacks. Town-planning principles not used.
GWINN, MICH. Cleveland- Cliffs Iron Company. Begun 1906-7.
Improved housing for miners and other residents. Acreage i square
mile. Sold or rented. Two-tenement house with six rooms on each
side, costing $1,800 (double barn and shed in rear for additional
$220). These rent for $8 a month per side. There are 600 houses,
model artistic cottages in fifteen styles, mostly one and one half
story, of four to six rooms, of stucco and wood. Warren H. Manning,
landscape designer. Lots are planted with shrubs, vines;
lawns, with playgrounds and gardens in rear. Water-works and
sewers were put in first. Good roads. Civic center. The company
has also developed various other mining towns.
HAUTO, PA. (mining town). Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company.
Begun 1913. Employer for employees. Rented $11 to $17. 50.
One- and two-story houses of hollow tile. The tile has a face 8 by
12 inches, and is not finished with stucco on the exterior or plaster
on the interior. The interior walls of the cheaper houses are whitewashed;
those of the more expensive houses are plastered.
HOPEDALE, MASS. Population (1916) 2,400. The Draper Company.
Begun 1897. Employer for employees. 30 acres. Four to
six houses per acre. Rented only to employees at $2.12 to $4.12 a
week; 2-flat row houses $1.25 to $1.75. Houses nearly all twofamily
shingled frame houses of attractive architecture. Some
eight-unit two-flat brick row houses, also attractive. 551 families
now housed. Warren H. Manning, Arthur A. Shurtleff, landscape
architects. Garden-city principles used in layout.
KENOSHA, Wis. Population 21,371. Kenosha Homes Company.
Begun 1916. Improved housing for workingmen. Capital
invested for first year expected to be about $500,000, with 10 percent
profit to the company on each house sold. Terms: $100
down and monthly payments. Two types of houses: bungalows of
five rooms and bath and two-story cottages of six rooms and bath.
John Nolen, landscape architect; Lowe and Bollenbacher, architects.
KISTLER, PA. (near Mt. Union). Population (Mt. Union)
3,338. Mt. Union Refractories Company. Employer for workingmen
with low wages. 50 acres. Lots 40 by 100 feet; five and onetenth
houses to acre. Small single-family houses, detached and semidetached.
Orchards in the rear of houses. John Nolen, landscape
architect; Mann & MacNeille, architects. Complete town-planning
principles applied. Local parks and playgrounds provided. Riverfront
reserved for public use.
LAWRENCE, MASS. Population 95,834. American Woolen Company.
Employer for employees, and houses also rented to general
public. Forty-two brick row houses have been built in rows of
seven at right angles to street. These groups face on a court which
has been planted with grass, flowers, and shrubs. Rent $2.75 and
$2.50 a week. Twelve overseers’ houses and fifty-two cottages are
rented to employees and public.
LECLAIRE, ILL. Population (1913) 800. N. O. Nelson Company.
Begun 1892. The company developed a tract of land near the factory
and sold lots and houses to employees and the public on the
instalment plan. The architecture of the first houses not attractive,
too fancy. The village well planned with curved streets and narrow
macadam pavement.
LOMAX, ILL. William Love, manager. A real-estate city building
scheme with some unusual features.
LUDLOW, Mass. Population 3,350. Ludlow Manufacturing
Associates. Begun 1874. The company houses about 575 families.
Majority single cottages of good design. Rent is $1.50 per room
a month.
MANCHESTER, N. H. Population 75,635. Amoskeag Manufacturing
Company. The company rents row houses and tenements
to its employees. Some of the row houses of good architecture. The
company also supplies land for employees to build houses with
money borrowed from a bank. The mortgage on the lot is cancelled
at the end of ten years if tenant is still in employ of the company
and living in the house.
MARCUS HOOK, PA. Population 1,573. American Viscose Company.
Employer for employees. Very ^
attractive row houses in a
garden village. Provides for 261 families. The company is the
American branch of an English concern, and the influence of the
English garden city is evident in the planning and architecture.
MIDDLETOWN, OHIO. Population 13,152. American Rolling
Mill Company. Begun 1900. Employer for some of its foreign
laborers. Single- and two-family houses, one-story buildings of
attractive design. A playground is provided in the center of the
block and a bathhouse for every four families.
MIDLAND, MICH. Population 2,527. The Dow Chemical Company.
Begun 1916. Over 100 acres purchased. Size of lots 60 by
1 20 feet. Sold exclusively to workingmen on a ten-year-payment
plan. Cottages with gardens. Cost ranges from $2,200 to $1,300 on
main street; $1,100 to $600 on side streets. Roads and sewers built
and welfare plans proposed.
MIDLAND, PA. Population (1914) 5,000. The Pittsburgh Crucible
Steel Company. Town originally laid out in 1906 by the
Midland Steel Company on checkerboard plan. Town taken over
by present company in 1911. The unsold portion of the town, consisting
of about 600 acres, developed in accordance with modern
city-planning principles. Houses for the better-paid employees in
the new development are of good architecture, of brick, stone,
cement, fireproof, with lots 40 by 130 feet. Houses for foreigners in
the old section are of box-type architecture and grounds are
undeveloped.
MINEVILLE, N. Y. (mining town). Wetherbee, Sherman &
Co. Employer for employees. The company has built 283 housessingle,
two-family and row types of cement blocks. Rents $5 to $12.
An incinerator is used for the disposal of refuse.
NANTICOKE, PA. Population 19,877. Delaware, Lackawanna
& Western Railroad Co. Begun 1911. Twenty double houses
(forty units) built for employees. Houses rent at $8 per month per
family. They are of concrete made of slag and cast in movable
molds of the Morrill system and painted inside and out with white
oil paint. Houses absolutely plain but attractive, due to good proportions
and liberal planting of home grounds.
NEW HAVEN, CONN. Population 144,505. Improved Housing
Association of New Haven. Capital invested $25,000. Rent $12.
Row of sixteen two-flat houses of cement blocks, covered with stucco,
of attractive architecture and good design. Plan consists of a large
kitchen-living-room (the kitchen stove is placed in the living-room
in winter for warmth and also for convenience), a kitchenette, two
bedrooms and a bath. Arrangement is first-class. The main drawback
of the development lies in the small, shallow lots and the treatment
of the rear. Mann & MacNeille, architects.
NEW YORK CITY. Population 5,333,539. City and Suburban
Homes Company. Begun 1896. Improved housing association.
Capital $4,000,000; 5 per cent limited dividend. Invested in tenement
property in city, $5,913,727.26; invested in suburban property
(Homewpod) $780,252.22. Latter consists of 250 individual houses
and semi-detached houses, forty of concrete in groups including a
park and playground. A few houses rent at $20 a month, but most
are sold on instalment plan. Life insurance must be carried so that
in case of death the house is paid for by the insurance. Checkerboard
system layout.
NIAGARA FALLS, N. Y. Population 30,445. Niagara Development
Company. The Niagara Falls Power Company built single
houses and two-, three-, and four-family houses for about 100 families
in 1895. They are of agreeable design with good floor-plans,
considering time of building. Rents from $9 to $28.
OJIBWAY, ONTARIO, CANADA. U. S. Steel Corporation. Begun
1916.
PALMERTON, PA. (mining town). Population 1,000. New Jersey
Zinc Company. Four-room frame houses provided for employees.
Monotony somewhat relieved by alternating houses with hip and
gable roofs.
PEACEDALE, R. I. Population 1,550. Peacedale Manufacturing
Company. Begun 1850. The company has built a village for its
employees. Single-, two- and three-family frame houses at rents
of $3.45 to $12.50 per month.
PELZER, S. C. Population 6,000. Pelzer Manufacturing Company.
Town not incorporated but held as private property by the
company. About 1,000 4-room cottages, renting for 50 cents per
room.
PHILADELPHIA, PA. Population 1,657,810. Girard Estate. Improved
housing. Average size lot, 2,271 square feet. Value of
Eroperty
$2,586,461.26. Rented at $31 to $58 a month, including
ght, heat, hot-water range. 481 completed dwelling-houses; one
apartment house, containing four seven-room housekeeping apartments.
Apartments fitted with all conveniences. General character
semi-suburban. One of the best developments. A whole block set
aside for park Girard Park.
PHILADELPHIA, PA. Population 1,657,810. The John B. Stetson
Company. Begun 1904. Capital $4,000,000. The company gives
stock in a building and loan association to employees for efficient
service.
PHILADELPHIA, PA. Population 1,657,810. Octavia Hill Association.
Begun 1896. Improved housing association with original
object of renovating run-down property for rental. New development
costing $60,000 built in 1913; 4 per cent limited dividend.
Income on new houses 6 per cent. Rented: apartments, two
rooms, bath, and kitchenette, $8 a month up; five rooms and
bath, $12.50. Two-flat row houses and some single-family row
houses. Plain
_ exterior, interior modern, sanitary, serviceable.
Grouping of units lessens monotony. Floor-plans good. “Pooled”
back yards.
PITTSBURGH, PA., headquarters of the Atlas Coal Company.
Population 564,878. Mining towns in various places. Begun 1913.
Employer for employees. Capital invested $125,630. Rented at $2
a room per month. Four-, five-, and six-room houses of attractive
architecture. Gardening encouraged.
PLAINFIELD, CONN. Population 1,200. Lawton Cotton Mills
Corporation. The town is located in a rural district with many of
the employees living on farms. Two-family houses are provided.
The employees are mostly Scotch, English, French-Canadian, and
American.
PROCTOR, MINN. Population 2,243. Duluth, Missabe and
Northern Railway Company. Employer for employees. Good
four-room frame houses, renting for $10 a month. The company has
developed other mining towns.
PUEBLO, COL. Population 44,395. Colorado Fuel and Iron
Company. Employer for employees. Good four-room frame houses,
a few of concrete as an experiment. Rented at $2 per room a month.
The company has also developed various other mining towns.
PULLMAN, ILL. (part of Chicago). Population (Chicago)
2,397,600. Pullman Company. Begun 1881. The town is not now
owned by the company, owing to a law passed forbidding a manufacturing
company owning land for other than business purposes.
All houses were sold about eight years ago. Approximately 1,500
row houses built. Broad streets, parks, and recreation-grounds provided.
It was a model town in many ways, but has become a warning
of the dangers of paternalism, the big strike of 1894 being largely
a protest against paternalism of the company. Rents were higher
than in neighboring towns.
ROEBLING, N. J. (10 miles to Trenton). Population 2,000.
John A. Roebling’s Sons Company. Begun 1906. The company
has built row houses and double houses for 531 families. The later
houses have good floor-plans and an attractive exterior. Monotony
avoided by alternating designs of houses. Rents vary from $5 to
$30 a month. Checkerboard system layout.
SALEM, MASS. Population 46,994. Salem Rebuilding Trust.
Begun 1915. Improved housing association. Capital $100,000, part
of relief fund remaining from that raised after the Salem fire.
Rented. The cost per family is $2,027.50, and rent is $15 per
month. Twelve two-family brick houses have been built, with two
types of floor-plans and two types of exteriors. The first type has a
living-room and kitchen on the first floor and two bedrooms and
bath on the second floor. The exterior is a two-story brick with hip
roof. The second type has a combination kitchen and living-room,
a bedroom and bath on the first floor, and three bedrooms on the
second floor. The exterior is brick for one story and for sides, and
gambrel-roofed.
SPARROWS POINT, MD. Population 4,000. Maryland Steel Company.
The company owns the town and has provided a fire and
police department at its own expense. It has built about 800 frame
and brick houses of monotonous architecture. The plans are not
very good.
TITUSTOWN, VA. (near Norfolk). Population (Norfolk) 67,308.
In 1901 a committee of negroes appealed to Augustus T. Stroud,
a white lawyer, to have land for home-sites bought and resold to
negroes. As a result of his efforts, they have built a town in which
all own their homes. A strong spirit of community pride prevails.
Lots 35 by no feet for $500; house of seven rooms can be built and
owned for $1,500. The “box house” has given place to attractive
houses with good roof, wide porch, and cool kitchen. Vacant lot
between houses. Lawns, flower-beds, and well-trimmed hedges add
to the appearance of houses. Streets are straight, well graded and
planted.
VANDERGRIFT, PA. Population 7,114. U. S. Steel Corporation.
Begun 1895. Most of the houses built are for the better-paid workingmen.
Architecture of jig-saw type popular at that time. The
company sold the lots, and a real-estate concern organized by the
company looks after all the real-estate business. Layout in accordance
with modern city-planning principles.
VIRGINIA HIGHLANDS, VA. Virginia Highlands Real Estate
Company. Intended as a cooperative suburb, but the development
has been conducted along real-estate lines. It was the first development
of a concrete city, all the houses being of concrete of Milton
Dana Morrill system, and the architecture of all houses is good.
Rents and costs are low, considering the accommodations provided.
WALPOLE, MASS. Population 4,892. Neponset Garden Village.
Begun 1914. 150 acres. Lots average 72 by 200 feet, 2.24 houses
to the acre. Plans call for all single-family houses, detached and
semi-detached. John Nolen, landscape architect. Comprehensive
town-planning principles and methods, including copartnership, to
be applied. Principal natural features set aside for public ownership
and a community hall, playgrounds, and village green included
in the plans.
WALTHAM, MASS. Population 27,834. American Waltham
Watch Company. The company no longer builds houses for its
employees. In early days it rented houses to employees, but these
have now been sold.
WASHINGTON, D. C. Population 356,028. Washington Sanitary
Improvement Company. Begun 1897. Improved housing
association. Capital $500,000; invested $944,059; 5 per cent limited
dividend. This company has built single and two-flat row houses
renting from $7.50 to $18 a month. The architecture of the earlier
houses is very monotonous; some have dark rooms; but the later
houses have good floor-plans. This company has been a financial
success and is generally taken as a model for other improved housing
associations. Alleys have been made into minor streets and thus
a larger portion of the land can be built upon without the objection
that comes from alley houses.
WASHINGTON, D. C. Population 356,028. Washington Sanitary
Housing Company. Begun 1905. This company was started when
all the capital of the Washington Sanitary Improvement Company
had been sold. The purpose of the company is about the same, but
it supplies houses to a poorer class of tenants. Capital $146,000;
5 per cent limited dividend. Value of property $185,268. The twoflat
houses which were built for negroes have good floor-plans, and
the monotony of regular repetition has been avoided by grouping
the units and varying the roof-line.
WATERBURY, CONN. Population (1915) 85,000. American Brass
Company. Begun 1916. Employer for employees. 12.17 acres.
Fifty-two lots provided for. Plan calls for central park or playground
and park features along the river. John Nolen, landscape
architect; Mann & MacNeille, architects.
WILMERDING, PA. Population 6,133. Westinghouse Air Brake
Company. Begun 1891. The company has built single- and twofamily
frame and brick houses, and also rows of two-flat houses.
The houses are sold on the instalment plan or rented. The floorplans
are good, and the exterior architecture fair, considering the
date of building.
WILMINGTON, DEL. Population 92,609. Woodlawn Company.
Begun 1903 (first houses built). Capital invested $583,000; yields
average net profit of about 5 per cent. Rented: six-room house
$1,775, rents for$i6; four-room house $1,425, rents for $13.50; twofamily
house $2,475, first flpr rents for $11.50, second for $12. 270
houses for 390 families. Solid row houses, row containing four sixroom
houses, four four-room houses, and six two-family houses.
Built of brick with slate and slag roofs, sewer, city water and gas,
and some electric wiring. Range with water-boiler attached; bathtubs
and kitchen-sinks porcelain enameled. Laundry-tubs on
second floor. Front- and back-yard plots and reservations for park
or playground.
WOODLAWN, PA. Woodlawn Company. Jones & Laughlin Steel
Company. Begun 1910. The town was built by the Steel Company,
which has built about 1,000 single- and two-family houses, renting
from $13 to $30 a month. Straight streets only laid out.
WORCESTER, MASS. Population 157,499. Norton Grinding
Company. Begun 1915-16. Employer (through Indian Hill Company)
for employees. 30 acres (Indian Hill); 116 acres being developed.
Sold for 10 per cent cash; 90 per cent mortgage held by the
company. Regular monthly payments, $14.10 on $2,800 property;
$17.20 on $3,700 property. When mortgage is reduced to 60 per
cent, the responsibility of the company ceases. Fifty-eight semidetached
(for two families) and single houses, painted white with
slate roofs. Grosvenor Atterbury, architect. Ample reservations
for parks and further civic development. Beautiful surroundings.
Civic center. Shore-drive along lake.
YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO. Population 100,593. The Modern Homes
Company. Begun 1910. Improved housing association. Capital
$155,000; value of property $200,000; 5 per cent limited dividend.
Single and row houses for sale and rent. Row houses rent at $10
to $12. Single houses cost $1,500 to $2,200 complete. Houses built
of cement blocks, poorly arranged in a straight line and too close
together.
[59]
AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION
MEMBERSHIP FEES
Annual Members $5 00 a year
Councilor 5 00 “
Sustaining 10 00 “
Affiliated (for organizations) 5 00 “
Life Members $50 00 without dues
Patrons $200 00 ” ” [59]

By November Harry [Truman] was in the business of buying and selling oil leases, out of an office in Kansas City. …he was after the main chance now, as much as ever John Truman had been. The third partner in this new venture, David Morgan, later said it was actually the gamble of the business – the “hazard” – that appealed to Harry.
Harry put in $5,000- five notes, due in ten months, these according to the contract, to be “signed also by Martha E. Truman, the mother of said Harry S. Truman.”
Morgan was convinced that fortunes were waiting beneath the farmlands of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. The company leased thousands of acres in all three states and in Louisiana as well [14 pg 100]

Further, the farm now belonged solely to the Trumans. The previous summer of 1916. Uncle Harrison had died, leaving all of his part to Matt and her children. In plain monetary terms they were sitting on a fortune. The price of wheat in 1916 hit a new high of $1.65 a bushel. Good land in Jackson county by 1917 was selling for $200 an acre. At the least the farm was worth $100,000, but it might have sold for twice that. [14 pg 101]

The closest friend, {to Truman], however, was First Lieutenant Ted Marks, who was nothing like the rest of the Missouri men, but an Englishman …[who] in civilian life [made] beautiful custom suits that sold for as much as $75. [14 pg 108]

In 1916, before America entered the First world War, the publisher of The New York Times addressed the Associated Advertising clubs of the World, who five years earlier had pledged themselves to a policy of [Truth in advertising.[ He said:
It may startle you if I say that I doubt if there is any business in the world in which there is so much waste of time, money and energy as in advertising and its correlative instrumentalities. It may be rank heresy for me to say this, yet I affirm that more than 50 per cent of money spent on advertising is squandered and is a sheer waste of printer’s ink, because little thought and less intelligence are applied, and ordinary common sense is entirely lacking; too frequently the dishonesty stamped on its face is about all the intelligent reader discerns.

These are harsh words, but the advertising men bore them bravely. Ochs had always been quick to find fault with the advertising offered him, and he had rejected millions of dollars worth - a policy which had paid handsomely. Now his newspaper was offering $100 for information leading to the conviction of anyone inserting a false or misleading advertisement in the newspaper. A few other publishers were cleaning up their advertising columns too, even boasting how much their honesty was costing them. The advertising clubs had set up in 1915 a national vigilance committee from which stemmed the “better business bureaus” in many cities; and the Association of national Advertisers was pledged to fight dishonesty. [24 pg 169]

The apprentice school conducted by the Y.M.C.A. represents another type of apprentice training. The instruction is given during the day. The apprentices are sent to the school by various firms in the city under an arrangement whereby the boys attend four and one‑half hours each week during regular shop time. In February, 1916, the enrollment consisted of 46 apprentices, practically all from the metal trades. The employers pay the tuition fee, which amounts to $20 a year. The course requires four years’ work of 40 weeks each, a total of 720 hours. It comprises instruction in shop mathematics, drawing, English, physics, and industrial hygiene. No shop equipment is used. Fifteen boys were graduated from the course this year. [47]

Night classes are conducted in both of the technical high schools for two terms a year of 10 weeks each, the pupils attending four hours a week. A tuition fee of $5 a term is collected, of which $3.50 is refunded to those who maintain an average attendance of 75 per cent. No special provision is made for apprentices as distinct from journeymen, and the trade classes are attended by a considerable number of wage‑earners employed in occupations unrelated to industrial work. [47]

1917
Then in April 1917 Woodrow Wilson was calling on congress for a declaration of war and the war, rather than bringing a bonanza to Morgan Oil & Refining, eventually finished it off. … Only later was it discovered that one of their leases in southeastern Kansas was part of the famous Teeter Pool, a supply of oil that would have made millions for the company and its officers had they just drilled deeper. Bess, like other investors in the venture, lost all she had put in, while Harry seems to have come out even. How much he lost altogether in the zinc is unclear. He said $11,000 at the time, but later gave a figure of $7,500. Either way it was a lot of money and all of it borrowed money. If his part in his fathers debts was $12,000 – the figure he once confided to Bess – then possibly his total indebtedness by this time was $23,000. Perhaps not coincidentally, Matt put another mortgage of $25,000 on the farm in 1917.
Yet as bad, as Harry felt about all this – and he could get extremely blue – the farm, mortgages and all, meant security as almost nothing else could have. Good years brought a clear income of maybe $4,000, at a time when the average working family earned less than $1,000. Exceptional years might mean $7,000, and apparently the Trumans had a few such years. [14 pg 101]

The crisis deepened when the United States entered the war in 1917. Some of the raw materials used to produce Pepsi-Cola, such as the tin in bottle caps, was diverted for war use. Almost overnight there were shortages of everything. To make matters worse, a war tax of five cents a gallon was levied on Pepsi-cola syrup. Some bottlers, unable to absorb the price increase, began diluting the syrup in an effort to produce more than the standard 144 bottles from a gallon of the stuff. Unfortunately, adulterating the syrup changed the taste, which caused an alarming drop in sales.
To stave off diminishing profits and ensure bottlers an adequate supply of Pepsi-Cola syrup, Bradham was determined to find a sugar substitute. Consequently, he investigated the use of saccharin, an artificial sweetener. However, because many states prohibited the use of saccharin, if Bradham had any hopes in this sugar substitute, the law would have to be changed. He wrote articles for trade magazines and lobbied state agencies to no avail. For the time being, saccharin was not the answer to Pepsi-Cola’s problems. The Department of Agriculture even stepped in to develop a formula to use less sugar in soft drinks, with disappointing results.
Bradham himself remained optimistic. In a letter dated April, 28, 1917, he mentioned a plan to increase capital stock to $2 million. He predicted that Prohibition, still a few years in the future, in banning alcoholic beverages throughout the country, would allow for the extension of business to every corner of the country. The soft drink industry could offer an alternative, legal refreshment to a thirsty public.
Toward the end of 1917, the sugar situation had become so severe that the government ordered restrictions on its sale. At the same time, congress was moved to investigate whether or not the sugar shortage was artificially induced. It was suspected that sugar hoarding speculators started a rumor of sugar scarcity, which caused panic buying by the public. Because so much sugar was being shipped to the allies in Europe it was relatively easy to fuel this panic in order to drive up the price. Congressional probes, however, failed to result in any prosecutions. [25 pg 42]

As a result of this business management of wheat, the consumer pays less for flour, although the farmer gets more for his wheat. In May, 1917, the difference between the price of the farmer’s wheat and of the flour made from it was $5.86 per barrel of 196 pounds. Fifteen months later the difference was 64 cents. In February, 1917, before the United States went into the war, flour sold at wholesale for $8.75 a barrel. In May, 1917, the war, with no food control, had driven the price up to $17. But in February, 1918, after six months of the Food Administration, it had gone down to $10.50 wholesale, and this in spite of unprecedented demand for our very short supply. Without control, flour would undoubtedly be selling for $50 a barrel. During the Civil War, with no world wheat shortage, but without food control, the price of wheat increased 130 per cent over the price in 1861. [49]

1918
In addition to his [Truman] regular duties, he had been assigned to run the regimental canteen – dispensary for candy, sodas, cigarettes, tobacco, shoelaces, writing paper – and it was this that soon made him known to nearly everyone in camp. (Virgil Thomson, the future composer, who had also enlisted the 129th and was at Doniphan at the same time,…) To help make the operation a financial success (as most Army canteens were not) Harry took on a partner, Sergeant Edwards Jacobson, a former clerk in a Kansas City clothing store. “I have a Jew in charge of the canteen by the name of Jacobson and he is a crackerjack,” he told Bess, as if that were all the reason anyone would need to expect a profitable outcome.
To finance the canteen every man in the regiment was assessed $2, which produced an instant capitalization of $2,200. In no time Truman and Jacobson had a “grand, rushing” business, taking in $500 to $900 a day. A barbershop and a tailor shop were added. After six months business was so successful overall that the canteen paid dividends of $10,000, which made Truman and Jacobson extremely popular and led them to conclude they were an unbeatable business combination. [14 pg 101]

The night of March 19, 1918, he [Truman] was “moving out at last,” by troop train…On the eve of departure, not knowing what else to do about his automobile, he sold it for $200.
On leave in New York before sailing..Only the Woolworth Building lived up to expectations., The view from the top was well worth the 50 cent admission.
Shopping On Madison Avenue, he was touched by the patriotic feelings of an optometrist who charged him just $17.50 for two pairs of aluminum framed glasses, much less than he would have had to pay at home. To be on the safe side Harry was going to France with six pairs of glasses, all pince-nez. [14 pg 110]

On November 11, 1918, the armistice bringing world War I to an end was signed. Bradham hoped his would also bring to an end his sugar dilemma. This was not to be. Rail strikes and high demand continued to cause instability in the sugar market, keeping prices high and supply low. [25 pg 44]

Every effort has been made to produce a great 1918 wheat‑crop. Congress, at the time the Food Control Bill was passed, fixed the price of the 1918 wheat at a minimum of $2 per bushel, and the President later fixed the price at $2.20. This has been high enough to encourage the farmer to increase his crop and not too high to be fair to the consumer. The Department of Agriculture, during the winter of 1917‑18, had for its slogan, “a billion‑bushel crop for 1918.” It has worked intensively to help the farmer in selecting and testing seed and in fighting destructive insects and plant‑diseases, and in every way to help him grow more wheat. [49]

All the Allied countries have been stretching their meagre wheat‑supply to the limit and are enforcing the most stringent regulations.
The flour is required to be of high extraction—ordinarily from 81 per cent to 90 per cent, decidedly higher than our 74 per cent. Even with this coarse, gray flour a large percentage of substitute must be mixed, usually 25 per cent. In England there are local regulations on the use of mashed potato in bread.
Their bread must be twelve hours old before it is sold, so that people will not be tempted to eat too much. The result is seldom palatable. In France no flour at all may be used to make the delectable pastries and cakes which have long been the delight of the French people and their guests. In Italy, macaroni, which in many regions is as much the “staff of life” as bread, must contain 43 per cent substitute, and in some places may not be manufactured at all.
Both England and France have subsidized bread; the Government has set a price below cost and itself makes up the difference to the baker. England has appropriated $200,000,000 for the purpose. [49]
England has compulsory rations for meat and butter or margarine and sugar, but not for bread. Her bread system is voluntary like ours, but much more detailed. The voluntary ration allows one‑half pound of bread a day for sedentary and unoccupied women and larger allowances up to a little over a poundfor men doing heavy labor. Waste of any kind is very heavily punished—one woman was fined $500 for throwing away stale bread.[49]

Rationing may come yet, but any such system bristles with difficulties. The cost to the Government has been variously estimated all the way from $10,000,000 to $45,000,000 a year. Fifty per cent of the population could not be restrained in their consumption by rationing, for they are either producers or live in intimate contact with the producer. A wheat ration which would be fair for the North might actually increase the consumption in the South. Finally, the burden of a bread card would fall largely not on the well‑to‑do, who eat less wheat already and can easily cut down further, but on those with little to spend, who might have to change their whole food habits. [49]

At first France used meatless days instead of rations, and in the spring of 1918 went back to meatless
days. High prices also keep down consumption. In July, 1917, there were 2 meatless days, and cattle could not be slaughtered on the 2 preceding days. Though this order was abolished in October, 1917, meat had gone up so high in price that consumption went away down. The Paris letter of the London Daily News and Leader on February 28, 1918, says that rump steak was selling for 4 shillings 2 pence—$1 per pound. Since May 15, 3 days a week must be meatless—Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. On these days all butchers’ shops are closed. Horse meat may be sold, but no poultry or game. Fish is scarce and very expensive. [49]

In spite of the short supply, the Food Administration has kept down the price of sugar by an agreement with the sugar‑refineries that the wholesale price must not be more than the cost of the raw sugar plus a fixed amount to cover costs of refining. Even during December, 1917, when there was a severe shortage in the East, the price remained stable. Refiners say that without regulation by the Food Administration the price would have gone to 25 cents a pound or higher.
At times the Food Administration has had to use compulsion to keep the price level and has not hesitated to do so where necessary. Licenses have been withdrawn for failure to comply with regulations, and businesses closed for longer or shorter times. One dealer who was charging 14 cents a pound for sugar had his store closed for 2 weeks; another paid $200 to the Red Cross for overcharging; another, for selling sugar and flour without regard to regulations, was closed indefinitely. [49]

1919
By 1919 Carnegie had given 7,626 church organs throughout the world at a cost of $6,248,312. [13 pg...]

[Truman & Jacobson] was to be a “first class operation,” specializing in famous brands. They would sell not suits or coats, but a full line of “gents furnishings” shirts, socks, ties, belts, underwear, hats. To get started, they combined their money and borrowed from the bank. The store was remodeled inside and out. The cost of their initial inventory came to $35,000.
Harry put in $15,000, most of which he obtained by selling off livestock and machinery from the Grandview farm. [14 pg 146]

Times were prosperous…Eddie Jacobson would recall with pleasure. “Silk underwear for men, and silk shirts, were the rage. We sold shirts at sixteen dollars. Our business was all cash. No credit. [14 pg 147]

By the year’s end they had sold $70,000 worth of goods, which meant a high return on their investment. [14 pg 148]

Coca Cola is bought from Asa G. Candler for $25,000,000 by Woodruff. [24 pg 187]

In the fall of 1919, Pepsi-cola was advised that they would receive the same quantity of sugar for October, November, and December that they had received for the same period the year before. Pepsi-Cola encouraged their bottlers to focus on filling orders for their regular customers. Even such conservation measures didn’t help. By late 1919, the Pepsi-Cola company lacked the sugar to produce their syrup.
The consequences were felt throughout the Pepsi bottler network. Many bottlers had to shut down, having nothing to bottle and nothing to deliver. It wasn’t until the end of 1919 that Bradham was able to buy the necessary sugar at 18 cents a pound, producing syrup that would cost $1.60 a gallon.
During the last few years of the war, the ever resourceful Bradham had bought sugar from any available source. One supplier had sold Bradham sugar that had been mixed with molasses. Once the Pepsi-Cola produced from this sugar reached the market, however, consumers complained about its taste. Although the tainted syrup fortunately was not distributed to all the Pepsi bottlers, those who did use it suffered lost sales and a further deterioration of their product’s reputation. [25 pg 44-43]

1920s
Billy LaHiff’s tavern on Forty-eighth Street became one of Damon’s regular ports of call. Billy had a habit that was puzzling in a New Yorker. He was helpful to young newspapermen when they most needed a friend,
The rooms over Billy’s tavern cradled a nest of fledgling reporters and columnists, and also harbored a number of great ambitions, past, present, and future. Walter Winchell lived there with his bride, June Magee. Walter was exploring Broadway, seeking a medium where he could best express his talents. “Bugs” Baer and his wife, Jimmy Hussey, the actor, and LaHiff himself occupied apartments in the building. Downstairs in the tavern, the greats of the sports, theater, and newspaper worlds gathered each evening for food and conversation.
One day, Winchell informed LaHiff that he couldn’t afford the $150 a month rental. He was only making $50 a week as a reporter on the Vaudeville News.
“Is $125 too much?” asked Billy.
“We’ll try,” replied Walter.
“That’s fine,” said LaHiff, smiling. “Don’t take your baby carriage from the front of the building – it’s the only sign of respectability it has!” [8 ph 128]

1920
George V. Marshall becomes salesman (NCR) in the Toronto office at $35 a week. [6 pg...]

The one looming worry was that the farmers were hurting and the reasons were plain enough at the same Kansas City grain exchange were John Truman had lost his money twenty years earlier. Prices were tumbling. Wheat that had sold for a record $2.15 a bushel in 1919 had dropped to $1.44 a bushel by the fall of 1920. Farm prices overall fell 40 percent and the farmers’ plight began to spread. The Middle West was especially hard hit. By 1912 the silk shirt that had been such a symbol of the postwar boom became the shirt Truman & Jacobson could no longer sell. By mid year their “flourishing business” had evaporated. With the country in a full scale depression, Harry and Eddie Jacobson were in trouble. To keep their stock up to date, they were forced to borrow more money. [14 pg 149]

[Michael J. Meehan]…bought his first seat [on the stock exchange]. [22 pg12]

A monopoly in the sugar trade, however, undermined the campaign. The expected normalization of sugar prices and supplies was thwarted by a cartel of Cuban sugar growers, farmers and distributors had formed an organization aimed at manipulating sugar merchants. The efforts of this group slowed the release of their product, causing demand to exceed supply. Panic buying promptly drive prices up, In march, the price of sugar was 9.5 cents per pound in April, the price rose to 13.75 cents per pound by May it had reached 27 per pound. Anxious about future price and availability, Pepsi-Cola bought 10,000 pounds of this 27 cent sugar, causing the price of syrup to shoot up to $2.32 per gallon.
Pepsi-Cola was not the only soft drink hit hard by the turbulent sugar market of 1920. Coca-Cola would lose $2 million as a result of fluctuating sugar prices. [25 pg 46]
Some attribute Bradhan’s financial ruin to the inflation of sugar pricing. Examining the numbers, one can see that even if Pepsi had sold their syrup at $1.25 a gallon, resulting in a loss of just over $1,700, that amount should have been negligible to the company. Multiply that figure by 10 to make the loss $17,000, and it still wouldn’t have been enough to devastate Pepsi’s fortunes. But that loss, added to several years of losses and combined with a decline in sales brought on by the sugar crisis, may have ben enough to wreck Bradhan’s dreams for Pepsi-Cola. [25 pg 46]

1921
The beginning of 1921 found the Pepsi-Cola company completely broke. Bradham took out a mortgage on the Pepsi-Cola building for $60,000 with the Dixie Fire Insurance Co. [25 pg 46]

1922
Truman & Jacobson failed in 1922. The business was approximately $35,000 in the red. The price of wheat in 1922 was 88 cents a bushel. [14 pg 151]

The job of eastern judge paid $3,465 a year. [14 pg 160]

KKK membership in Kansas $10. [14 pg 164]

By 1922 [The Saturday evening Post] was selling 2,187,024 copies per issue – about seven times as many as in 1902 – while its advertising revenue had climbed steeply to $28,278,755 – over 78 times as much as in 1902! [23 pg 104]

On February 20, 1922 the new Pepsi-Cola company was incorporated in Wilmington, Delaware. Unable to find enough investors, however, the company failed to pull themselves out of debt. The end came for Bradham and the New Bern ea of Pepsi-Cola on May 31, 1923, when the company was certified bankrupt. [25 pg 46]

1923
On May 7, 1923, the assets of the Pepsi-cola company were bought up by the Craven Holding Corporation. …As if on cue, on April 17, 1923, the court ordered trustee R.B. Williams to sell the assets of the Pepsi-Cola company to the Craven Holding corporation. The price: $35,000 – half in cash and half in a promissory note due in six months. [25 pg 46]

The Christmas tree was officially recognized in 1923 when the President began the practice of lighting a tree on the White House lawn.

1924
In 1924 a reporter found him [William James Sidis, savant, collector of street car transfers] working as a clerk in a Wall Street office for twenty three dollars per week. [10 pg 52]

Harry Truman becomes presiding judge at a salary of $6,000 per year. The office of county collector offered an inordinately high salary of $10,000. [14 pg 173]

…then after an increase due to the shortages and inflation of World War I, [auto prices] went down again until by 1924 the price of a Ford (without self starter) was only $290. Meanwhile production had expanded by slow degrees from 18,664 cars all the way to 1,250,00 in 1920-21. [23 pg 101]

1925
HEALTH OFFICE REGULATIONS FOR CONTROL OF HOUSE FLIES IN CITIES.
All stalls in which animals are kept shall have the surface of the ground covered with a water‑tight floor. Every person occupying a building where domestic animals are kept shall maintain in connection therewith a bin or pit for the reception of manure and, pending the removal from the premises of the manure from the animal or animals, shall place such manure in said bin or pit.
This bin shall be so constructed as to exclude rain water and shall in all other respects be water‑tight, except as it may be connected with the public sewer.
It shall be provided with a suitable cover and constructed so as to prevent the ingress and egress of flies. No person owning a stable shall keep any manure or permit any manure to be kept in or upon any portion of the premises other than the bin or pit described, nor shall he allow any such bin or pit to be overfilled or needlessly uncovered. Horse manure may be kept tightly rammed into well‑covered barrels for the purpose of removal in such barrels. Every person keeping manure in the more densely populated parts of the District shall cause all such manure to be removed from the premises at least twice every week between June 1 and October 31, and at least once every week between November 1 and May 31 of the following year. No person shall remove or transport any manure over any public highway in any of the more densely populated parts of the District except in a tight vehicle, which, if not inclosed, must be effectually covered with canvas, so as to prevent the manure from being dropped. No person shall deposit manure removed from the bins or pits within any of the more densely populated parts of the District without a permit from the health officer. Any person violating any of the provisions shall, upon conviction thereof, be punished by a fine of not more than $40 for each offense. [43]

1927
[Poster] Look! Victor artists A.P. Carter and the Carter Family will give a musical program at Elm Hill School August 10th… This program is morally good. 25 cents adults… 15 cents children. [5 pg 99]

In December 1927 came an advertising campaign which roused America to near-hysteria: the proclamation and unveiling of the Model “A” Ford. For eighteen years the famous Model “T” – the car which was incapable of improvements had clattered its way round the world. .. Newspaper photographers haunted the roads near Detroit in the hope of catching the new model out on test; they photographed many cars but not the right ones. On December 2, the day of the unveiling, a million people in New York tried to view the Model “A”, which, by late afternoon, had to be removed from its showroom and installed in Madison Square Garden. In two thousand newspapers, at a cost of $1,300,000, ford ran a fine day series of full page advertisement, revealing all that had hitherto been a matter of speculation. [24 pg 187]

1928
Ford..personal income in 1928 had reached $136,000 a day. [22 pg 39]

1929
Damon sent his first short story to the Cosmopolitan Magazine. A few days later he received a telephone call from Ray Long, who was then editor of the Cosmopolitan. Ray’s voice was excited.
“Damon, that story was wonderful,” he said.
“Stop kidding, Ray,” Damon answered, “I’m in no mood to be Kidded.”
“It’s just what we want, Damon, and a check for a thousand dollars is in the mail.”
“What are you trying to do?” Damon demanded, almost dropping the phone, “ruin my amateur standing?”
“Well, if a thousand dollars will do it,” Long said, “I stand ready to accept anything you write at the same figure.”
Along Broadway some will tell you that Runyon wrote this story because he needed the money for an appendectomy. Others will label it a pure fable. … It is true, however, that Damon wrote the first of his famous short stories because he needed money. The depression that forced men with college degrees to sell apples on street corners inspired Damon to turn to fiction to supplement his newspaper salary. [8 pg 152]

A judgement by default for $8,944.78 was brought against [Truman] for his old haberdashery debts. His mother , meantime, had been forced to take another mortgage on the far. Yet when one of new roads cut 11 acres from her property, he felt he must deny her the usual reimbursement from the county, as a matter of principle, given his position, Had he not been the presiding judge, her payment would have been $1,000 and acre or $11,000. [14 pg 182]

A young man from Independence named Yancey Wasson, who worked for his cousin at Guy Wasson’s fabric Company on Magee Trafficway in Kansas City, would remember Judge Truman coning in to buy seat covers for his car. The bill came to $32, but on instructions from his cousin, young Wasson said judge Truman could forget the bill if he just arranged for the company to get some business on county cars and trucks. Harry gave him a look. “Son, I don’t do business that way,” he said, and paid the bill.
Sometime later, when Tom Pendergast ordered seat covers for his car that were to cost $65 and Yancey Wasson, calling at Pendergast’s office, made a similar offer, Pendergast, leaning back in his chair, said, “I think we can do that.”
“About two hours later,” Wasson recalled, “I walked out of the police garage with an order for 200 quick change seat covers for 100 cars on the police register and an order for 20 front rubber mats. [14 pg 182]

[Michael J. Meehan]…bought his first seat [on the stock exchange], he had two employees; now he had some 400, with an annual payroll of around $600,000. [22 pg 12]

[New Years Day] The Rolls stopped outside the town barber shop.
Garcia hoped it was empty, the barber ready.
Giannini had not shaved himself for twenty years – regarding it as “non productive and time consuming.” He had told Garcia: “In the time I would take to shave, I could read a company report – and make a decision that could, maybe, bring in a million dollars. Maybe more.”
Impressed the chauffeur had set up a unique tonsorial network. During the past year, as Giannini expanded his banking enterprises through California – n between entrenching his position in Wall street – Garcia briefed every barber he came across that whenever he pulled up in a Rolls, the barber must be prepared instantly to attend his master. The chauffeur promised a quarter tip on top of the ten cent shave. [22 pg 14]

Ford’s hiring agents resorted to a “ten in, ten out” method of selection. …On the first days, fighting had broken out as the desperate men strove to be in the right position when they reached the gates; the guards doused them with fire hoses. Some of the men began to freeze where they stood. They were either taken to hospitals or struggled to a local ten cent movie house where, the Times man noted, they were “not so much interested in the show as in keeping warm.” … [22 pg 39]

[The price of a seat on the stock exchange] was more than $500,000 – and there was no room for chairs on the crowded floor. [22 pg 54]

Homer Dowdy was pleased he had placed his savings in the Union Industrial Bank. It was a comforting thought for the thirty four year old postman to know that “the money was safe and growing,” faced as he was with a sick wife and three small children to rear. Even with his postman’s salary of $2,100 a year, “things were tight.”
All his life he had scrimped and saved. Once it had been to buy a new plow when he had farmed in Missouri at the turn of the century. Next it had been for the means to marry Gladys. He had saved before the arrival of each child. Then, realizing his small holdings could never support them, Homer had sold it and brought the family to Flint. He was attracted, like so many migrants, by the high wages Billy Durant offered at “the Buick.”
Homer had hated life o the assembly line: the noise, the heat, the hire and fire mentality, the sudden, unexpected layoffs.
But he saved enough from his sixty cents an hour wage to put a deposit on their home. And he had studied at night for the Civil Service Examination. In 1925 he had passed it and joined the postal service.
The great thing about being a postman, he told Gladys, was that “it’s a permanent job.” As he saw it: “Everybody else can get laid off, but they still like to get letters.” [22 pg 104]

Mott heartily endorsed the sentiments of one reporter: “The American who has been humbled by poverty, or by insignificance in the business order, or by his racial status, or by any other circumstance that might demean him in his own eyes, gains a sense of authority when he slides behind the wheel of an automobile and it leaps forward at his bidding, ready to take him wherever he may personally please. If he drives a bus or a huge truck trailer his state is all the more kingly, for he feels himself responsible for the wielding of a sizable concentration of force.”
It was a killing force. In 1922 less than 15,000 people had died on the roads; now at the end of the second month of 1929, the annual rate was running at close to 30,000.
Mott, understandably, preferred to publicized reports that the auto industry was improving the life style of the nation. He believed it was making everyone happier – and richer.
It did not need much to be classified as rich in 1929: an income of $6,000 a year was sufficient to put an individual among the top 5 percent of the population. There were also the very rich, of which Mott was one. In 1928 he was included in the record 513 individuals who had an annual income of over $1 million. [22 pg 106]

Church attendance dropped; now, in 1929, more people went to the movies than to places of worship. The United States, said intellectuals, lacked a cultural tradition and was suffering from commercialism. And the popular mind of the American public, according to Walter Lippmann, was “irrational, gullible, easily misled.” [22 pg 119]

In spite of the booming stock market, less than three out of every hundred Americans had incomes of over $10,000 a year; only eight in every hundred earned over $5,000. Sixty percent of the population earned less than $2,000. [22 pg 120]

Hundreds of telephone clerks sitting in cramped booths around the edge of the floor took down the orders. Crawford always marveled at their speed and the way they never made a mistake while each day transcribing messages which involved millions of dollars; the slightest lapse in their concentration could cost firms huge losses.
For the next five hours, they would be rigidly confined to their cubicles. If Crawford spotted a telephonist on the actual trading floor, the man would be ordered out of the Exchange and fired by his firm.
The link between the booths and the trading posts were the page boys. They all had high school diplomas and many were college graduates. They wore military cadet style uniforms, known as “Wall street West Pointers,” and earned a salary of fifteen dollars a week. [22 pg 124]

Moving purposefully – through the groups of commission brokers, floor traders, and specialist; past the odd lot dealers, who only handled orders for fewer than 100 shares; past the “two dollar men,” so called because that sum was once their compensation for buying or selling 100 shares for a commission broker, though now it was $2.50 – William Crawford finally climbed onto the podium. [22 pg 125]

But there was more in store. During the trip, Ford, as usual without a dime in his pockets, had borrowed two cents from a J.F. Quinlan to purchase a stamp.
In return Henry had given Mr. Quinlan a check for two cents to cover the amount. It did not take reporters long to work out that during the time required by Ford to write out his check – the first personal check he had signed in five years – hin income had increased by $6.32, or 316 times the amount payable. The New York Times announced the computation was “based on reports that Mr Ford had $1,000,000,000, which at 5% would yield him an income of $136,986 a day, $5,707 an hour, $95 a minute and $1.58 a second.”
The Times estimated it had taken Ford four seconds to write out the check. [22 pg 214]

Worst of all, Mott also discovered his wife had tried to cheat him. Returning from Europe, Dee underwent an unspecified operation in Battle Creek Sanatorium. She presented her husband with a bill for $2,000. OnS checking with the clinic, Mott found the cost came to only $1,000. [22 pg 228]

Since February the 1929 membership [on the stock exchange] had been increased from 1,100 to 1,375. A seat not cost $625,000. [22 pg 234]

In America the weeks following the Crash saw a steady deterioration in steel production, freight loadings, automobile manufacturing.
The government tried to restore confidence. A cut in income tax was introduced. It gave a man supporting a family of two children on $4,000 a year a full $6 a year extra to spend.
The benefit was derisory, but in any case there were few men earning that sort of salary.
Public works budgets were increased by $175 million to be spread over ten years, It did little to restrain the growing army or workless.
President Hoover sent for Henry Ford and asked if he could help.
Ford promised he would raise wages from $6 to $7 a day. The gesture cost him about $20 million a year.
Most failed to realize that the automobile market was saturated; a million used vehicles crammed the nation’s secondhand lots.
Bank deposits shrank. Gold flowed out of the country. Speakeasy prices fell; illicit champagne dropped from $100 to $75 a bottle. There were few takers.
By December, New York stores were reporting a 50 percent drop in the sale of radios. [22 pg 409]

During that very year 1929, according to the subsequent estimates of the very careful and conservative Brookings Institution, only 2.3 per cent of American families had incomes of over $10,000 a year. Only 8 per cent had incomes of over $5,000. No less than 71 per cent had incomes of less than $2,5000. Some 60 per cent had incomes of less than $2,000. More than 42 per cent had incomes of less than $1,500. And more than 21 per cent had incomes of les than $1,000 a year. “At 1929 prices,” said the Brookings economists, “a family income of $2,000 may be regarded as sufficient to supply only basic necessities.” One might reasonablely interpret this statement to mean that any income below that level represented poverty. Practically 60 per cent of American families were below it – in the golden year 1929! There has been a tendency, at least during the last decade or so, for the inequality in the distribution of income to be accentuated.” [23 pg 128]

In that year over 12 million Americans were unemployed. In the industrial towns the proportion of jobless people was staggering. In Buffalo, for instance, a house to house canvass of nearly fifteen thousand people who were ready and able to work showed that 31 per cent of them could not find jobs, and less than half of them were working full time. And meanwhile the farmers were in desperate straits, with cotton bringing less than 5 cents, wheat less than 50 cents, and corn only 31 cents. [23 pg 131]

The official bottle of the Pepsi-Cola Corporation, introduced n July of 1929, held 6.5 ounces and was topped with a green and white cap. [25 pg 56]

Book Prices from the New York Times Book Review January 13, 1929 – June 30, 1929
Black Trails from the Middle Border Hamlin Garland $2.50
Elizabeth and Essex Lynton Strachey $3.75
Good Morning America Carl Sandburg (his first voluem of verse in seven years) $3.00
Hunger Fighters Paul De Kruif $3.00
Middletown: A Study in contemporary American Culture Robert & Helen Merrell Lynd $5.00
Bambi Felix Salten $2.50
The Fiancier Theodore Dreiser $3.00
The Art of Thinking Ernest Dimnet $2.50
Coming of Age in Samoa Margaret Mead $3.00
Pilgrims Progress John Bunyan $1.25
Point Counter Point Aldus Huxley $2.50
The Story of Religion – Charles Francis Potter
Crime novels average $2.00 each.
From the Pantheon series of Pegasus Press:
To be a complete history of Europan art. Each volume royal quarto, with approximately 100 pages of text and 100 pages of collotype plates.
English Mediaeval Painting $31.50
English Illumination $56.00
Spanish Romanesque Sculpture $63.00
German Illumination $63.00
Ad: Speak French like a native! Examine for 5 days the 24 lesson course and the French-English dictionary and then mail in $1.85 and $2 a month for 4 successive months.
The works of Clarence Darrow $1 post paid. 18 intriguing sections. Easily worth $3 – All yours for $1 Haldeman-Julius Publications.
The ideal Bookcase $3.75 per section.
Subscription to Current History 6 months for $1 Regular price 25c.
[29 (various ads)]
1931
The lobster canneries gave them three cents a pound for their small lobsters. Larger ones brought five cents; other fish similar returns. ….
The rebirth of Little Dover began in 1931 when the fishermen put into practice some of the ideas learned in the study clubs they shouldered axes and cut timber to build a cooperative lobster cannery. Having no horses they dragged the lumber, and stone for the foundation, out by hand. When the cannery was finished the banks refused them a loan for canning machinery, but they found a friendly source from which they borrowed $1,000. The first year’s operation brought a profit of $4,000 – enough to pay off the whole loan and award themselves an extra cent a pound for their catch.
In swift succession they built a fish processing plant, set up a consumer cooperative and bought a herd of goats to supply milk for the children. Their cooperative store saved them as much as $4 on a fishnet, five cents a pound on rope, four cents a pound on nails; small items, but in those savings and the higher prices obtained for their catch lay the difference between poverty and prosperity.
They built their own sawmill which brought the price of their lumber down from $37 to $7 a thousand. … Last summer, lobsters that a few years ago brought them five cents a pound netted them 20 cents. … [9 pg 419]

In 1931 [Montgomery Ward] lost $9 million, and its stock, which had peaked at 156 7/8 in 1929 could be bought for 6 5/8. [18 pg 22]

…it might be argued that the cola wars began on September 26, 1931 on that date Pepsi-Cola replaced Coca-Cola at all Loft stores, [25 pg 65]

1932
At the middle of the year 1932 – more than two and a half years after the crash of 1929 – American industry as a whole was operating at less than half its maximum 1929 volume. During this year 1932, the total amount of money paid out in wages was 60 per cent less than in 1929. The total of dividends was 57 per cent less; and these dividends represented the earnings of the more fortunate concerns – some might say the more ruthless toward their employees – while American business as a whole was running at a net loss of over five billion dollars.

1933
Richmond Pearson Hobson, awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, and shortly afterward he was made a rear admiral with $4,500 a year retirement pay. [2 pg 41]

New Deal Art Projects
Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) 1933-34
Murals: about 400
Easel works: 6,800
Sculptures: 650
Prints: 2,600
Government expenditure: $1,300,000
Treasure Section of Painting and Sculpture (section), 1934-43
Murals: 1,100
Sculptures: 300
Government expenditure: $2,570,000
WPA Federal Art Project (WPA / FPA), 1935-1943
Murals: 2,500
Easel works: 108,000
Sculptures: 17,700
Prints: 11,200 designs
Government expenditure: $35,000,000
Treasure Relief Art Project (TRAP), 1935-1939
Murals: 89
Easel works: 10,000
Sculptures: 65
Government expenditure: $833,700 [13 pg 88]

Loft’s Candies of New York City advertised two full pounds of candy for 29 cents. Three box assortment of chocolates for 99 cents. A chocolate cake with 1 full pint fresh frozen Strawberries and Cream for only 29 cents. Pastry Specials: coffee ring 29 cents; California Fruit leaf, 29 cents; Famous Pecan Honey Bun, 29 cents. Jams, jellies and Marmalade, a full pound 19 cents. Coffee, full pound 29 cents. And a full 8 oz. Pepsi-cola served at the fountain, still 5 cents. [25 pg 60]

Guth figured taking a risk on something new might be just the thing to invigorate Pepsi-Cola’s languishing sales. Buying up used 12 ounce beer bottles, he contracted mavis Bottling to fill the lot with Pepsi-Cola. To gussy the bottles up, they were wrapped with foil around the neck and bottle cap, much like champagne bottles. Priced at 10 cents, this new 12 ounce Pepsi-Cola was sold exclusively through Loft stores.
Unfortunately, the foil wrapped bottles failed to entice consumers, sales continued their downward slide. Faced with a growing inventory of 12 ounce Pepsi-cola bottles, someone decided to reduce the price from 10 cents to a nickel. [25 pg 67]

1934
Farm prices, in steady decline since the Coolidge years, had gone from bad to worse. Eggs that normally sold for 25 cents a dozen were bringing 5 cents. Since 1930, more that eighteen thousand Missouri farms had been foreclosed. [14 pg 209]

Harry Truman runs for U.S. Senate. Harry’s expenses in the primary had come to $12,286. In the general election they were $785. [14 pg 212]

[Trumans] hunt for an apartment, which they found on Connecticut Avenue – four rooms in the Tilden Gardens apartments for $150 a month. Later, they stopped at a piano store, where Truman sat down and played several before choosing one to rent for five dollars a month. [14 pg 214]

Apartment hunting in Washington Truman writes to his wife:
Found a rather nice place at 1921 Kalorama Road. It was a northwest corner, fifth floor apartment – two bedrooms, two baths, living room, small dining room, large hall, $125 per month. No garage. Then I looked at a house at 2218 Cathedral, a block north of Connecticut… They were painting and papering it from cellar to attic. It had a two car garage… The wanted $90 per month. I then went down to the Highlands at California and Connecticut. They had a nice two bedroom apartment on the southeast corner, fourth floor, at $125 – better I think than 1921 Kalorama Road. Then I looked at the Westmoreland right behind the Highlands on California. They wanted $100 for a two bed room apartment on the sixth floor, and $79.50 for one on the fourth floor that had four rooms. I am going back to look at 2400 sixteenth Street and the Jefferson tomorrow and a couple of houses. I bet I find something that’ll suit before I quit. [14 pg 221]

{Truman] never ceased worrying about money and whether he could make ends meet in Washington on a salary of $10,000. In his letters to Bess he reported the amount of his bus fare (20 cents), the charge for six months of the Washington Post ($7.50), an old grocery bill ($9.53).

In March, 1934, the 12 ounce, five cent bottle of Pepsi-Cola debuted in Baltimore. The results were almost instantaneous. By May, up to 1,000 cases were being sold in a single day. [25 pg 69[
When word spread of Pepsi-Cola’s success, individuals lined up by the dozens to sign on as Pepsi-Cola distributors. During the Depression, jobs were scarce, and a Pepsi-Cola distributor could bring home a relatively good paycheck. Purchasing Pepsi-Cola directly from the bottling plant for 50 cents per case, distributors could unload those same cases for 75 cents throughout territories that were exclusively theirs. This distribution method kept Pepsi-Cola’s sales force small - and its payroll down. [25 pg 71]
Today, a Pepsi-Cola franchise is worth millions of dollars, but in 1934, the price was $315. The was the cost of one unit of Pepsi-Cola concentrate which would yield 1,200 of Pepsi-Cola. Also included in the purchase price were enough bottle caps and labels to produce 28,800 bottles.
The truth is, the profit on the sale of 12 ounce Pepsi-Cola bottles was so minuscule at first that many bottlers earned more on the deposit collected for the bottles. The used bottles, which cost $1 per gross, produced $2.88 in revenues when deposits were collected. Admittedly, this may not seem like much money, but for many bottlers it made the difference in keeping their businesses in the black. [25 pg 72]

1935
In the year 1935 the median incomes of colored families were computed in a number of cities; in the northern ones, they averaged about half, or a little less, of the median incomes of white families 9which themselves were nothing to brag of in the depression year); in souther cities they averaged even less. Im Mobile, Alabama, for example, the median Negro family took in only $481` during the year, as against $1,419 for the median white one. And in that same year something like half of all the Negro families in the North were on relief. [23 pg 158]

The price for this old place, including twenty-two acres of land and a barn usable for garage and chicken house, was $8,200. According to actual record, only $2,798 was spent on remodeling. There were almost no structural changes required. Two minor partitions were removed and five new windows cut. Otherwise, this expenditure was largely devoted
to the introduction of plumbing, heating, and lighting. By type of work, the costs for this remodeling were as follows:

Two bathrooms, each complete with shower;
a kitchen sink and laundry tub $590.00

Heating system, including steam boiler, piping
and 25 radiators, totaling 630 feet of radiation 889.00

Water system, cleaning well, installing pump
and 500 gallon storage tank 218.00

Electric wiring entirely of armored cable and
lighting fixtures 306.00

Sewage system complete with septic tank and
disposal fields 230.00

All carpentry, including necessary work for
plumber, electrician, etc. 160.00

Masonry, including repairs to fireplaces and
chimneys 105.00

Decorations, paint, and paper for twelve rooms 150.00

Architectural supervision, plans where needed
and preliminary inspection of several houses 150.00

Total $2,798.00

These are the actual figures for a livable and attractive country home. [49]

Of course if you have found a house dating from the 17th or 18th century, you have something fairly rare and it is worth reclaiming even though very extensive replacements are needed. In Fairfield, Connecticut, for example, there is the Ogden House, built before 1710. Its present owner paid $4,000 for it in what seemed to be ruinous
condition. Its renovation cost fully $12,000; but finished, this old salt box house is so unusual that more than one buyer is ready and
waiting to pay double the amount spent. [49]

1938
Those who lament that America’s last frontier is gone should visit Greenbelt, Md., the little resettlement town founded by the New Deal. Here, in a new outpost in the wilderness of economics, a band of men and women, in homes flung in crescent pattern among the trees, have voluntarily decided to try something never tried before in a modern American community. They are about to buy, and operate for themselves, all the stores which serve their town.
Ownership will be acquired through the sale of stock. Each share will cost $10. Half of Greenbelt’s families must invest to make the cooperative effective under the charter granted the town by the government. One family may buy as many shares as it likes, but, no natter how many, it gets only one vote in the management. Each share holder becomes a part owner of everything in town: the food store, the drugstore, the gas station, the motion picture theater which will open soon, etc.
Belief in the cooperative idea is exhibited in unmistakable ways. For example, salaries in Greenbelt run from $22 to $45 a week, mostly in the lower brackets. Anyone earning more may not remain a resident of Greenbelt. The Greenbelt health association guarantees for its members medical care, preventive and remedial, at a cost of a $5 membership; fee and weekly payments ranging from $1.50 for an unmarried person to $2.25 for a man, wife and four children.
There are 698 families now living in Greenbelt. The resettlement administration spent more than $14,000,000, and employed 3000 WPA workers to provide sewage and garbage disposal, to put modern plumbing and electricity (including electric stoves) in every home, to build modern schools.
Greenbelt critics ask whether it was worth so much of the taxpayers’ money to try to prove the worth of resettlement. The people of Greenbelt answer that “a couple of Greenbelts could be built for the cost of one battleship.” and besides, the government expects to get its money back in rents over 60 years. AP; N.Y. Herald Tribune (August 7, 1938) [9 pg 444]

1939
Kansas City Manager Henry McElroy, who also died while facing indictment, was found to have misplaced some $20 million with his unique system of bookkeeping, a figure nearly twice the city’s annual budget. [14 pg 239]

The price of Texas oil dropped to four cents a barrel.

…the idea that “synthetic” materials can do better than merely imitate nature; they can actually improve on nature. It was before World War II – on October 25, 1939, to be exact – that they produced the climactic demonstration of this idea; that was when nylon stockings first went on sale. [28 ??]

At the 1939 Christmas season Montgomery Ward and company gave away 2.4 million copies of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” a versified story written by an employee in their advertising department. Gene Autry’s singing version became a runaway best selling record. [28 pg 159]

1940s
During the nineteen forties the number of farm workers shrank from 9½ millions to only a little over 8 millions. Nevertheless farm production increased by 25 per cent. This was partly, of course, because prosperity at home and food shortages abroad had broadened the market; but partly it was because farmers, like other Americans, were using more and more machines, old and new, in their daily life. [23 pg 169]

1940
Not so many years ago, many of the small circuses that traveled about the United states not only made each ticket seller pay up to $35 a week for his job – because short changing was so profitable – but they even sold the pocket picking privilege for the season to the highest bidding gang. [9 pg 80]

For a premium ranging from 50 cents for freshmen to 35 cents for seniors, the Students’ Protective Insurance Company, formed last year by students of Providence College, Rhode Island, sells ‘exam insurance.” the company provides each policyholder with a special syllabus of “ho tips” on a course; if the student fails to make a passing grade it pays the additional examination fees to the college: $2 for the first try, $5 each for the next two. The plan is being adopted by students at boston College, Columbia University, Princeton, and the University of California. [9 pg 125]

Students of Denver University have evolved a new method of earning money for their college expenses: party driving. “Party drivers” guarantee sober driving for other students on parties. Of late, police starting to arrest drivers of cars filled with shouting, singing students have been checked by the explanation: “I’m a party driver.” [9 pg 125]

William Wilson divorced his wife because she took his false teeth and held them for $2 ransom. [9 pg 170]

For those tired of trying to use paper towels as washcloths there are lozenges, easily carried in the purse or pocket, that expand into sponges when dropped in water. Ten cost 60 cents. [9 pg 245]

There [the supreme court chambers] everything is arranged in strict order of precedence – the chief Justice’s judicial gown is in the first case, that of Associate Justice Cardozo, the newest member, in the farthest. Each robe bears the initial of its owner, but there are “spares” on hand should a jurist slip on his brief walk and tear his own. The robes are of silk and cost about $100 each, paid by the Justices themselves. [9 pg 303]
Life insurance companies might profitably make such a [syphilis] test in every medical examination; at least one large company takes a Wassermann on all applicants for policies of $20,000 or more. [9 pg 363]

{Communist party dues] My yearly salary was $3,600. The scale of dues ranged from two cents a week for unemployed members, to $3.50 a week for me. Then to this was added extra levies for the International and for the American Party convention. Then there were books, pamphlets, magazines and newspapers to buy, and once each year we contributed a day’s salary to the Daily Worker drive.
In all, my financial obligation to the Party amounted to approximately $900 in two and one half years. After I had been in the Party for a year I was forced to give up my usual two weeks’ vacation trip. I discontinued membership in two historical associations, I stopped subscriptions to three magazines, I stopped buying books in my field. [Condensed from Harper’s Magazine; Stuart Browne] [9 pg 386]

To no one’s surprise, the Bennett Clark presidential boom came to nothing. … almost no one seemed wiling to give money. Mildred Dryden, who had left the Washington office to hep with the campaign, remembered having trouble finding money enough to buy stamps. One mailing of eight hundred letters asking for donations of a dollar produced about $200, hardly worth the effort. [14 pg 244]

[Senate Candidate Truman] Senator Jimmy Byrnes, hearing of Truman’s financial troubles, talked the New York financier Bernard Baruch into contributing a desperately needed $4,000 to the campaign. And at the last, Alben Barkley, too, would appear for speeches in St. Louis and Kansas City. … In full page newspaper ads, the president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, A.F. Whitney, called for help for “our good friend” Harry Truman, and in another few weeks the railroad unions provided the only big money behind the senator, some $17,000. Harry, as always in his political life, refused to handle any money, leaving that t the others. Eventually, however, to meet expenses he had to borrow $3,000 on his life insurance policy. [14 pg 256]

1941
Every month was adding five thousand people to the city’s population. Already, the shortage of housing was more acute than in 1918. The Trumans were extremely lucky to find a new apartment, five small rooms at 4701 Connecticut avenue, on the street side of the building, second floor, for $120 a month. [14 pg 255]

The New Deal was past now, the Depression a bygone era. The hero of the hour, so different from the kind who had flocked to Washington in the early Roosevelt years, was the “dollar-a-year,” a high powered, high-priced corporation executive who had taken a government post but kept his old corporate salary, an innovation that some, like Senator Truman, looked on with great skepticism. [14 pg 255]

1942
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Bel & Howell filmo “companion” 8. This palm size camera makes superb 8mm movies in full color or black and white. ‘Drop-in” loading – no sprockets to thread. Life time guarantee! With F 3.5 lens, only $52,80. [19 pg...]

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[Natl. Geographic Ad] Jordan’s Virginia Ham. Mail order. Average weight 6½ to 11 pounds – Price 95 cents a pound. Jordan’s Old Virginia Smokehouse. For shipments west of Rockies add 5 cents per pound. [19 pg...]

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District of Columbia.
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The Biltmore. Madison Avenue at 43rd St. All that is best in atmosphere, appointments, service. Single, $5.50 up, Double, $7.50 up; Suites $12 up.
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Essex House. Facing central park. Rooms and suites with butlers pantries – from $5.50.
The Gramercy Park. Famed traditional hotel at legendary private park. rendezvous of nation’s great. $3 single, $5 dble., $7 suites. Weekly, monthly.
Hotel Lincoln. 44th to 45th Sts. At 8th Ave. 1400 rooms – $2.50 up. Four fine Restaurants. Direct subway Entrance to All Points of Interest.
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Hotel Seymour. 50 W. 45th St. Near Fifth Ave. theaters, ships, art galleries, Radio City. Quite, refined surroundings, single $4; double $5.50; Suites $8.
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The George Washington. Lexington at 23rd. Famous for cheerful service, superb cuisine, comfort, contentment. 600 rooms for $2 single, $3.50 double. [19 pg...]

The setting up of Pepsi-Cola centers for servicemen was one of the most popular programs sponsored by the company to bolster the war effort. The first center opened in July 1942 in New York city’s times Square, followed by others in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. All operating expenses were paid by the Pepsi-Cola company.
In the first year of operation, the centers attracted more than two million visitors from every branch of the military. For the convenience of military personnel, doors stayed open from 9:30 A.M. until 12:30 A.M. During those hours, men and women in the armed forces were served hamburgers and sandwiches at reduced prices – and all the free Pepsi-Cola they could drink. Every center was equipped with showers and telephones. One letter – written on servicemen center stationery, addressed to “Fuzzy Kitten” and signed “Your loving fiancé” – describes the ballad “Night and Day” being played over the radio, adding, “It has all the words the way I feel about you, darling.”
Perhaps the most popular feature of the centers was the voice recording booth. Free of charge, visitors were invited to record a personal message onto a 78 record to send home to friends and family. For the tongue-tied, scrips were provided to help put their feelings into words. [25 pg 98]

1943
In 1943 Pepsi-Cola was offered at soda fountains for the first time in 10 years. At the point of purchase displays offered : “Big ten ounce glass for 5 cents. [25 pg 97]

1945
Look at the figures for workers in manufacturing industries. Between 1939 and 1945 their average weekly earnings went up by 86 per cent. Meanwhile their cost of living went up by an estimated 29 per cent – but even so they were far better off than in 1939. They had experienced a sharp and welcome gain in “real wages.” [23 pg 150]

The first big promotion of the atomic age was the ball point pen, launched with the make-‘em talk slogan “It writes under water.” five thousand people waited outside a new York store on an October morning in 1945 to buy the first pens – at $12.50 each. The pen swept the world at a fast falling price, surviving such dubious tributes as “The Only pen that will make eight carbons and no original.” [24 pg 226]

Even the movies did not overlook the dramatic effect of killing off villains or threatening heroes with the great brutes. An old tiger shark in an aquarium (rent $25 a day or $60 by the week) was almost killed by a succession of stunt men who climbed into his tank to “fight” him. [33 pg 27]

It cost the state about $500 a year to keep a man behind bars. Besides, his wife and child may also have to be supported, at a cost of $750. [33 pg 17]

GI Bill of Rights – for the benefit of the 12,000,000 American servicemen and servicewomen of the present war.
…will be eligible for from one to four years of schooling or training, for which the Government will pay up to $500 a year for tuition, books and similar expenses, plus $50 a month for subsistence, or $75 if the veteran has any dependents.
…even elementary or grammar-school education is included; in fact, study is permitted in any approved public or private educational or vocational institution at any level; or in any approved business or industrial establishment which gives apprentice or vocational training on the job.
…The actual school charges under the rather liberal tuition allowance of up to $500 a year – this can include laboratory and other established fees, but not board or lodging – will be paid direct to the institution by the Veterans’ Administration, which is in charge of this program.
In New York city…$50 a month may not be enough. …For a young veteran returning to a rural area, $50 a month in cash, or $75 if he has dependents, will be a powerful inducement to enroll for school again.
…The bill reduces or eliminates the veterans allowances only if he is taking part-time courses or working full time, or if he receives pay for work he performs as part of an on-the-job training course.
…The unemployed vet must accept a suitable job if one is offered him, whereupon his benefits cease. And if he should earn more than $30 a week in part-time employment while drawing unemployment benefits, the latter would automatically be reduced by the amount of his earnings exceeding $3 a week. [33 pg 36]

1946
To increase production without an increased sugar supply, Pepsi-Cola in 1946 introduced a new product, sugar-free Everess sparkling water. …However, marketed to a more affluent class of people, the luxury image of the product never caught on.
While sugar restrictions hampered sales of Pepsi-Cola during and just after the war, postwar inflation proved a more serious nemesis. Between 1941 and 1947, the cost of living in the United States increased by 52 percent, while Pepsi-Cola continued to sell its 12 ounce bottles for five cents a piece. Something had to be done, because it was only a matter of time before Pepsi’s profits would be eaten away by inflation.
The cental debate was whether to increase the price of Pepsi-Cola or decrease the bottle size. The regional and economic diversity of the communities served by Pepsi-Cola bottlers caused both solutions to be adopted. Bottlers who felt obligated to maintain the nickel price offered a 10 ounce bottle. Those who were confident that a price increase of a penny would meet only minor resistance continued to offer a 12 ounce bottle. [25 pg 99]

1947
On January 1, Ogden Reid raised the price of the daily and Sunday editions (of the Herald Tribune) just three days before his unexpected death. If the Times went along, fine, he told is subordinates, and if it didn’t, “I think the paper is strong enough to stand it.” The evening papers also raised prices, but the Times matched only the Sunday increase, from ten to fifteen cents, and for nearly three years the flourishing daily Times undersold the daily Herald Tribune. This inevitably took some toll of readers. “Nobody in New York is going to pay a nickel for the Herald Tribune when they can get the Times for three cents, the general manager of the Times, Julius Adler, is aid to have remarked at a meeting of newspaper executives during that period. “That’s the way to put a competitor out of business. [16 pg 110]

[Natl. Geographic Ad] Enlarged maps $2 each in U.S. @2.25 elsewhere. Map of Bible Lands 64 ½” x 44 ½
United States 67″ x 43 1/2″. The World 67″ x 43 1/2″.

[Natl. Geographic Ad] Annual dues $4.00. Canada and abroad $5.00. Lifetime memberships $100.

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1948
It was estimated in 1948 that the median Negro family income was 47 per cent lower than the comparable white family income. [23 pg

According to them [President’s Council], in recent years some 10.6 per cent of all the families in the United States have been living on individual or family incomes of less than $1,000 a year. That is about one family in ten, trying to make out on a dismally inadequate money intake.
About 14.5 per cent have been living on incomes of between $1,000 and $2,000 – approximately one family in seven.
About 20.6 per cent =- say one family in fine – have had incomes of between $2,000 and $3,000.
A very much larger number, about 33.6 per cent, or something like a third of all our families, have had between $3,000 and $5,000.
Only about 17.9 per cent – say one family out of seven – have had between $5,000 and $10,000.
And a very small group- about 2.9 per cent, or only one family in thirty four – have been in the over $10,000 bracket.
There are also a great many individuals not living in any family; in 1948 there were estimated to be some eight million of them in all. Their incomes follow more or less the same pattern, except that they are more numerously represented in the lowest brackets.
Now let us look for a moment at the lowest of these groups: the 10.6 per cent of the families (of thereabouts), and also the individuals, who are living on annual incomes of less than $1,000. Who are they?
They include, to begin with, some farmers and private businessmen who have simply had a bad year- have had to sell crops or goods at a loss, let us say. But some or most of these have savings enough to tide them along. (No grinding poverty there, in most cases.) They include a great number of rural poor: people working poor and worn out land, tenants, sharecroppers. (a Good many of these- we don’t know how many- may be able to raise enough food for their own use so as to manage somehow on even a grimly small money income.) Another group, not quite so large, consists of old people, who in some cases have families depending on their meager savings or earnings, and in other cases are fending for themselves alone, with or without old age relief. One out of three single elderly men and women had to get along in 1948 on less than $20 a week, said Robert L. Heilbroner in a study of American poverty in Harper’s Magazine for June, 1950)
Step up into the next lowest rank of poverty, the group with family or individual incomes of between $1,000 and $2,000 a year, and we find more businessmen who have been encountering tough sledding, more marginal farmers, more old people, more marginal laborers who have been laid off agin and again, and also some members of another group those whose wages, even in the time of plenty, have been so low as to keep them in a constant struggle with poverty. Again, among most of these groups there is an unduly large representation of Negroes. [23 pg 184]
It is when we examine the next two or three brackets – those representing incomes of $2,000 to $10,000 – that is that millions upon millions of families have risen out of the under $2,000 class and the $2,000-$3,000 class and have climbed a bracket or two. These fortunate families have been getting their money from a wide variety of occupations; among them have been farmers, office workers, professional people such as a steelworker’s family who used to live on $2,500 and now are getting $4,500 or more. Consider a single salient statistic: that the average earnings of workers in all manufacturing industries in America in 1950 were $59.33 a week. During the past decade these earnings, as they climbed, have been pursued by rising prices, but on the average they have kept well ahead.
Let us see what has spppened to the top five per cent of the population, income wise – roughtly speaking, the people who have been living on incomes of $8,000 or over.
According to the elaborate calculations of simon Kiznets of the National Bureau of Economic Research, during the period between the two wars the people in this comparatively well off group were taking a very big slice of the total national income- no less than 30 per cent of it, before taxes; a little over 28 per cent after taxes. But by 1945 their slice had been narrowed from 30 to 19½ per cent before taxes, and from 28 to 17 percent after taxes. Since 1945 this upper group has been doing a little better, relatively, but not much.
As for the top one per cent, the really well to do and the rich, whom we might classify very roughly indeed as the $16,000 and over group, their share of the total national income, after taxes, had come down by 1945 from 13 per cent to 7 per cent. [23 pg 186]

By 1948 about 28 million Christmas trees were being distributed annually in the United states. The 100,000 acres devoted to Christmas trees were producing a crop values at $50 million annually. [28 pg 161]

1949
Presidential salary increased to $100,000. [1 Pg 18]

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[Natl. Geographic Ad] Dumont Meadowbrook Television. 72 square inch television screen and FM radio in a traditional cabinet of selected mahogany veneers. $525 plus installation. [20 pg...]

[Natl. Geographic Ad] National City Bank Travelers checks 75 cents per $100. [20 pg...]
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Kodaslide Projector, Model 1A- Projects big, brilliant images of you color slides on a home screen. $27.50 Other Kodaslide Projectors, $47.50 up.
Kodaslide Table viewer – An ingenious new viewer that holds 30 to 75 color slides, projects them – enlarged about 5 times – on its own built in screen. $95.

The Council of Economic Advisers, figuring in terms of “spending units” – which may be families or individuals – say that in 1949 the lowest fifth of these spending units were scrimping on incomes of under $1,280 a year; the next fifth, on incomes of between $1,280 and $2,289; the middle fifth received incomes of between $2,290 and $3,199; the next to the top fifth, incomes of between $3,200 and $4,499; the top fifth, $4,500 and over.
If you compare the Councils figures with those of the Joint committee’s subcommittee, remember that the council’s calculations are loaded downward by the fact that in the lower brackets there is a heavy concentration of single people (as distinguished from families) but you should then bear in mind another fact: that what is a deplorable income for a family of five may be a manageable one for a single person. If you will also meditate upon the infinite diversity of human circumstance, and the difficulty of drawing a clear line, even among your own acquaintances, between dependents and separate spending units, you will begin to realize why such figures give us only a very smudgy outline of the actual state of affairs. [23 pg 184]

Just as the craven were beginning to fear that the American home could accumulate no more worldly possessions, and that only a depression could result, Mr. Charles Luckman, then president of Lever Bothers, announced in July 1949, some encouraging statistics. Twenty seven million Americans still had no kitchen sinks, eighteen million no washing machines, twenty five million no vacuum cleaners and forty million no bathtubs or showers. (And still only one man in seven shaved daily!) [24 pg 226]

Americans had become more attracted to convenience over savings in the products that they purchases. Responding to this trend, in 1949 Pepsi-Cola test marketed a 12 ounce can priced at 10 cents. While available for a couple of years, such packaging never caught on. Public acceptance of soft drinks in cans was several decades down the road. [25 pg 103]

1950
…in the National Economic Review for the year 1950, published by the President’s council of economic advisers in January, 1951, there was an estimate of the proportion of Negroes in various income groups which put the situation in somewhat different terms. Among those “spending units” – which means families and individuals – whose money income before taxes was less than $1,000 for the year, 83 per cent were found to be white; 15 per cent, Negro (leaving two per cent classified as “unascertainable”). Among the next higher group, with annual incomes between $1,000 and #2,000, 89 per cent were white, 10 per cent Negro. In the $2,000-$3,000 class, 92 per cent were white, 7 per cent Negro. And in the large group with incomes of $3,000 or over, 97 per cent were white, 3 per cents were Negro. When you examine those figures, remember that the Negroes of the country constitute just about one-tenth of the population. There fore par for each of these classifications would be 10 per cent. The figures reveal a marked shortage of colored people in the more well to do groups, and an excess of colored people in the lowest group. [23 pg 163]

So effective were public health measures such as mosquito control for the prevention of malaria that in 1950 the State of Missouri offered a bonus of $10 to any doctor who could find a new case of malaria, and not a single case was reported. [23 pg 177]

Early in 1950, Pepsi-Cola was paid $4 million for its Cuban sugar plantation, which had never really provided a steady supply of affordable sugar. [25 pg 111]

Budget-priced 35mm. Miniature for sparkling color slides. Get beautiful full-color transparencies for projection, for Kodachrome Prints. Fast shutter, simplified operation make the “Poney” perfect for travelers, sportsmen, and stay-at-homes who like to make fine pictures. $34.75. The 828 Model, $29.95. Flasholder with guard, $11.50 At kodak dealers’… [38]

French Line. Your Gay Entree To Europe. Sailings (to Pylmouth and LeHavre) and minimum one-way rates: Liberte, Oct. 26, Nov. 11 Nov. 29, Dec. 16, Jan 4,20; First Class, $340; Cabin, $220; Tourist, $165. Lle de France, Oct. 14, Oct, 31, Nov. 18, Dec. 7; First Class $335; Cabin, $220; Tourist, $165. De Grasse, Oct. 4, Jan 3; First class, $235; Cabin, $180. [38]

Wallace Sterling silver. There are nos six Wallace Sterling designs by William S. Warren. Each is a work of art, sculptured to express a mood of beauty. Six piece place settings from $27.40 to $37.50 [38]

Stereo Realist 3-D camera. Priced according to Fair Trade Practices. Camera and Viewer $182.25 (tax inc.) [38]

American Express Travelers checks. 75 cents per $100. [38]

Williamsburg Lodge (Virginia) – Single form $3.50 – Double from $5
Williamsburg Inn – single from $7 – double from $10

1951
[Raskob’s] estate sold off the Empire State Building for $34 million. [22 pg 413]

February 13, 1951, devoted its front cover and four pages to [Arthur] Godfrey, ..whose idiosyncratic delivery of “commercials” earned him the sort of following accorded, as a rule, only to top flight professional entertainers – and an income, for all quarters, estimated at $1,000,000 a year. Godfrey had no inhibitions about, “ribbing the product,” or mentioning other sponsor’s wares. He like to fool about with a ukulele, and in so doing revived the moribund ukulele industry. [24 pg 272]

1952
The wife of the Cleveland machine tool executive or Pittsburgh steel executive who lives so grandly away from home may sometimes find there is something a little lopsided in their family scale of living. “The company has spoiled Jim terribly,” said a businessman’s wife quoted by William H. Whyte, Jr. in Life magazine for January 7, 1952.
Even when he was only earning $7,500 a year he used to be sent to Washington all the time. He’d go down in a Pullman drawing room and, as J.R. Robinson of the General company, take a two room suite. Then he used to be asked by some of the company officers to a hunting and fishing lodge that the company kept in the north woods. When he went to New York,, he’d entertain at Twenty One, the Barberry Room, and the Chambord, Me, meanwhile I’d be eating a 30 cent hamburger and, when we went away together on vacation, we would have to go in our beat up old car or borrow my sister’s husband’s. This taste of high life gives some of these characters delusions of grandeur. [23 pg 191]

Undoubtedly chlorophyll did much to force up America’s bill for national advertising in 1952 to $958,000,000. …[some] 200 different articles had been marketed in America containing chlorophyll – including chewing gum, toothpaste, soap mouthwashes, cigarettes, shampoos, room sweeteners, shirts, insoles and dog foods (”some breeds of dogs, though loveable, are pretty gamy”). [25 ...]

1953
[Natl. Geo. Ad] G E Ultravision 21 inch Television start at $199.95.

[Natl. Geo. Ad] View-Master. Over 400 entertaining, educational subjects t delight all the family. Stereoscope $2.00, Reels 35 cents, 3 for $1.00. Projector $10.95

[Natl. Geo. Ad] See Britain by rail; 9 day “Guest ticket” for unlimited Tail Travel, only $24.00 $36.00 fist class. Not obtainable in Britain- Purchase before you leave. Dine as you ride for as little as $1.00. Your bedroom London to Scotland reserved for $5.08. 14 cents for a reserved train seat.

[Natl. Geo. Ad] Europe in 1953. Olson Travel Organization. Weekly sailings March thru September in Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. Select tours, tourist class, only $1295. Deluxe tours, Cabin Class, only $1495. Oto Luxury Tours, First class, only $1885 up. 47 to 63 days.

[Natl. Geo. Ad] FREE book for fisherman. 100 pages of fishing tips – how to bait, fly, spin cast – records – fish pictures – tackle. Free-cast Reel with New Speed control. No thumbing or backlashes. No. 666 – $11.

[Natl. Geo. Ad] Sheaffer’s Snorkel pen. Sheaffer’s Valiant snorkel Pen, matching Pencil and Ballpoint, Complete, $29.50

[Natl. Geo. Ad] S.S. Delta Queen. Air-conditioned river Cruises. 20 days to Romantic New Orleans by Ohio-Mississippi Rivers. Leave Cinti, O. $275 up. Greene Line Steamers, Inc.

[Natl. Geo. Ad] TDC Slide Projector model “D” . 300 watt lamp. 5″ f/3.5 lens. $69.50. Headliner projector $37.50. Streamliner 2 x 2 500 watt projector $84.50. Duo Model with 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 changers $89.50. Project-or-View Combination projector and 6 3/4 x 6 3/4 viewer in one housing $74.50. Stereo Projector Twin 500 watt lamps for all stereo slides $175. Prestomounts – Protect you slides with TDC Prestomounts- the first mounts designed especially for automatic and manual changers! Box of 20. $1.85.

[Natl. Geo. Ad] Geographic book “Stalking Birds with Color Camera” $7.50. Or “The book of fishes” $6.50.

[Natl. Geo. Ad] Garrard. The World’s Finest Record changer. Can be used with you present set.$42.30.

[Natl. Geo. Ad] Fly TWA. TWA Skyliner Tour. 15 day. Only $587. Visit London, Stratford on Avon, Shakespeare country, Paris, Versailles. Price includes hotel rooms, mist meals, sightseeing tours and round-trip shy tourist ticket from New York.
23 day tour TWA Skyliner Tour of 6 countries, only $902. See London, Paris, the Alps, Venice, Florence, Lake Lucerne, Rome, Holland, and much more. Sightseeing, hotel rooms, most meals and round trip Sky Tourist ticket from New York are included in the low price.
[Natl. Geo. Ad] Kodak Signet 35 Camera. Ektar f/3.5. 1/300 flash shutter. $92.50. Kodak Highlux III Projector, $56.50. [21 pg...]

Prices from ads in the Greenfield Recorder-Gazette 200th anniversary edition.
Greenfield, Massachusetts – Tuesday, June 9, 1953

Summer Home Burns
Meredith, N.H. (AP) Fire yesterday destroyed the $7,000 summer home of Raymond Reed of Andover, Mass. The dwelling was on the shore of Lake Winnipeasukee.

At Bartlett’s – The Man’s Shop- 200th anniversary commemorative plate. A beautiful China Plate bound in gold with the official 200th anniversary seal reproduced in green. Full size 10 1/4 inches in diameter, $1.95 ea.

Wed. Specials From Gould’s
Hamburger 4 lbs. $1.00
Short, Club, or Cubed Steaks lb. 69c
Assorted Cold Cuts lb. 49c
Potato Salad lb. 29c
New Betty Crocker cake Mixes pkg. 33c
Crustquick plus coupon 10c
Giant Fab 69c

Crosby, Optician 7 power binocular with case. $38.00
Goodnow’s Dept. Store – black heel nylons 89c
Shelburne Falls Garage – 1948 Chevrolet 2 Dr. sedan, 25,000 miles, one owner, Radio, new seat covers. $895.00.
1941 Chev. 2-Dr. Sed. $195.
1941 Cadillac 4-Dr. Sedan, Hydramatic, Radio, Excellent Rubber. $350.
1939 Chev. Sedan. $150.
1950 Chev. 4-Dr. Sedan. Lots of extras. $1,395

Wilson’s Lynbrook’s belle-skirted charmer in lustrous, deep toned broadcloth… with a demurely bare neckline and no sleeves at all. (It’s sanforized of course!) Navy, or charcoal grey. $10.95

At the Snack Bar Wed. special. Hot turkey Sandwich. Cranberry sauce, Garden Salad, Rolls, butter, Vegetables, Coffee. 90c.

Mohawk Restaurant Wed. Special. Baked Individual mutton chops, French Fried Potatoes, New Spinach, Rolls and butter, pier or pudding. 99c.

W.E. Aubuchon Co. Inc. Sapolin Speed enamel, 1 pint, enough for a crib, toy chest and playpen. No lead pigments or other toxic ingredients. Pt. $1.25

Saving’s Bank First President Man of Renown The first president of the Greenfield Savings Bank rose from a modest beginning to a pinnace of success and respect in franklin county.
Sanderson acquired his father’s business as a tanner at the age of 17 when his father was gored to death by oxen on July 25, 1831. Born July 10, 1814 in Petersham. He moved to Bernardston with his mother when a young man and was employed for two years by Col. Aretas Perry.
He became a trustee of the Franklin institute for Savings and upon organization of the Greenfield Savings Bank he became president, serving from 1968 until 1882. An active man, he was president of Powers Institute for 10 years, trustee of Cushman Library, unitarian church for 10 years, A life member of the Franklin County Agricultural society, director of the Franklin county National Bank for a number of years and president of that bank in 1886 and 1887.
In politics he was originally a Whig, but upon formation of the Republican Party he joined its ranks, held various positions of trust and honor, and was state senator in 1861. Sanderson died at Bernardston July 12, 1898, having just passed his 84th birthday.

Jim Hurlburt’s IGA Super Market. Wed. Specials.
Swift’s select Top Round, Bottom Round, Cubed Steaks lb. 79c.
Bananas 2 lbs. 29c.
IGA Mayonnaise pt. jar 35c.
IGA Salad Dressing pt. jar 27c
Fresh Calif. Peas 2 lbs. 29c

Ann August Orlon and Nylon Suits $17.95.

Poppy Drive Nets $30. Mrs. Robert Cranmore, chairman of the poppy drive, announced more that $30 was realized. This money will be turned over to the rehabilitation fund. Prizes were given to children selling the most poppies. First was won by Muriel Kelly. Second prizes were given to Beverly Jenkins and Roland Taylor.

Army-Navy Store Fishing Boots, $8.69. Hood Fishing Boots, $12.67

Greenfield Auto Metal work & Welding Co. Have created an object on display in the window of Simmon’s Jewelers. For the person naming it – and its purpose the above concern will give the following prizes: 1st Prize a $49.75 Wrist Watch (choice of Man’s or Lady’s) 2nd prize a $15.00 String of Pearls. 3rd Prize a $10.95 Expansion watch band.

Curtis Hotel Special every Sunday night. A delicious Buffet $2.25 Served in Curtis Garden and Grill. Cocktails and Befe4ages at Special Buffet prices.
Every Weekday Lunch Time and evening Roast Beef Special. Dish Gravy, Baked potato, Rolls and butter, Yorkshire Pudding, Chef’s Salad, Coffee and Cream. $2.95
Millinery Fashions Special. 51 gauge – 15 Denier, Nylons. 59c

Newton Motor Sales Handsome new ‘53 Henry J. Hundreds of dollars lower than any other full size car. As little as $9.49 a week. Up to 30 miles a gallon. $1399.

Classifieds. Various listings. For Sale, Pigs, $10. For Sale, Mahogany High Boy, $50. Magic Chef side oven and broiler gas range $10. Glenwood apt. size gas range, $20. Divan, $45. Box spring and inner spring, $45. Washing machine $10. [30]

…………………..END of listings………….