The first U.S. bank was built when Philadelphia was the nation’s capitol. Alexander Hamilton created the bank to handle the debt from the Revolutionary War, and to create a standardize currency, for at that time coins and bills issued by state banks served as the currency. The First bank was charted in 1791 by Congress and signed by President Washington. In 1811, Congress voted to abandon the bank and its charter. The bank was housed in Carpenters’ Hall from 1791 to 1795. The neo-classical design of the bank was intended to recall the democracy and splendor of ancient Greece. Crowning the two story portico is an eagle. At the time of the bank’s creation the eagle had been the national symbol for only 14 years. It is the oldest bank building in America and is considered the oldest building in America with a classical façade. The bank charter was in effect for only 20 years and cost $110,168.05 to build.
1643In America the rudimentary notion of taxing a person’s income, or his earning “faculty” (as it then was called), is found as early as 1643, when the colony of New Plymouth taxed persons “according to their estates or faculties”; three years later the colony passed a tax on the “returns and gains” of tradesmen and craftsmen. Other colonies followed. The “faculty” tax was actually rooted in the Middle ages. It was not an income tax in the modern sense, for it did not allow taxpayers to balance losses against gains, and it was levied only on certain kinds of income. Sums received from this kind of tax remained small. Not until the mid-nineteenth century did anything substantially like a modern income tax appear. Between 1840 and 1850, six states introduced some kind of income tax. A Virginia law of 1843, for example, imposed a tax of 1 percent of salaries and professional incomes over $400 a year, and 2½ on interest received. [28 pg 206]
1774
-Philadelphia, 14th August, 1794.
DEAR SIR,
By captain H----, of the Betsy, who will deliver this letter, I have sent you specimens of the federal coinage.
When that government was formed, a mint was established, and a coinage issued on a new plan. This was much wanted, as scarcely three of thestates agreed as to the value currency of a dollar. Here it was seven shillings and sixpence, in South Carolina four shillings and eight pence, at New York eight shillings, and in the New England states six shillings. According to the new regulations, all nominal coins are exploded, and the silver dollar, weighing 17 dwts. 6 grs. [Footnote: This is the exact weight of the spanish milled dollar, which, as well as the divisions, are allowed to pass current; they consist of the half, quarter, eighth, and sixteenth, also the pistreen, or fifth, and the half pistreen, or tenth.], is fixed as the standard, divided into one hundred decimal parts; these are of copper, and called cents. All taxes, duties and imposts, that extend to the whole Union, are levied in these coins only. The other federal coins, like the english guineas and crowns, never appear on the public accounts.
Those of gold are eagles, half eagles, and quarter eagles, value ten, five, and two and a half, dollars: of silver, the half, quarter, tenth, and twentieth of the standard dollar; or fifty, twenty-five, ten, and five cents: of copper, the half cent, or two hundredth part of a dollar. The principle on which this coinage is formed is so very simple, that the proportion they bear to each other, and the standard dollar may be found with the utmost facility. Indeed little else is wanted than the adding or cutting off figures or ciphers: for instance, the public accounts being kept in two columns, dollars, and cents; suppose in adding up the latter, you find they amount to 27,621, you have only to cut off the two right hand figures, and their value stands thus; 276 dollars, 21 cents. To reduce eagles to dollars, add a cipher, and vice versa. To reduce half, and quarter eagles to dollars, you have only to divide by 2 or 4 previous to adding the cipher.
But though the federal government has succeeded in establishing it's coinage, the people cannot be persuaded (the wholesale merchants, and a few enlightened citizens excepted,) to come into this scheme; they obstinately insist on buying, selling, and keeping their accounts in the good old way of their fathers! that is to say, in currency, by pounds, shillings, and pence; and nothing can be more complex, as they have not a single coin in circulation of the real or nominal value of any of them. If you are to pay the sum of three shillings and fourpence halfpenny, (without having recourse to the federal scheme) you must provide yourself with three silver divisions of the Spanish dollar, viz. the fourth, eighth, and sixteenth, three english halfpence, two of George the Second, and one of his present majesty [Footnote: Owing to the quantity of counterfeit english halfpence of the present reign now in circulation in these states, those of king George the Third, whether counterfeit or not, are depreciated to the 360th part of a dollar.]; the nominal value of which, added together, make that sum within a very trifling fraction.
I am informed the federal government means to fix the weights and measures by a standard, which, like the coinage, will admit of the same even division by decimals. I am often asked why the English, after having proved the great utility of this scheme in their chain of one hundred links for land measuring, do not extend it to their coin, &c.? If you can think of a good solution to this question, pray let me have it in your next to.
Yours sincerely, &c. [35]
Feb. 5th .--Arrived at Baltimore, and hired a caravan with four horses, which is here called a stage: the same afternoon we arrived at the Susquana. This noble river, which is here about a mile and a quarter wide, was frozen hard. Our advanced guard crossed the day before, in a ferry boat: this circumstance will give you some idea of the severity of the cold in this climate. A negro slave, belonging to the ferry, undertook to drive our stage over the river for two dollars, which his master put into his pocket, and ordered Sambo to proceed; the fellow drove boldly, and was across in a few minutes, the ice cracking most horribly all the way. I suppose I need not inform you, we were not in the carriage. Philadelphia is the first port in the Union. The total value of it's exports in the year 1793, was 69,5736 dollars; the total of flower shipped in the year 1792 was 42,0000 barrels, and in the spring only of 1793 it exceeded 200,000 barrels. The total of inward entries at Philadelphia, in 1793, was 1414 vessels of different sizes, of which 477 were ships or brigs. [35]
The inhabitants are in general very fond of theatrical representations; their new theatre is an elegant building, from a design the subscribers obtained from London, where the principal scenes were painted by Richardson and Rooker. The receipts of the house have exceeded one thousand six hundred dollars. [35]
Aug. 31st .--Arrived at Lancaster, a prettily situate town, of about nine hundred houses. It is reckoned the largest inland town south of New England, and indeed the only large town without some kind of navigation; to remedy this inconvenience as much as possible, a turnpike road (very superiour to any thing of the kind in America, and which will cost three thousand dollars per mile) is forming from Philadelphia, through Lancaster, to the Susquana. I before told you this river, owing to the rocks and falls, was not navigable; but I forgot to inform you, that the inhabitants of the back country contrive to waft the produce of their plantations down the river on floats, during the floods, in spring and fall; which will be conveyed by means of this new road to Philadelphia, whence it will be exported to the west indian or european markets. [35]
Lancaster was originally a german settlement; the inhabitants were so desirous of perpetuating their language, that they established german schools for the education of the rising generation; but their descendants, finding the inconvenience of being without a knowledge of English, now send their children first to the german, and afterward to the english schools; by which means they acquire a tolerable idea of both languages. They still retain many characteristics of their ancestors; such as frugality, plainness in dress, &c. At our first concert, three clownish-looking fellows came into the room, and, after sitting a few minutes, (the weather being -warm-, not to say -hot-) very composedly took off their coats: they were in the usual summer dress of farmers servants in this part of the country; that is to say, without either stockings or breeches, a loose pair of trowsers being the only succedaneum. As we fixed our admission at a dollar each, (here seven shillings and sixpence,) we expected this circumstance would be sufficient to exclude such characters; but on inquiry, I found (to my very great surprise!) our three sans culottes were german 'gentlemen' of considerable property in the neighbourhood! [35]
An irish family often arrives, and purchases a plantation; which for some years brings them good crops, but for want of manure will in time be worn out (a very common case in America.) When in this situation they offer it for sale, the adjacent German families club a sum of money, purchase the land, plough it well, and let it remain in this state for three or four years: they then place an emigrant family from their own country upon the farm, who, by indefatigable industry and manure, soon bring the land round, pay for the estate by installments, and live very comfortably. Some of the best plantations in Pennsylvania were originally left in this manner. The irish family go two or three hundred miles up the country, where they can purchase as much land as they please, from sixpence to a dollar per acre: here they literally break fresh ground, and begin the world again. To some timorous people, their new situation would be thought dangerous, as they are liable to a visit from the Indians, and perishing by the scalping knife and tomahawk.--See a former letter on back settlers. [35]
Since writing the above, the general assembly has ordered fifty thousand dollars be raised by lottery, which are laid out in paving the town, and clearing the Basin. Two enormous machines have been constructed on the dutch plan, to work with oxen, which make such progress in clearing the channel, that it is expected in a few years it will be sufficiently deep, to admit the largest merchantmen to come up to the wharfs of the town. And since my landing in England, my brother informs me, Baltimore is at last incorporated; a vigorous police established; and improvements are going on with spirit. [35]
Philadelphia, February 21st 1795.
DEAR SIR,
You know one motive for my coming to this country was, that I might have an unlimited range in my two favourite amusements, shooting, and fishing, and in both I have had tolerable sport. But as few except emigrants, follow the european method of shooting, I cannot purchase a pointer for any sum: pray send me one by an early fall ship, and if possible smuggle me half a dozen pounds of Battel powder; for since you have begun to cut one another's throats in Europe, I find it impossible to procure any but dutch, and that unglazed, at the moderate price of two dollars a pound. [35]
Philadelphia, February 12th, 1796.
DEAR FRIEND,
Were I to characterise the United States, it should be by the appellation of the land of speculation. Such has been the rapid rise of every article of American produce, of house-rent, and land (to say nothing of mercantile speculation, great part of the carrying trade of Europe being now in the hands of the Americans) that surely there never was a country where that passion was so universal, or had such unbounded scope. The last great purchase of land from the Indians, on the confines of Georgia, was at the rate of a cent per acre; one hundred acres for a dollar! Before the American war, flour, was sold at two dollars, per barrel; it is now selling at fourteen. But perhaps the most tempting speculation is that of the mines. Our friend, Parsons, who is here looked upon as an agent to some english speculators, has lately received the enclosed, which I begged a copy of, for your perusal but should first inform you, the cheapest fuel you can burn in some parts of America, is english coal from Liverpool! [35]
For some time before I left Baltimore, our papers were full of a shocking transaction, which took place on board an irish passenger ship, containing upwards of three hundred. It is said, that, owing to the cruel usage they received from the captain, such as being put on a very scanty allowance of water[Footnote: By a law of the United States, the quantity of water and provision every vessel is obliged to take (in proportion to the length of the passage and persons on board) is clearly defined. A master of a vessel violating this law forfeits five hundred dollars.] and provision, a contagious disorder broke out on board, which carried off great numbers; and, to add to their distress, when they arrived in the Delaware, they were obliged to perform quarantine, which, for some days, was equally fatal.
The disorder was finally got under by the physicians belonging to the Health Office. We had several of the survivors on board, who confirmed all I had heard: indeed their emaciated appearance was a sufficient testimony of what they had suffered. They assured me, the captain sold the ship's water by the pint; and informed me of a number of shocking circumstances, which I will not wound your feelings by relating. It is difficult to conceive how a multitude of witnesses can militate against a fact; but more so, how three hundred passengers could tamely submit to such cruelties, from a bashaw of a captain. [35]
Ran away this morning, an irish servant, named Michael Day, by trade a tailor, about five feet eight inches high, fair complexion, has a down look when spoken to, light bushy hair, speaks much in the irish dialect, &c.:--Whoever secures the above described, in any gaol, shall receive thirty dollars reward, and all reasonable charges paid.--_N.B._. All masters of vessels are forbid harbouring, or carrying off the said servant at their peril."
CHARLES TOWN settled 1628.
------------ burnt 1775.
------------ rebuilt 1776.
-P. S.- I was yesterday introduced to Cox, the celebrated bridge-architect: he is famous for throwing a bridge over waters, where, from the depth or strength of the current, this operation was thought impracticable. He always constructs his bridges of wood, and endeavours to give as little resistance to the water as possible: his supporters are numerous, but slender; and there is an interval between each. He tells me this idea first struck him from reading Aesop's fable of the Reed and the Oak: the reed, by yielding, was unhurt by a tempest, which tore up the sturdy oak by the roots. Cox served his apprenticeship to a carpenter; and it was late in life before he attempted bridge-building. He proved his new theory on a small bridge in the country, which answering beyond his most sanguine expectations, he delivered proposals for connecting Boston to the continent, at Charleston, by means of a draw-bridge. His plan was by some supposed to proceed from a distempered brain. It is usual for the ignorant to call a projector insane, when his schemes exceed the bounds of their shallow comprehensions. After some time, a subscription was raised; and, to the confusion of his enemies, he erected a bridge 1500 feet long, by 42 wide, where there was, at the lowest ebb, 28 feet of water, and the flow of the tide was from 12 to 16 feet more. But what is the most surprising, this bridge has stood the shock of prodigious bodies of ice, sometimes three or four feet in thickness; which are, every thaw violently forced against it with a powerful current. He was rewarded with the sum of two hundred dollars above his contract. He then went to Ireland, where he built seven bridges; the largest was at Londonderry, 1860 feet long, by 40 wide; the depth of water 37 feet, and the flow of the tide from 14 to 18 feet more. He compleated this bridge so much to the satisfaction of the gentlemen who employed him, that he was presented with a gold medal and one hundred pounds above his contract. [35]
Their sawing-mills are numerous, and well constructed; this circumstance, and the great quantity of timber, mast, spars, &c., with which this country abounds, enable them to build vessels considerably under what you can afford in England, though the wages of a shipwright are now two dollars and a quarter per day. Theirs ships, in point of model and sailing, if not superiour, are at least equal to the best european-built vessels, and when constructed of live oak, and red cedar are equally durable. Vessels of this description are scarce. Live oak is rarely met with north of the Carolinas: that used in the Boston ship-yards is brought from Georgia; a distance of more than a thousand miles, [35]
1777recruiting poster issued by the Continental congress to lure a crew for [John Paul] Jones voyage on the Ranger somewhat oversold the “agreeable” aspects resulting n later discontent.
“Great encouragement for seamen.
All gentlemen seamen and able bodied landsmen who have a mind to distinguish themselves in the glorious cause of the country, and make their Fortunes, an opportunity now offer on board the ship Ranger, of Twenty Guns, (for France) no laying in Portsmouth, in the State of New Hampshire, commanded by John Paul Jones Esq. Let them repair to the ship’s rendevous in Portsmouth, or at the sign of Commodore Manley, in Salem, where they will be kindly entertained and receive the greatest encouragement. The ship Ranger, in the opinion of every person who has seen her is looked upon to be one of the best cruisers in America. She will be always able to fight her guns under a most excellent cover; and no vessel yet built was ever calculated for sailing faster and making good weather.
Any gentlemen volunteers who have a mind to take an agreable voyage in the pleasant season of the year, may, by entering on board the above ship Ranger, meet with every Civility they can possibly expect, and for a further encouragement depend on the fist opportunity being embraced to reward each one to his merit.
In congress, March 29, 1777Resolved: that the marine committee be authorized to advance to every able seaman, the enters into the continental service, any sum not exceeding Forty dollars and to every ordinary seaman or landsman, any sum not exceeding Twenty dollars, to be deducted from their future prize money. [spelling modernized] [15 pg 10]
1787Although the Federal constitution in 1787 had given the congress the power “to establish Post Offices and Post Roads,” not until the era of the civil War did the outlines of the modern system appear. [28 pg 130]
1791Alexander Hamilton had noted in his Report on Manufactures (1791) that four fifths of the American people’s clothing were made in their own households for themselves. Only the rich could afford to employ tailors. At first these tailors traveled the countryside working on material supplied by the customer, and eventually they settled down in the cities. [28]
1792By act of Congress, passed on April 21, 1792, the Ohio Land Company, for example, received 100,000 acres, and in the same year it bought 892,900 acres for $642,856.66. But this sum was not paid in money. The bankers and traders composing the company had purchased, at a heavy discount, certificates of public debt and army land warrants, and were allowed to tender these as payment. [Footnote: U. S. Senate Executive Documents, Second Session, Nineteenth Congress, Doc. No. 63.] The company then leisurely disposed of its land to settlers at an enormous profit. Nearly all of the land companies had banking adjuncts. The poor settler, in order to settle on land that a short time previously had been national property, was first compelled to pay the land company an extortionate price, and then was forced to borrow the money from the banking adjuncts, and give a heavy mortgage, bearing heavy interest, on the land. [Footnote: U. S. Senate Documents, First Session, Twenty-fourth Congress, 1835-36, Doc. No. 216: 16.] The land companies always took care to select the very best lands. The Government documents of the time are full of remonstrances from legislatures and individuals complaining of these seizures, under form of law, of the most valuable areas. The tracts thus appropriated comprised timber and mineral, as well as agricultural, land. [57]
1796VAST TRACTS SECURED BY BRIBERY.
One of the most scandalous land-company transactions was that involving a group of Southern and Boston capitalists. In January, 1795, the Georgia Legislature, by special act, sold millions of acres in different parts of the State of Georgia to four land companies. The people of the State were convinced that this purchase had been obtained by bribery. It was made an election issue, and a Legislature, comprising almost wholly new members, was elected. In February, 1796, this Legislature passed a rescinding act, declaring the act of the preceding year void, on the ground of its having been obtained by "improper influence." In 1803 the tracts in question were transferred by the Georgia Legislature to the United States Government.
The Georgia Mississippi Land Company was one of the four companies. In the meantime, this company had sold its tract, for ten cents an acre, to the New England Mississippi Land Company. Although committee after committee of Congress reported that the New England Mississippi Land Company had paid little or no actual part of the purchase price, yet that company, headed by some of the foremost Boston capitalists, lobbied in Congress for eleven years for an act giving it a large indemnity. Finally, in 1814, Congress passed an indemnification act, under which the eminent Bostonians, after ten years more lobbying, succeeded in getting an award from the United States Treasury of $1,077,561.73. The total amount appropriated by Congress on the pretense of settling the claims of the various capitalists in the "Yazoo Claims" was $1,500,000. [Footnote: Senate Documents, Eighteenth Congress, Second Session, 1824-25, Vol. ii, Doc. No. 14, and Senate Documents, Twenty-fourth Congress, 1836-37, Vol. ii, No. 212. After the grants were secured, the companies attempted to swindle the State of Georgia by making payments in depreciated currency. Georgia refused to accept it. When the grant was rescinded, both houses of the Georgia Legislature marched in solemn state to the Capitol front and burned the deed.] The ground upon which this appropriation was made by Congress was that the Supreme Court of the United States had decided that, irrespective of the methods used to obtain the grant from the Georgia Legislature, the grant, once made, was in the nature of a contract which could not be revoked or impaired by subsequent legislation. This was the first of a long line of court decisions validating grants and franchises of all kinds secured by bribery and fraud. [57]
1800The report of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society of 1801 shows that there had been an increasing interest in Negro education. For this purpose the society had raised funds to the amount of $530.50 per annum for three years. In 1803 certain other friends of the cause left for this purpose two liberal benefactions, one amounting to one thousand dollars, and the other to one thousand pounds.[3] With these contributions the Quakers and Abolitionists erected in 1809 a handsome building valued at four thousand dollars. They named it Clarkson Hall in honor of the great friend of the Negro race. In 1807 the Quakers met the needs of the increasing population of the city by founding an additional institution of learning known as the Adelphi School. [51]
1807"-June 18, 1807.- Last week I went to Mr. Beers and saw a set of Montaigne's 'Essays' in French in eight volumes, duodecimo, handsomely bound in calf and gilt, for two dollars. The reason they are so cheap is because they are wicked and bad books for me or anybody else to read. I got them because they were cheap, and have exchanged them for a handsome English edition of 'Gil Blas'; price, $4.50." [36]
In the fall of
1807 Finley Morse returned to college accompanied by his next younger brother, Sidney Edwards. In a letter of March 6, 1808, he says: "Edwards and myself are very well and I believe we are doing well, but you will learn more of that from our instructors."
In this same letter he says:--
"I find it impossible to live in college without spending money. At one time a letter is to be paid for, then comes up a great tax from the class or society, which keeps me constantly running after money. When I have money in my hand I feel as though I had stolen it, and it is with the greatest pain that I part with it. I think every minute I shall receive a letter from home blaming me for not being more economical, and thus I am kept in distress all the time. "The amount of my expenses for the last term was fifteen dollars, expended in the following manner:--
Dols. Cts.
Postage $2.05
Oil .50
Taxes, fines, etc. 3.00
Oysters .50
Washbowl .37-1/2
Skillet .33
Axe $1.33 Catalogues .12 1.45
Powder and shot 1.12-1/2
Cakes, etc. etc. etc. 1.75
Wine, Thanks. day .20
Toll on bridge .15
Grinding axe .08
Museum .25
Poor man .14
Carriage for trunk 1.00
Pitcher .41 14.75-1/2
Sharpening skates .37-1/2 Paid for
Circ. Library .25 cutting wood .25
Post papers .57
Lent never to be returned .25
$14.75-1/2 15.00-1/2
"In my expenses I do not include my wood, tuition bills, board or washing bills." How characteristic of all boys of all times the "etc., etc., etc.," tacked on to the "cakes" item, and how many boys of the present day would bewail the extravagance of fifteen dollars spent in one term on extras? In a postscript in this same letter he says: "The students are very fond of raising balloons at present. I will (with your leave) when I return home make one. They are pleasant sights."[36]
1810Ironically enough, a temporary change in farm economy added materially to the exodus from New England and the Middle Atlantic state. This was the Merino sheep mania which began in a small way as early as 1810 when a Yankee, who had been abroad, imported a band of this celebrated breed from Spain and began raising sheep on a large scale. They flourished in the Vermont hills. Their fleece fetched amazing prices, as high as $1.50 a pound; and it wasn’t long before farmers in New England, New York, and New Jersey were paying fancy prices for Merino stock. [7 pg 2]
June 25, 1810MY DEAR PARENTS,--I received yours of the 23d this day and receive with humility your reproof. I am extremely sorry it should have occasioned so many disagreeable feelings. I felt it my duty to tell you of my debts, and, indeed, I could not feel easy without. The amount of my buttery bill is forty-two or forty-three dollars. ... Mr. Nettleton is butler and is willing I should take his likeness as part pay. I shall take it on ivory, and he has engaged to allow me seven dollars for it. My price is five dollars for a miniature on ivory, and. I have engaged three or four at that price. My price for profiles is one dollar, and everybody is ready to engage me at that price.... Though I have been much to blame in the present case, yet I think it but just that Mr. Twining should bear his part. ... I had begun with a determination to pay for everything as I got it, but was stopped in this in the very beginning, for, in going to Mr. T. to get money, I have five times out of six found him absent, sometimes for the whole day, sometimes for a week or two weeks, and once he was absent six weeks and made no sort of provision for us. Mrs. T. is never trusted with money for us. Now in such case I am obliged by necessity to get a thing charged, and I have found by sad experience that a bill increases faster than I had in the least imagined. ... [36]
After his graduation from Yale College in the fall of 1810, Finley Morse returned to his home in Charlestown, Mass., and cheerfully submitted himself to his parents' wishes by entering the bookshop of a certain Mr. Mallory. He writes under date of October 31, 1810, to his brothers who are still at college: "I am in an excellent situation and on excellent terms. I have four hundred dollars per year, but this you must not mention out. I have the choice of my hours; they are from nine till one-half past twelve, and from three till sunset." [36]
But he still clings to the idea of becoming a painter, for he adds: "My evenings I employ in painting. I have every convenience; the room over the kitchen is fitted up for me; I have a fire there every evening, and can spend it alone or otherwise as I please. I have bought me one of the new patent lamps, those with glass chimneys, which gives an excellent light. It cost me about six dollars. Send on as soon as possible anything and everything which pertains to my painting apparatus." [36]
As in most discussions, political or otherwise, neither party seems to have been convinced by the arguments of the other, for the parents continue to urge him to leave politics alone; indeed, they insist on his doing so. They also urge him to make every effort to support himself, if he should decide to spend another year abroad, for they fear that they will be unable to send him any more money. However, the father, when he becam e convinced that it was really to his son's interest to spend another year abroad, contrived to send him another thousand dollars. This was done at the cost of great self-sacrifice on the part of himself and his family, and was all the more praiseworthy on that account. [36]
On December 19, 1814, his mother writes:--
"I was not a little astonished to hear you say, in one of your letters from Bristol, that you had earned money enough there to pay off your debts. I cannot help asking what debts you could have to discharge with your own earnings after receiving one thousand dollars a year from us, which we are very sure must have afforded you, even by your own account of your expenses, ample means for the payment of all just, fair, and honorable debts, and I hope you contract no others. We are informed by others that they made six hundred dollars a year not only pay all their expenses of clothing, board, travelling, learning the French language, etc., etc., but they were able out of it to purchase books to send home, and actually sent a large trunk full of elegant books. Now the person who told us that he did this has a father who is said to be worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars; therefore the young man was not pinched for means, but was thus economical out of consideration to his parents, and to show his gratitude to them, as I suppose. Now think, my dear son, how much more your poor parents are doing for you, how good your dear brothers are to be satisfied with so little done for them in comparison with what we are doing for you, and let the thought stimulate you to more economy and industry. I greatly fear you have been falling off in both these since the eclat you received for your first performances. It has always been a failing of yours, as soon as you found you could excel in what you undertook, to be tired of it and not trouble yourself any further about it. I was in hopes that you had got over this fickleness ere this...
"You must not expect to paint anything in this country, for which you will receive any money to support you, but portraits; therefore do everything in your power to qualify you for painting and taking them in the best style. That is all your hope here, and to be very obliging and condescending to those who are disposed to employ you.... [36]
181425 cent ticket admits bearer to Peal’s Museum of Curiosities. [2. Pg 7]
Visitors [to Peal’s museum]could have their silhouette made for eight cents a profile. [2. Pg 9]
1815May 3, 1815"The moment I (S.F.B. Morse) get home I wish to begin work, so that I should like to have some portraits bespoken in season. I shall charge forty dollars less than Stuart for my portraits, so that, if any of my good friends are ready, I will begin the moment I have said 'how do ye do' to them. "I wish to do as much as possible in the year I am with you. If I could get a commission or two for some large pictures for a church or public hall, to the amount of two or three thousand dollars, I should feel much gratified. I do not despair of such an event, for, through your influence with the clergy and their influence with their people, I think some commission for a scripture subject for a church might be obtained; a crucifixion, for instance. "It may, perhaps, be said that the country is not rich enough to purchase large pictures; yes, but two or three thousand dollars can be paid for an entertainment which is gone in a day, and whose effects are to demoralize and debilitate, whilst the same sum expended on a fine picture would be adding an ornament to the country which would be lasting. It would tend to elevate and refine the public feeling by turning their thoughts from sensuality and luxury to intellectual pleasures, and it would encourage and support a class of citizens who have always been reckoned among the brightest stars in the constellation of American worthies, and who are, to this day, compelled to exile themselves from their country and all that is dear to them, in order to obtain a bare subsistence. [36]
1816Before we follow him on that tour, however, I shall quote from a letter written by him to his friend Washington Allston:--
Boston, April 10, 1816MY DEAR SIR,--I have but one moment to write you by a vessel which sails to-morrow morning. I wrote Leslie by New Packet some months since and am hourly expecting an answer.
I congratulate you, my dear sir, on the sale of your picture of the "Dead Man." I suppose you will have received notice, before this reaches you, that the Philadelphia Academy of Arts have purchased it for the sum of thirty-five hundred dollars. Bravo for our country!
CONCORD, August 16, 1816I am still here and am passing my time very agreeably. I have painted five portraits at fifteen dollars each and have two more engaged and many more talked of. I think I shall get along well. I believe I could make an independent fortune in a few years if I devoted myself exclusively to portraits, so great is the desire for good portraits in the different country towns. [36]
CONCORD, September 2, 1816MY DEAR PARENTS,--I have just received yours of August 29. I leave town to-morrow morning, probably for Hanover, as there is no conveyance direct to Walpole. I have had no more portraits since I wrote you, so that I have received just one hundred dollars in Concord. The last I took for ten dollars, as the person I painted obtained four of my sitters for me.... [36]
WINDSOR, VERMONT, September 28, 1816I am doing pretty well in this place, better than I expected; I have one more portrait to do before I leave it.... I should have business, I presume, to last me some weeks if I could stay, but I long to get home-through Concord- .... Mama's scheme of painting a large landscape and selling it to General Bradley for two hundred dollars, must give place to another which has just come into my head: that of sending to you for my great canvas and painting the quarrel at Dartmouth College, as large as life, with all the portraits of the trustees, overseers, officers of college, and students; and, if I finish it next week, to ask five thousand dollars for it and then come home in a coach and six and put Ned to the blush with his nineteen subscribers a day. Only think, $5000 a week is $260,000 a year, and, if I live ten years, I shall be worth $2,600,000; a very pretty fortune for this time of day. Is it not a grand scheme? [36]
Continuing his modestly successful progress, he writes next from Hanover, on
October 3, 1816:--
"I arrived in this place on Tuesday evening and am painting away with all my might. I am painting Judge Woodward and lady, and think I shall have many more engaged than I can do. I painted seven portraits at Windsor, one for my board and lodging at the inn, and one for ten dollars, very small, to be sent in a letter to a great distance; so that in all I received eighty-five dollars in money. I have five more engaged at Windsor for next summer. So you see I have not been idle. "I _must_ spend a fortnight at Concord, so that I shall not probably be at home till early in November. "I think, with proper management, that I have but little to fear as to this world. I think I can, with industry, average from two to three thousand dollars a year, which is a tolerable income, though _not equal to_ $2,600,000!" [36]
"I have just received your favor of the 30th ultimo, and thank you very cordially for your goodness in consenting to take my daughter's full-length likeness in the manner I described, say twenty-four inches in length. I will pay you most willingly the two hundred dollars you require for it, and will consider myself a gainer by the bargain. I shall expect you to decorate this picture with the most superb landscape you are capable of designing, and that you will produce a masterpiece of painting. I agree to your taking it with you to the northward to finish it. Be pleased to represent my daughter in the finest attitude you can conceive." Mr. Alston was a generous patron and paid the young artist liberally for the portraits of his children. In recognition of this Morse presented him with his most ambitious painting, "The Judgment of Jupiter." Mr. Alston prized this picture highly during his lifetime, but after his death it was sold and for many years was lost sight of. It was purchased long afterwards in England by an American gentleman, who, not knowing who the painter was, gave it to a niece of Morse's, Mrs. Parmalee, and it is still, I believe, in the possession of the family. [36]
1818FRIDAY MORNING,
20th, 1818 AT UNCLE FINLEY'S.
We are safely housed under the hospitable roof of Uncle Finley, where they received us, as you might expect, with open arms. He has provided lodgings for us at ten dollars per week. I have not yet seen them; shall go directly. [36]
On January 27, 1818, he arrived in that beautiful Southern city and thus announced his arrival to his parents: "I find myself in a new climate, the weather warm as our May. I have been introduced to a number of friends. I think my prospects are favorable." At first, however, the promised success did not materialize, and it was not until after many weeks of waiting that the tide turned. But it did turn, for an excellent portrait of Dr. Finley, one of the best ever painted by Morse, aroused the enthusiasm of the Charlestonians, and orders began to pour in, so that in a few weeks he was engaged to paint one hundred and fifty portraits at sixty dollars each. Quite an advance over the meagre fifteen dollars he had received in New England. But for some of his more elaborate productions he received even more, as the following extract from a letter of Mr. John A. Alston, dated April 7, 1818, will prove:-- [36]
1819On March 1, 1819, the Common Council of Charleston passed the following resolution:-- "Resolved unanimously that His Honor the Intendant be requested to solicit James Monroe, President of the United States, to permit a full-length likeness to be taken for the City of Charleston, and that Mr. Morse be requested to take all necessary measures for executing the said likeness on the visit of the President to this city. "Resolved unanimously that the sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars be appropriated for this purpose. [36]
1820Great fortune attended his [John James Fougere Audubon] choice of a wife. She not only encouraged him in his ambitions, but took a position as governess in order to support herself and the two sons. Later, she started a school and was so successful that she soon was receiving an income of $3,000 a year.... [9 pg 157]
1821In the course of time, however, these philanthropists met with some discouragement. In 1821 certain masters were sending their slaves to a Sunday-school opened by Levi Coffin and his son Vestal. Before the slaves had learned more than to spell words of two or three syllables other masters became unduly alarmed, thinking that such instruction would make the slaves discontented.[1] The timorous element threatened the teachers with the terrors of the law, induced the benevolent slaveholders to prohibit the attendance of their Negroes, and had the school closed.[2] Moreover, it became more difficult to obtain aid for this cause. Between 1815 and 1825 the North Carolina Manumission Societies were redoubling their efforts to raise funds for this purpose. By 1819 they had collected $47.00 but had not increased this amount more than $2.62 two years later. [52]
1825In the beginning, postal charges were paid by the recipient, and charges varied with the distance carried. The, in 1825 congress permitted local postmasters to give letters to mail carriers for home delivery, but these carriers received no government salary and for their whole compensation depended on what they were paid by the recipients of individual letters. This meant, of course, that the carrier would not leave letters in mailboxes, but had to find each recipient in person or lose his fee. People who did not want to pay these fees could instruct the postmaster to keep their mail at the post office. This system lasted for about forty years, down to the very era of the civil war. [28 pg 130]
1826James Clyman ...sold his last year’s catch of beaver skins for $1,251, wealth enough to buy a substantial farm. [4 pg 53
1828In Rhode Island, where the black population was proportionately larger than in some other New England States, special schools for persons of color continued. These efforts met with success at Newport. In the year 1828 a separate school for colored children was established at Providence and placed in charge of a teacher receiving a salary of $400 per annum.[1] A decade later another such school was opened on Pond Street in the same city. About this time the school law of Rhode Island was modified so as to make it a little more favorable to the people of color. The State temporarily adopted a rule by which the school fund was thereafter not distributed, as formerly, according to the number of inhabitants below the age of sixteen. It was to be apportioned, thereafter, according to the number of white persons under the age of ten years, "together with five-fourteenths of the said [colored] population between the ages of ten and twenty-four years." This law remained in force between the years 1832 and 1845. Under the new system these schools seemingly made progress. In 1841 they were no longer giving the mere essentials of reading and writing, but combined the instruction of both the grammar and the primary grades. [52]
1829Bishop Capers was the leading spirit in the movement instituted in that commonwealth about 1829 to establish missions to the slaves. So generally did he arouse the people to the performance of this duty that they not only allowed preachers access to their Negroes but requested that missionaries be sent to their plantations. Such petitions came from C.C. Pinckney, Charles Boring, and Lewis Morris.[1] Two stations were established in 1829 and two additional ones in 1833. Thereafter the Church founded one or two others every year until 1847 when there were seventeen missions conducted by twenty-five preachers. At the death of Bishop Capers in 1855 the Methodists of South Carolina had twenty-six such establishments, which employed thirty-two preachers, ministering to 11,546 communicants of color. The missionary revenue raised by the local conference had increased from $300 to $25,000 a year. [52]
1830sUntil the 1830's the common newspaper practice was to sell to advertisers the right to insert a daily advertisement at a flat fee for the whole year. For about $32 an advertisement would appear every day in a big city newspaper, and the advertiser was not closely restricted in space or linage. This practice, together with the cheapening of paper by the Fourdrinier paper making machine in the 1820's encouraged the printing of larger and larger papers. By the 1830's the New York Journal of Commerce stretched across eleven columns of a sheet 35 inches wide and 58 inches high. This unmanageable expanse, nearly six feet wide when opened, came to be called the “blanket sheet.” The inconvenience of such a paper explained the special appeal of the new tabloid format, and when the New York Sun first appeared in 1833, it was only 9 inches by 12 inches. A paper shortage in the mid 1830's was another incentive for smaller-size sheets. [28 pg 142]
1831In Virginia where the prohibition did not then extend to freedmen, there was enacted in 1831 a law providing that any meeting of free Negroes or mulattoes for teaching them reading or writing should be considered an unlawful assembly. To break up assemblies for this purpose any judge or justice of the peace could issue a warrant to apprehend such persons and inflict corporal punishment not exceeding twenty lashes. White persons convicted of teaching Negroes to read or write were to be fined fifty dollars and might be imprisoned two months. For imparting such information to a slave the offender was subject to a fine of not less than ten nor more than one hundred dollars. [52]
1832Alabama had some difficulty in getting a satisfactory law. In 1832 this commonwealth enacted a law imposing a fine of from $250 to $500 on persons who should attempt to educate any Negro whatsoever. The act also prohibited the usual unlawful assemblies and the preaching or exhorting of Negroes except in the presence of five "respectable slaveholders" or unless the officiating minister was licensed by some regular church of which the persons thus exhorted were members.[1] It soon developed that the State had gone too far. It had infringed upon the rights and privileges of certain creoles, who, being residents of the Louisiana Territory when it was purchased in 1803, had been guaranteed the rights of citizens of the United States. Accordingly in 1833 the Mayor and the Aldermen of Mobile were authorized by law to grant licenses to such persons as they might deem suitable to instruct for limited periods, in that city and the counties of Mobile and Baldwin, the free colored children, who were descendants of colored creoles residing in the district in 1803. [52]
1834(Walter Hunt makes the first working sewing machine.) He was pure inventor, so obsessed by inventing and so bored by the prosaic tasks of exploiting his novelties that his very genius was destined to deny him a place in the history books. His inventions included a flax spinning machine, a knife sharpener, a yarn twister, a stove (some say the first) to burn hard coal, a nail making machine, ice plows, velocipedes, a revolver, a repeating rifle, metallic cartridges, conical bullets, paraffin candles, a street sweeping machine, a student lamp, and paper collars. According to his draftsman friend who had been making drawings to accompany Hunt’s numerous patent applications, Hunt designed a patentable safety pin quickly in order to get the money to pay him a debt of $15. Within three hours Hunt worked out the idea, made a model from an old piece of wire, and sold the patent rights for $400. [28 pg 92]
In a letter to Mr. Clarke, of June 30, 1834, he (Samuel F.B. Morse)says:-- "The picture of the Louvre was intended originally for an exhibition picture, and I painted it in the expectation of disposing of it to some person for that purpose who could amply remunerate himself from the receipts of a well-managed exhibition. The time occupied upon this picture was fourteen months, and at much expense and inconvenience, so that that sum [$2500] for it, if sold under such circumstances, would not be more than a fair compensation. "I was aware that but few, if any, gentlemen in our country would be willing to expend so large a sum on a single picture, although in fact they would, in this case, purchase seven-and-thirty in one. "I have lately changed my plans in relation to this picture and to my art generally, and consequently I am able to dispose of it at a much less price. I have need of funds to prosecute my new plans, and, if this picture could now realize the sum of twelve hundred dollars it would at this moment be to me equivalent in value to the sum first set upon it." [36]
The land frauds were great and incessant. In a long report, the United States Senate Committee on Public Lands, reporting on June 20, 1834, declared that the evidence it had taken established the fact that in Ohio and elsewhere, combinations of capitalist speculators, at the public sales of lands, had united for the purpose of driving other purchasers out of the market and in deterring poor men from bidding. The committee detailed how these companies and individuals had fraudulently bought large tracts of land at $1.25 an acre, and sold the land later at exorbitant prices. It showed how, in order to accomplish these frauds, they had bought up United States Land Office Registers and Receivers. [Footnote 8: U. S. Senate Documents, First Session, Twenty-third Congress, 1833-34, Vol. vi, Doc. No. 461:1-91.] [57]
1835As an instructor in the University he(Samuel F.B. Morse not only received a small salary which relieved him, in a measure, from the grinding necessity of painting pot-boilers, but he had assigned to him spacious rooms in the building on Washington Square, which he could utilize not only as studio and living apartments, but as a workshop. For these rooms, however, he paid a rent, at first of $325 a year, afterwards of $400. [36]
Connecticut State Prison. — From the annual report of the Directors of the Connecticut State Prison, it appears that the number of convicts in the prison at this time, is two hundred and seven — of whom fifty are blacks, and nineteen are females. They are employed in various branches of labor, viz : — twenty- three in the carpenter’s shop, twenty-one in the smith’s shop, forty-five in the chair shop, forty-three in the cane seating shop, seventeen in the shoe shop, twenty-two in the Britanni -ware shop, seven as waiters and nurses, and ten are invalids. The females are employed partly in the kitchen, and partly in making cigars. About half the contracts are let out by the day oa[sic] contracts. The income the last year, from the labor of the convicts, including the receipts from visiters, amounted to seventeen thousand three hundred and eighty-four dollars, making an average of ninety-one dollars and fifty cents for each. The whole amount of expenses for the year. including the support of prisoners and the expenses of the guard, was twelve thousand one hundred and sixteen dollars, or an average of sixty- three dollars and seventy-seven cents for each. The prison has therefore made a profit, from the labor of the prisoners, of five thousand two hundred and sixty-eight dollars. The Directors propose that a separate block of cells, fifteen or twenty in number, should be built, to be paid for out of the income of the prison. The prison is represented as well calculated for the safe keeping of the prisoners — ~no one having ever made his escape. [58]
Methodist Missionary Society. — The annual meeting of this association was held in the city of New-York, on the eleventh ult. During the past year, forty- one new missions have been established, and more than four thousand members have been added to the church. In 1820, the receipts amounted to eight hundred and twenty-three dollars ; they have now risen to forty thousand; but, owing to the extent of its operations, the association is indebted to the amount of about one thousand seven hundred dollars. Between three and four thousand dollars were subscribed and collected at the meeting. [58]
1836Medicine in 1836 was, of course, primitive. Whatever the cause of the eye affliction, there was not much a doctor could do. The typical physician’s bag contained a syringe for enemas, and a lancet, a scarificator, and a cupping glass, for bleeding the patient. There was a pitifully small number of drugs: laudanum for pain, calomel for purging, sarsaparilla to indue sweating, and various compounds containing alcohol that were given as tonics to combat fever. Other than that, doctors, could only prescribe rest and fresh air. In the early 1800s, there was a fad for hydrotherapy, and the treatment that was recommended for Olmsted’s malady was seawater bathing (hence, presumably, his summers in Saybrook). Since modern remedies for conjunctivitis include washing the eves with a weak saline solution, this may, in fact have helped reduce the inflammation.
1837At twenty one [Joseph Stephen] Wright had made a personal fortune of $200,000, then lost every dollar of it in the panic of 1837. He didn’t mind. Money wasn’t wealth, anyway. The real wealth was the land. Wright went headlong into public service to incorporate the Union Agricultural society. Next, he founded the Prairie Farmer, which began its long distinguished life by campaigning for public schools in farm communities and for better was in regard to fences. These and other movement took fire like prairie grass. Editor Wright went on to demands for a state normal school and an agricultural college and, always, for more and better fences. [7 pg 44-45]
John Olmsted noted only that on June 14, 1837, he “went to NYC with Fred by river returned Monday 19th via New Haven” and that Dr. Wallace charged four dollars to examine the boy’s eyes. [26 pg 37]
1840's...around eighty four of every one hundred Americans lived and worked in rural areas. [7 ]
What was a farm like in the mid-forties- a farm, say in the State of Illinois, which its boomers declared to be a veritable Garden of Eden? It might run to 2,000 acres, though the average was nearer to the 160 acres of the later homesteading era. The home was likely to be a cabin of squared logs, chinked with moss and mud. It was perhaps 14 by 20 feet. It had one room. The attic was reached by a vertical ladder. It had one room. Another ladder might lead through a trapdoor to the cellar. The barns of the place and period seemed to fit no pattern. The Y ranged from what a sharp observer a superior article to little more than a hovel. Transportation was by farm wagon or buggy, and in winter by a homemade sleigh called a jumper, made of slant, [sic] and provided with the necessary box and seats. [7 pg 7]
The important matter of fencing was handled in a variety of ways. In timbered country you girdled trees until they died, then felled and split them into rails and posts; and here and there was a small sawmill with a picket making machine, turning out pickets for about seventy five cents a rod. A rod (16 ½ feet) was still the measure favored by husbandman. [7 pg 8]
A good cow cost $9. A pair of horses could be had for about $40. ...Fields yielding seventy bushels of corn to the acre failed any longer to excite farmers who had to sell it for ten cents or less. For this reason many prairie settlers caught the si8l culture mania which had already swept desperate New England and hand petered out as suddenly as it had begun. (See 1841) [7 pg 8]
(Dates??) Benjamin Talbot Babbitt, soap manufacture and prolific inventor. Born in Oneida county, New York, Babbitt agreed at the age of eighteen to pay his father $500 a year as recompense for leaving the family farm. [24 pg 104]
In America it was far more difficult than in England to tell a man’s social class by what he wore. The British consul in Boston in the early 1840's, Thomas college Grattan, complained of American equality; he found servant girls “strongly infected with the national bad taste for being over dressed, they are, when walking the streets, scarcely to be distinguished from their employers.” [28 pg 91]
Elias Howe, born in 1819, was the son of a Massachusetts farmer. At the age of twenty, when he was working as a journeyman machinist for a Boston scientific instrument maker, his interest was awakened by a customer’s effort to perfect a knitting machine, some years later, under pressure to support a wife and three children and desperately casting about for some way to add to his salary of $9 a week, he decided to try to make his fortune from a sewing machine. [28 pg 93]
Large areas of land bought from the Indian tribes by the Government, almost at once became the property of canal or railroad corporations by the process of Government grants. A Congressional document in 1840 (Senate Document No. 616) made public the fact that from the establishment of the Federal Government to 1839, the Indian tribes had ceded to the Government a total of 442,866,370 acres. The Indian tribes were paid either by grants of land elsewhere, or in money and merchandise. For those 442,866,370 acres they received exchange land valued at $53,757,400, and money and merchandise amounting to $31,331,403. [57]
The great scandal caused in Pennsylvania in 1840 by the revelations of the persistent bribery carried on by the United States Bank for many years, was only one of many such scandals throughout the United States. One of the most characteristic phases of the reports of the various legislative investigating committees was the ironical astonishment that they almost invariably expressed at the "superior class" being responsible for the continuous bribery. Thus, in reporting in 1840, that $130,000 had been used in bribery in Pennsylvania by the United States Bank, an investigating committee of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives commented: "It is hard to come to the conclusion that men of refined education, and high and honorable character, would wink at such things, yet the conclusion is unavoidable." [Pa. House Journal, 1842, Vol. ii, Appendix, 172-531.] [57]
1841...the State (Illinois) was paying a bounty of $1 on every ten pounds of cocoons raised. [7 pg 8]
Case bought six ground hogs on credit. He compared the cost of travel by the Erie Canal, and so across Lake Michigan by boat to Chicago, and the all lake route by way of the Welland Canal and lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan, He chose the latter because it was much cheaper, if longer, and he must be thrifty if for no other reason than the freight charge of $60 for his ground hogs. [7 pg 24]
The New York Tribune sprang into existence on April 10, 1841, on $2,000 capital - $1,000 of it borrowed. [16 pg 98] In its initial week, the Tribune took in $92 but paid out $525. It continued to lose money at the rate of between $200 and $300 a week until, three months after the paper first came out, Greeley was able to persuade Thomas McElrath, an attorney with publishing experience, to invest $2,000 for a partnership. [16 pg 99]
James Fenimore Cooper had won a $200 verdict against the Tribune in its first year. [16 pg 101]
1843[Olmsted] going to sea at least gave the appearance of pursuing a career, and he was half serious. ...He had no intention of going as a gentleman “with his gloves on,” as Dana put it - he would sail “before the mast,” as a common seaman. Or at least, an apprentice seaman. Merchant ships regularly took on two or three “green boys,” in addition to their regular complement. Olmsted was no longer a boy (he was almost twenty one), but he was certainly green in seafaring. ... He met the captain an affable man named Warren Fox. The following day, Captain Fox informed him that he was accepted. Regular seamen were paid about twelve dollars a month; as a green hand, Olmsted would receive considerably less. ... He left on the Ronaldson from New York harbor on April 23, 1843. In his first letter home, from Sumatra, he wrote: “It grieves me very much to tell you (the voyage) has likewise been in many respects a disagreeable & unpleasant one.”...Like many novices, Olmsted was seasick. At first he tried to work, but eventually he was unable to leave his bunk. The four “green boys” were housed in a foul smelling small space in steerage, deep below decks. He managed to get moved to the forecastle, where most of the crew lived, and shared a bunk with Goodwin, who took care of him... It was weeks before he could eat solid food, and a full month before he recovered. But he was so weakened that he could not do his regular duties and was put to cleaning the rust from the cutlasses and pistols in the armory. This light work did not last long. Olmsted was an apprentice sailor, not a cabin boy. He was expected to perform the same tasks as the other men. These included the morning washing of the decks, as well as regular rounds of scrubbing, scraping, and painting. Bilge water has to be pumped out daily. The rigging had to be regularly tarred. He took his turn at watch and learned to go aloft to set sails. He was soon scrambling up the ratlines, as much as a hundred feet above the deck. Here, where the swaying motion of the ship was exaggerated many fold, he would join his mates in gingerly edging out on the yards to furl or unfurl the huge flapping canvas sails. The exhausting work made for blistered hands, cracked knuckles, and aching joints....{Cape of Good Hope] The Ronaldson encountered terrible seas, rains, finally a snowstorm. A squall blew away the main topsail. Going aloft and handling the wet, icy lines became more dangerous than ever. He suffered a bad fall, although not as bad as Braisted, who survived a drop from the fore-topgallant yard, a distance of fifty feet or more...One morning Olmsted awoke to find that he couldn’t move his right arm. He had another month of light duties until the paralysis wore off and he regained his strength. He was discovering the truth of Dana’s observation that “a sailor‘s life is at best but a mixture of a little good with much evil, and a little pleasure with much pain.”
Sickness, accidents, debilitating work, and bad weather were coupled with cramped and uncomfortable living conditions. The food was monotonous: salt beef and biscuits daily, interrupted on sundays by duff, a clammy pudding of boiled flour and molasses. As a special treat the cook would make lobscouse, a stew of crushed biscuits, potatoes, and codfish or more of the salt beef.
The Whampoa anchorage was particularly unhealthy, and like many of the crew, Olmsted contracted typhoid. [26 pg 50-51]
1844Solomon and Harriet Louisa Young made their start on a farm known as the Parrish Place, not far from the Missouri River and well within the projected outlines of Kansas City. Then, shortly afterward, in 1844, possibly because of the flood, they made a first claim to public land on high ground back from the Blue Rive approximately sixteen miles south of Independence, near the settlement of Hickman’s Mills, on what was called Blue ridge, It was high, fertile, well-drained ground, ideal grazing country, good for corn and wheat, as high and fine as any land in the county, with distant views miles into Kansas Territory. This first Blue ridge claim comprised just 80 acres, the minimum purchase required by the Land Act, and Solomon Young paid $1.25 an acre, the minimum price for public land. To gain title he was also obliged to occupy the land for a time, and consequently stories were passed down of how he and Harriet Louisa came there with “a gun and an axe and two babies and a blanket.” [14 pg 23]
A founder and the first president [Horace Greeley] of the New York Printers’ Union (Later Typographical Union Number Six), he paid Tribune printers thirty two cents for each 1,000 ems set in type when other papers were paying twenty three; in 1844, the editor led the battle for a higher city wide scale for printers, and won. The victory was celebrated by the firing of a cannon in front of the Tribune office. ...Although he frequently quarreled with his printers - once hiring strikebreakers - Greeley remained, generally, on good terms with them. In 1862 just a year after they had refused to accept a ten per cent pay cut announced by the editor, Tribune printers chipped in to purchase Greeley a $400 gold watch. [16 pg 98]
Extracts from the Financial Report to the Association. (of Brook Farm)
"The Direction of Finance respectfully submit their annual report for the year ending Oct. 31, 1844:--
The income of the Association during the year from all sources whatever has been . . . . . . .$11,854.41
and its expenditures for all purposes, including interest, losses by bad debts, and damage of buildings, tools andfurniture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10,409.14
leaving a balance of . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,445.27
from which deducting the amount of doubtful debts contracted this year . . . . 284.43 --------we have . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $1,160.84 which is to be divided according to the Constitution.
"By the last yearly report of this Direction it appears that the Association has been a loser up to November 1, 1843, to the amount of $2,748.83. In this amount was included sundry debts against associates amounting to $924.38 which should not have been included. There were also some small discrepancies which were afterwards discovered, so that
on settling the books, the entire deficit appeared to be $1,837.00. "To this amount should be added the proportion of the damage done to the tools, furniture and general fixtures and depreciation in the live stock, by the use of the two years which the Association has been in operation previous to that time. The whole damage of this property by the use of these years has been ascertained by inventory to be $365.54, according to the estimates and statements prepared by Messrs. Ryckman and Hastings, which are herewith submitted.
"Of this sum, $365.54, we have charged one third, $121.85, to the account of the current year, and two thirds, $243.69, to the account of the two preceding years. To the same amount should also be added sundry debts which have since proved to be bad, amounting in all to $678.08, and also an error in favor of I. Morton amounting to $17.74, which has since been discovered in his account, so that the total deficit of the preceding years will appear to be as follows:-- Deficit on settling the books..... $1,837.00
Damage on furniture and fixtures..... 243.69
Bad debts, including debts of associates considered doubtful....... 678.08
I. Morton............................ 17.74
Total.............................. $2,776.51
"From this amount is to be deducted the value of the farm produce consisting of hay, roots, manures, etc., on hand November 1, 1843, which was not taken into the amount of last year, but which has been ascertained to be $762.50, as well as the value, $49.13, of the family stores which were on hand at the same time, but were also omitted from the amount.
"Deducting these two amounts ($762.50+$49.13= $811.63) from the deficit as above stated we have: Deficit.......... $2,776.51
Farm produce and family stores....... 811.63
Real deficit for 1842 and 1843.... $1,964.88
"It was the opinion of a majority at least of this Board that this sum must be chargeable upon the future industry of the Association, and that no dividend could be declared until it had been made up.
Accordingly the quarterly statement for the quarter ending August 1, 1844, was based upon this opinion, and a deficit of $526.78 declared to exist at that time. It is but justice to say that that statement was made up in the absence of one of the members of the Direction, Mr. Ryckman, who on seeing it objected entirely to the principle which it embodied. Subsequent consideration has convinced the Direction that the statement was in that respect erroneous, and that the transactions of previous years ought not to affect the operations of this, in the way proposed in the statement. It should be borne in mind that the deficit before spoken of is not a debt in itself, but is the difference between the amount of our debts and our joint stock, and the nominal value of our assets. The Association is not bound to pay the sum or to make it good in any way. It pays interest upon it, but can never be called on to pay the principal. The sum total of the actual liabilities of the Association, that is, of debts and obligations which it is bound at some time or other to pay, is much exceeded by the cost value of its property. Its joint stock, which it is not bound to pay, much exceeds the deficit we are speaking of, so that clearly the deficit is not to be paid, but only the interest upon it, that is, five per cent per annum forever. So that it is evident that the principal is by no means chargeable upon the industry of the present or of future years, but only the interest. And even if the said deficit were a debt to be paid it would still, as we conceive, be perfectly just and legitimate to issue stock for its amount to those members by whose labors it was made up. Because in that case we should merely, in consideration of such labor, bind the Association to the yearly payment of the interest aforesaid according to the terms of our joint stock compact. "This is, as we are persuaded, the only way whereby labor can receive justice. If a hundred dollars in money is invested in our stock, we issue certificates for that amount, and why must we not do the same with an investment of a hundred dollars' worth of labor? The claim in the latter case seems to us even more imperative than in the former. The dividend of each year ought, as we are convinced, to be made with reference solely to the difference between its gains on the one hand, and its expenditures and losses on the other. "As soon as the Phalanstery shall be completed it will become necessary to establish different rates of room rent. It is a matter of doubt whether such an arrangement is not already desirable. In our present crowded condition, indeed, the general inconveniences are distributed with tolerable equality, but still it is impossible to avoid some exceptions, and it might contribute to the harmony of the Association "The earlier losses of the establishment must be regarded as the price of much valuable experience, and as inevitable in starting such an institution. Almost every business fails to pay its expenses at the commencement--it always costs something to set the wheels in operation; this is not, however, to be regarded as absolute loss. This is the view which is to be taken of the condition of the Association at the beginning of the present year."The true value of any property is precisely the sum on which, in the use for which it was designed or which it may be put to, it pays the requisite interest. The price of railroad stock, for example, is not regulated, either by its original cost or by the present intrinsic worth of the property it represents, but by the dividend it pays and by the condition and durability of the railroad. For any other use than as a railroad the property of the road is of course comparatively worthless, but that consideration has no effect upon its value. "The case is entirely the same with the property of this Association. As long as it is able, in the use and under the management of the Association, to pay the stipulated interest--five per cent per annum-- upon the stock shares by which it is represented, so long those stock shares will be worth par, whatever may be the nominal cost of the property, or its value for any other purposes than those of the Association. "In accordance with these views and for other considerations which we shall hereafter allude to, this Direction is altogether of opinion that the results of this year's industry ought to be divided irrespective of the results of former years, and certificates of stock issued to those persons who are entitled to such dividends. "To some persons it may perhaps seem remarkable that a dividend should be declared when the Association is so much in want of ready money as at present, but a little reflection will show anyone that it is a perfectly legitimate proceeding. A very large part of our industry has been engaged in the production of permanent property such as the shop, the Phalanstery and the improvements upon the farm. These are of even more value to the Association than so much money, and a dividend may as justly be based upon them as upon cash in the treasury. If a just graduation of rates for different apartments should now be established. As far as possible no member should be the recipient of peculiar favors, but when all are charged at an equal rate for unequal accommodations, this is unavoidable. For the same reason a difference should be made between the price of board at the Graham tables, and those which are furnished with a different kind of food. It is only by this means that justice can be done and differences prevented. The first thought that will arrest the attention of some in reading this report is the smallness of the figures. It does not appear to-day that the corporation was much of a financial affair, for there are thousands of persons in our land now who could easily sustain such an institution and pocket its yearly losses; but we must bear in mind that the intervening years have changed the value of money, and its relation to property. A fair price for a mechanic's labor then was a dollar for a day of ten to twelve hours; the same persons would now receive three to four times as much for less hours. We should remember also that the colossal fortunes of to-day were not in existence then. The means at the command of the Association were very small, and the wonder is that with so little money capital the enterprise should have attracted the wide notice it did. In this report was an allusion to the Graham table. In the dining room there was always, at the time of which I write, one table of vegetarians--those who used no flesh meats, and generally no tea or coffee. They passed under the name of "Grahamities," from the founder of the vegetarian system in America, Dr. Sylvester Graham, whose name is still connected with bread made of unbolted wheat because it was by him considered the very perfection of human food. These persons were of both sexes, different ages and occupations. They worked on the farms, in the schools, the houses and the shops. They had the diet of the place, minus the meat and sometimes the tea and coffee. Little attention was paid at first to this departure from common habits, but by degrees the numbers increased until they began to be a power. Their constancy, their earnest belief, soon swept away all ridicule, and the proof that they could do their share of daily work was not wanting. Among the number were many very devoted and cheerful persons. "C. A. D." [40]
It is on record that Morse offered, in 1844, after the experimental line between Washington and Baltimore had demonstrated that the telegraph was a success, to sell all the rights in his invention to the Government for $100,000, and would have considered himself amply remunerated. [36]
Above ad from the 1844 City Directory of Chicago
1845A fire forced Greeley to return the Tribune to Ann street to share the plant facilities of the World (it is one of the wonders of nineteenth century journalism that papers brawling and feuding in their columns would, in emergencies, make every effort to assist each other), but the Tribune soon returned to its new site in a squat, five story building that was purchased from Price in 1858 for $163,000. [16 pg 100]
(excerpt of letter seeking entrance to the Brook Farm experiment) I have not a large fortune, but sufficient to live comfortable anywhere. A large part of it is now invested in houses and lands in Georgia. Such is the low price of cotton that real estate cannot be sold at this time without a serious sacrifice. Most of my Georgia property rents for more than the interest of its cost at 8 per cent. I have also houses and land in this state, but cannot for the above named reason find a purchaser. Therefore, if I go into Association I shall be obliged to leave some of my possessions unsold, and be content to receive the rent until I can effect a sale. I have no negroes--thank God. Now if you are not full at Brook Farm, and do not object to myself, wife and two daughters, one four years and the other six months old, presenting ourselves as candidates for admission, and $2500 or $3000 will be sufficient for an initiation fee, I shall, as soon as I can arrange my affairs, be with you. I will thank you to write to me, informing me with how much ready cash, with an income of $500 or $600 per year, I can be received. Mrs. Clarke and myself will wish to engage daily in labor. We both labored in our youth--we wish to resume it again. Very respectfully, John Clarke. [40]
(excerpt of Mr. Ripleys reply to J. Clarke. In regard to the connection of a family with us, our arrangements are liberal and comprehensive. We are not bound by fixed rules which apply to all cases. The general principle we are obliged to adhere to rigidly is not to receive any persons who would increase the expenses more than the revenue of the establishment. Within the limits of this principle we can make any arrangement which shall suit particular cases. A family with resources sufficient for self-support, independent of the exertion of its members, would find a favorable situation with us for the education of its children, and for social enjoyment. An annual payment of $1000 would probably cover the expenses of board and instruction, supposing that no services were rendered to diminish the expense. An investment of $5000 would more than meet the original outlay required for a family of eight persons; but in that case an additional appropriation would be needed, either of productive labor or cash, to meet the current expenditures. I forward you herewith a copy of our Prospectus, from which you will perceive that the whole expense of a pupil, without including board in vacations, is $250 per annum; but in case of one or more pupils remaining with us for a term of years, and assisting in the labor of the establishment, a deduction of $1 or $2 per week would be made, according to the services rendered, until such time as their education being so far completed, they might defray all their expenses by their labor. In the case of your son fifteen years of age, it would be necessary for him to reside with us for three months at least, and if at the end of that time his services should be found useful, he might continue by paying $150 or $200 per annum, according to the value of his labor, and if he should prove to have a gift for active industry, in process of time, he might defray his whole expenses, complete his education and be fitted for practical life. [40]
Still earlier, on March 18, 1845, in one of his reports to the Postmaster-General, Cave Johnson, he adds: "In regard to the salary of the 'one clerk at Washington--$1200,' Mr. Vail, who would from the necessity of the case take that post, is my right-hand man in the whole enterprise. He has been with me from the year 1837, and is as familiar with all the mechanism and scientific arrangements of the Telegraph as I am myself.... His time and talent are more essential to the success of the Telegraph than [those of] any two persons that could be named." [36]
At first Kendall had great difficulty in inducing capitalists to subscribe to what was still looked upon as a very risky venture. Mr. Corcoran, of Washington, was the first man wise in his generation, and others then followed his lead, so that a cash capital of $15,000 was raised. Mr. Reid says: "It was provided, in this original subscription, that the payment of $50 should entitle the subscriber to two shares of $50 each. A payment of $15,000, therefore, required an issue of $30,000 stock. To the patentees were issued an additional $30,000 stock, or half of the capital, as the consideration of the patent. The capital was thus $60,000 for the first link. W.W. Corcoran and B.B. French were made trustees to hold the patent rights and property until organization was effected. Meanwhile an act of incorporation was granted by the legislature of the State of Maryland, the first telegraphic charter issued in the United States."
The company was called "The Magnetic Telegraph Company," and was the first telegraph company in the United States. [36]
1846Exactly when Solomon went west on the first of his wagon train expedition, leaving Harriet Louisa in charge of everything, it not clear. It is known only that he went several times prior to the Civil War, beginning perhaps as early as 1846, the momentous year of the Mexican War and the trek of the Mormons out of Illinois to the Great Salt Lake (not to mention the year of Anderson Truman’s arrival in Independence). Such undertakings were epic in scale, in any event. The customary overland train was made up of forty to eighty giant canvas covered freight wagons, each requiring six yoke of oxen or mules and two drivers. A single wagon and team stretched 90 to 100 feet. And since the practice under way was to keep the wagons about 100 feet apart, some trains would be strung across the prairie for as far as three miles. To keep his bearings, Solomon carried a brass telescope, like a sea captain. The goods hauled could be worth a fortune, $30,000 or more, and the profits, if all went as planned, could be correspondingly large. Solomon, who at census time now listed himself as a freighter, appears to have done quite well. In 1850, his recorded wealth was $5,000. He is said to have owned as much as 5,000 acres, fancy, blooded horses, and there was real silver on the table. Once, he started for California with a herd of fifteen hundred cattle. It took him a year and he lost five hundred cattle on the way, but he made it, through every kind of weather and hardship, across half the continent. At Sacramento he traded the surviving herd for a ranch of 40,000 acres. But this as the story goes, he was forced to sell to cover the debts of a partner. A man made good on his debts, a man stood by his friends. And a world beating talker had a tale to tell his children, and they theirs. [14 pg 25]
By
April 1845 He (Howe) was actually sewing a seam on his machine. In 1846 he received a patent. To persuade the public that his machine would really work, Howe took it to the Quincy Hall clothing Manufactory in boston, seated himself before it and offered to sew up any seam that anyone would bring. For two weeks he astonished all comers by doing 250 stitches a minute, about seven times the speed by hand. He then challenged five of the speediest seamstresses to race his machine.
Even these demonstrations did not persuade people to buy Howe’s machines. Some objected that it was still imperfect, because it did not make a whole garment; others feared it would put tailors and seamstresses out of work. All were discouraged by the cost of a machine, at that time about $300. Howe determined to try the English market. When his brother, Amasa, took the machine to London, he awakened the interest of a shrewd corset manufacture who bought the English rights for a song, and then persuaded Elias Howe to come to London to adapt the machine to the needs of corset making. By working hard for eight months, Howe accomplished the difficult assignment, whereupon his employer (who proved to be a Dickensian villain) fired him. Suffering from the tragedy of his wife’s death (he had to borrow a suit to attend her funeral!) And the loss of all his household goods in a shipwreck off cape cod, in 1849 Howe returned penniless to New York. [28 pg 94]
It was characteristic of (S.F.B.) Morse that the first money which he received from the actual sale of his patent rights ($45 for the right to use his patent on a short line from the Post-Office to the National Observatory in Washington) was devoted by him to a religious purpose. From a letter of October 20, 1846, we learn that, adding $5 to this sum, he presented $25 to a Sunday School, and $25 to the fund for repairs. [36]
1847On April 24, [John Chafin age 73] sold the 134 acre family farm to his son [John Emerson Chaffin, yeoman age twenty two, both of Holden Mass] for $3,000. Later in the same day, curiously enough, yet another deed was executed, in which father John paid $1,500 to buy back half of the same farm, but this time with a lengthy proviso attached. Young Chaffin now owned $1,500 and half a farm; he was to earn the rest, to wit: by providing for ‘my honored father and mother during their natural lives in the following manner: to provide them with good and suitable meats, drinks and vegetables and groceries with any and all things necessary to furnish a good and suitable table for their board and sustenance; to cook and furnish them with good and suitable board, or to pay for their board where either or both may wish to live... to provide them with good and suitable clothing of all kinds which they shall wish for their convenience and comfort; to provide them with all the wood they want of a good quality fitted for stoves or fireplaces as they shall direct... to provide and keep a suitable horse, carriage, and harness for their use when ordered by them; to have the use of one half the house they now occupy; to provide them with suitable help and attendants in sickness and in health subject to their order; to pay their doctoring, nursing, and funeral charges...
They system worked without a hitch, and young Chaffin did his duty for the remaining thirteen years of his parents’ lives. [??]
“Shall have a better crop than my neighbors,” [Olmsted] informed Fred Kingsbury. “I shall send a parcel of them to New York at 37½ cents.” [26 pg 74]
In 1847 the Post Office Department adopted the idea of a postage stamp, which of course simplified the payment for postal service but caused grumbling by those who did not like to prepay. In Philadelphia, for example, with a population of 150,000, people still had to go to the post office to get their mail. The confusion and congestion of individual citizens looking for their letters was itself enough to discourage use of the mail. Besides, the stamp covered only delivery to some post office and did not include carrying to a private address. It is no wonder that during the years of these cumbersome arrangements private letter carrying and express business developed, some delivering a letter anywhere in the city for a penny. Although their activities were semi-legal, the thrived, and actually advertised that between Boston and Philadelphia there were a half day speedier that the government mail. The government postal service lost volume to private competition, and was not able to handle efficiently even the business it had. [28 pg 130]
POUGHKEEPSIE, NORTH RIVER,
July 30, 1847In my last I wrote you that I (S.F.B. Morse) had been looking out for a farm in this region, and gave you a diagram of a place which I fancied. Since then I was informed of a place for sale south of this village 2 miles, on the bank of the river, part of the old Livingston Manor, and far superior. _I have this day concluded a bargain for it._ There are about one hundred acres. I pay for it $17,500. [36]
Probably the best example of this class was Harrison Ellis of Alabama. At the age of thirty-five he had acquired a liberal education by his own exertions. Upon examination he proved himself a good Latin and Hebrew scholar and showed still greater proficiency in Greek. His attainments in theology were highly satisfactory. _The Eufaula Shield_, a newspaper of that State, praised him as a man courteous in manners, polite in conversation, and manly in demeanor. Knowing how useful Ellis would be in a free country, the Presbyterian Synod of Alabama purchased him and his family in 1847 at a cost of $2500 that he might use his talents in elevating his own people in Liberia. [52]
The "credit" system was gradually abandoned by the Government, but the auction system was retained for decades. In 1847, the Government was still selling large tracts at $1.25 an acre, nominally to settlers, actually to capitalist speculators or investors. More than two million acres had been sold every year for a long period. The House Committee on Public Lands, reporting in 1847, disclosed how most of the lands were bought up by capitalists. It cited the case of the Milwaukee district where, although 6,441 land entries had been made, there were only forty actual settlers up to 1847. "This clearly shows," the committee stated, "that those who claimed the land as settlers, are either the tools of speculators, to sequester the best lands for them... or the claim is made on speculation to sell out." [Footnote: Reports of Committees, First Session, Thirtieth Congress, 1847-48, Vol. iii, Report No. 732:6.] [57]
1848Wall hangers were then a favorite method of selling goods, especially goods to farmers; and for the next several decades wall hangers were virtually the only decoration to be found in the kitchens, and occasionally the parlors, of Western farm hones. Case’s first hanger dated 1848, announced that the Racine threshing Machine Works, J.I. chase, Proprietor, was open for business in its new and enlarged establishment. [7 pg 32]
Unlike much advertising of the period, Case’s was not blatant. It was modest, through completely assured. It was also personal. In a chatty aside he remarks that in the past he had been forced to buy his castings from outside ships, with the result that sometimes he got good castings, sometimes bad ones. Now, however, he has his won foundry; hence his castings will be universally good. [7 pg 33]
The cost of a Case threshing machine complete with horse power varied from $290 to $325, at the shop. That is what later was to be described as “f.o.b. factory.”
You had to come and take them away, or pay the cost of delivery. Nothing is said about an all cash deal - farmers did not trade that way - but if some odd farmer wanted to make a larger down payment than the sum asked, he was to be allowed a 10 per cent deduction on anything over $50. Fifty dollars was the standard down payment, to be followed by $75 on the next November 1st, $100 on January 1st, and the balance on the first day of October following - all with interest. [7 pg 34]
Virtually destitute, In July of 1848, Trist and his wife moved to West Chester, Pennsylvania. During his stay there several writers came to him in search of information about the great men he had known: Henry S. Randal, for his biography of Jefferson; James Barton, for his biography of Jackson; Thomas Hart Benton, for assistance on his Thirty Years’ View. [12 pg 89]
Thirteen year old Andrew Carnegie finds first employment as a bobbin boy in a textile mill at $1.20 a week. [13 pg58]
1849Industrialist Case must have been pressed for time, but in 1849 he found occasion to do some courting, and soon married small, vivacious Lydia Ann Bull, of Massachusetts stock. The couple set up housekeeping in a house rented for five dollars a month. He was never a man to live beyond his means. Apparently he did not believe that his means yet permitted him to have his own horse and buggy to take him forth on his constant tours to sell machines - and to make collections. For at least two years after his marriage, Case did his traveling by stage, boat, and on foot. [7 pg 36]
“To term an American farmer dilatory in regard to the payment of his bills,” said one of J.I. Case’s early bookkeepers, “is arrant flattery.” Here is salesman and collector Case himself in Monroe, Wisconsin, writing home one October night in 1849: he had driven ten miles since dark, taken care of his hired team, eaten supper, and is prepared to call it a ‘middling day for collecting.” In this case “middling” meant “money to pay my expenses home providing I cozen pretty well.” He have been careful to keep expenses at a minimum, only to discover that, if only for peace of mind and the safety of his pocketbook, he must buy “a gimlet to fasten my door at night.” This protection set him back a dime; and because there were no road signs and everybody had his won notion of how far it was to the next place, and how best to get there, Case had to blow thirty five cents for a pocket map.
Collections weren’t very good wither. From somewhere in the wilds “nine miles east of Madison, Wis.,” he moans that though he has presented notes to the amount of $2,500, he has received only $50. “I tell you,” he wrote to his wife, “these are hard old times to collect money.” [7 pg 36]
Archambault of Philadelphia started building engines and mounting them on wagon wheels in 1849. The machines came high, the four horse power costing $625 and the ten horse power $2,300. [7 pg 55]
Influenced somewhat by his Associationist leanings, he (Greeley) turned the paper (The Tribune) into a joint stock venture, issuing 100 shares of stock, each valued at $1,000. But apparently the teachings of Associationism had not found favor among the members of the Tribune staff, for only six employees came forward at the first offering with the courage - and the $1,000 - to invest in the Tribune. Of the other 94 shares, 10 were reserved for Dana, 31½ for Greeley, and 52½ for McElrath. Greeley, who was assured by the Tribune Association bylaws of an annual salary of $2,500, had thus surrendered nominal control of the paper, but until the last days of his life, even at times when he himself possessed only six shares, he never lost the decisive voice. [16 pg 101]
When Mr. Ripley left Brook Farm he was poor. The experiment had cost him money, years of toil and made debts for which he felt responsible. He determined to pay them. As yet the way was not open. The Harbinger was changed in form and lived less than two years in its new location, and during a temporary illness of the editor its publication was suspended. Mr. Ripley and wife taught school at Flatbush, L.I. A t the termination of the -Harbinger- he immediately commenced writing for the New York -Tribune-. Its pay roll indicates what he received May 5, 1849; it was $5 for the previous week's work. In July, same year, he was paid $10 per week; April 6, 1850, $15; Sept. 21, 1851, $25 per week. He wrote articles on all the living topics of the day, from the arrival of the last new singer to the death of the last criminal. Things trivial and non-important, grave and gay, of lasting import and the most ephemeral, all came under his pen. He also wrote, either occasionally or regularly, for a dozen other periodicals. He was an early contributor to -Putnam's- and from its commencement wrote for -Harper's New Monthly-. As editor associated with Mr. C.A. Dana he gave his time and best thought to the New American Cyclopedia, and the first two or three volumes of the series were edited solely by them. In 1871 his salary was raised to $75 per week. When the Cyclopedia was revised he was paid $250 per month for extra work on it. More than a million four hundred and sixty thousand volumes of the two editions have been sold, and a small royalty secured to the editors on each volume. [40]
1850s[or earlier] Raymond, who was making $1,000 a year as assistant in the departments of literary criticism, fine arts, and general intelligence, soon defected and went over to feud with Greeley as managing editor of the Courier and Enquirer. A few years later, in 1851, her started a paper of his won and called it the New York Times.) At the Tribune he was eventually succeeded by Charles A. Dana, who was to make something of a name for himself in journalist, too, It was Dana who too the initiative in building up the Tribune staff, hiring and assigning correspondents, including a man in London named Karl Marx, who wrote dispatches to the Tribune at one pound apiece for more than ten years. 16 pg 100]
1850At Galena, one day in November, 1850, Case learned to his horror that six threshing machines he had shipped to Iowa, for the harvest just then finished, had not arrived until the last shock of grain had been threshed. He had expected to collect $1,000 on these machines. Instead, he had to ante up $40 freight charges on each machine and trust to luck in selling them for the next harvest season. [7 pg 38]
In 1850, at the age of twenty two, he (Henry Miller) set out from New York for the city whose golden name was then on everybody’s lips - San Francisco. When, after a perilous journey across the Isthmus of Panama, he landed in the city by the Golden Gate, he had only six dollars to his name, actually, not even the name was his own. He had been born Heinrich Alfred Kreiser, and that was what he had been called until he went on board his ship at New York. He had bought his ticket at the bargain rate of $350 from a shoe salesman who at the last minute had decided not to make the trip. As the young man was boarding the ship, he looked at the pasteboard in his hand and to his dismay saw on it the words “”Not Transferable.” At the head of the gangplank stood the purser, checking the passenger list. “Name please?” the purser asked. The young man gulped, then looked down at his ticket and read off the words there - “Henry Miller.” Unwilling to admit the small fraud, he continued to use the salesman’s name. Eight years after his arrival in San Francisco, the state legislature passed a special bill legalizing the change. [17 pg 20]
He has thought of practical matter: how much cheaper for him to visit England now, he points out sagely, than when he will be married and with a family. He claims that he is better than John at managing money matters, and he is sure that he can keep his expenses down to less than $140 or $160 (in fact, he would spend about $300). The trip is to be mainly an inexpensive waling tour since Brace’s family has little money, and Olmsted reminds his father that he has had much more practice in roughing it than either of the other two. Wouldn’t it be a good idea, in any case, to be away from Staten Island during the cholera season? [26 pg 85]
Louis Prang, a sixteen year old refugee from the German revolutions, came to New York in 1850, acquired a reputation as a lithographer, and pioneered in making colored lithographs of famous works of art (he christened them “cromos” and the name stuck) which he sold for $6 apiece. In 1875 he applied his techniques to producing colorful cards for Christmas, and these came to be esteemed as works of art.. Prang’s eight color chromos of the Nativity, of children, young women, flowers, birds, and butterflies (a few, too, of Santa Clause) gave a certain tone to the practice of sending greeting cards at Christmas and dominated the market until about 1890. [28 pg 162]
The policy of granting enormous tracts of land to corporations was revived for the benefit of canal and railroad companies. The first railroad company to get a land grant from Congress was the Illinois Central, in 1850. It received as a gift 2,595,053 acres of land in Illinois. Actual settlers had to pay the company from $5 to $15 an acre. [57]
1851The Prairie Farmer welcomed each new improvement in agricultural machinery, including those of Cyrus McCormick, Obed Hussey, and Jerome I. Case. Then, in 1851, Editor [John Stephen] Wright himself entered the field with a revolutionary device, the Atkins Automaton, this was the work of another Yankee, Jearum Atkins, a native of Vermont who migrated to the Midwest as a millwright. A fall from a wagon put him into bed for twenty four years during which he devised and perfected his Automation. This was one of the first self-rakers for use with reapers. It imitated the motion of human arms and was so wondrous in action as to awe the crowds that came to see it on trial. Forty of the machines were sold in 1853; three hundred a year later. By 1856 /Wrights’ firm was making fine thousand Automatons - and selling them as fast as made. Agricultural groups showered medals and resolutions of merit on the invention. It was common talk Cyrus McCormick was much worried. Meanwhile, too, the Prairie Farmer had been wildly successful. Its subscription list had grown to 10,000. Editor Wright changed it from a monthly to a weekly, all for the same price. Then came the swift debacle. A subordinate in the automaton factory had, in the great rush of orders, used green wood in many of the machines; and in the hot sun of harvest time they had warped. Back they came. Either that or their owners wrote to demand that Wright take the shoddy things off their property. Wright and his men worked all hours to replace the defective machines, and he might have managed to survive the stupid accident had it not been that panic was in the air. The panic quickly developed into a financial disaster of national size. Wright lost his factory, his business, his home, and the Prarier Farmer. He tried again, this time in real estate, but he had lost his touch, and soon was to lose his brilliant mind, to die in an institution for the insane. [p7 pg45]
[Robert] Bonner, born in Ireland, had immigrated in 1839 at the age of fifteen, and began as a typesetter on the Hartford Courant, where he showed a talent for fast composing and a taste for fast horses. In 1851 he paid $900 for the Merchant’s Ledger, a dull journal of the dry goods trade. By 1855 he had discarded the drab commercial matter, had shortened the name to the New York Ledger, and his weekly now offered sentimental stories, serials, moral essays, heartwarming doggerel, and advice to the lovelorn. [28 pg 140]
1853No wonder that the snobbish British merchant W.E. Baxter was irritated in 1853-54 to find common workmen so overdressed by English standards. “You meet men in railroad cars, and on the decks of steamboats, rigged out in super fine broadcloth and white waistcoats, as if they were on their way to a ball room, and common workmen you find attired in glossy black clothes while performing work of the dirtiest description... the farmers are the only class who wear rough garments... the people have yet to learn that apparel should be chosen for use not show, that shabby broadcloth is the most pitiful of all costume, and that it is no mark of gentility to wear a dress unsuitable to one’ means and employment.” [28 pg 92]
1854The war in the Crimea, a place few American farmers had ever heard of, broke out in 1854 and involved Russia, Turkey, France and England. Its demand sent wheat prices on the Chicago market from 72 cents a bushel to $1.43 a bushel. [7 pg 41]
With his wife running a school for young ladies, Nicholas Trist was reduced to taking a job as a clerk for the Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad company, where he eventually worked up to paymaster at a salary of $112.50 a month. It was a bitter lot for a man who had been so close to the nation’s great and had done so much for his country. [12 ]
To many in western Missouri the civil War commenced not in 1861 with the attack on fort Sumter in South Carolina, but in 1854, when congress passed the fateful Kansas-Nebraska Act, leaving to the residents of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska the decision of whether to allow slavery. What compounded the problem was the disproportionate size of the slave population along Missouri’s western border - where possibly fifty thousand slaves were held which was nearly half the slaves in all Missouri. In Jackson county alone there were more than three thousand, and their owners, whatever their feeling for the Union, dreaded the prospect of free territory so close, to which a slave might escape, or from which could come armed bands of slave liberators. For the owner, his slave was very often his most valuable possession, in addition to being vital to his livelihood, and as the chances of war increased, the monetary value of every slave increased steadily, to the point where a male in good health was worth $3,000, as much as 500 acres of prime land. [14 pg 26]
Singer refused to pay Howe a royalty....after a long search, Singer and his lawyers located Walter Hunt, and some fragments of Hunt’s early machine were finally discovered in a garret. In 1854, after a costly three year trial, the court held in favor of Howe. Though Hunt had been on the right track, the court said, Hunt had never patented his invention, nor had he made a practical, salable machine. “For all the benefit conferred upon the public by the introduction of a sewing machine, the public are indebted to Mr. Howe.” Howe’s fortunes abruptly changed. He obtained $15,000 from singer, and soon was receiving a $25 royalty on every sewing machine made in the country. [28]
1855A month later Olmsted moved from Staten Island to rented rooms on lower Broadway. It is inaccurate to say that he simply lost interest in farming. When he set out on his south travels, he must have had in mind his old mentor George Geddes, who combined farming with a large, productive farm and was a wealthy man. After eight years as a farmer, Olmsted still depended on his father’s financial support - about $1,000 a year. The farm was not paying its way. On the other hand, he had earned a total of $720 (about $20,000 in modern dollars) from the Times for his two series. This was a modest income for what amounted to fourteen months of beginners’ work, but it was evidence that perhaps his talents lay in that direction. [26 pg 134]
On June 26, 1855, Mr. Kendall forwarded a letter which he had received from a certain Milton S. Latham, member of Congress from California, making a proposition to purchase the Morse patent rights for lines in California. In this letter occur the following sentences: "For the use of Professor Morse's patent for the State of California in perpetuity, with the reservations named in yours of the 3d March, 1855, addressed to me, they are willing to give you $30,000 in their stock. This is all they will do. It is proper I should state that the capital stock of the California State Telegraph in cash was $75,000, which they raised to $150,000, and subsequently to $300,000. The surplus stock over the cash stock was used among members of the Legislature to procure the passage of the act incorporating the company, and securing for it certain privileges." [36]
1856Late in 1856 came a mild warning when wheat prices dropped a little, though not enough to disturb the unlimited confidence. [7 pg 42]
In 1856 when [John Wesley Iliff’s] father offered to give him $7,500 if he would settle on a good Ohio farm, young Iliff refused, and (so the story went) asked instead for a mere $500 so he could make his start in the West. [28 pg 9]
[Howe’s bonanza from winning the court battle] did not last long. {Many manufactures of sewing machines] were suing each other. The upshot of these and other widening disputes, which now involved another half dozen large manufactures, was the great Sewing Machine combination in 1856. The patent owners pooled all their patents on the essential features of the sewing machine into a single franchise for a single fee, and the owners of the different patents shared the franchising fees. Before signing, Howe insisted that at least twenty four manufactures be franchised. Howe himself received $5 for each machine licensed to sell in the United States and $1 for each machine exported, which eventually brought him about $2 million. [28 pg 95]
1857The first part of 1857 [wheat prices] continued prosperous, too. The season was cool and late. Crops, however, looked good, and conditions generally were satisfactory until near the close of harvest. Then everything seemed to collapse. Several large banks in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia suddenly closed their doors. It was soon seen that the wonderful magnetic telegraph could spread bad as well as good news, and the clicking keys in the big money centers presently brought notice of an avalanche of bank closures that was almost simultaneous in Cleveland, Chicago, St. Paul, San Francisco, and Portland. [7 pg 43]
Now, during 1857-1859, a farmer who said he didn’t have any money was telling the truth. An honest man of Sparta, Wisconsin, who owed $375 on Case machinery, wrote in to say: “Dear Mr. Case, Sir, the day is dark and gloomy and unsettled like my mind as I have disappointed you so long about your money, but sir, I assure you I shall get it even if I have to give 3 per cent per month for it.” [7 pg 43]
A farmer of Farmington, Wisconsin, who had been using a Case thresher with a Case mortgage on it, wrote to say he had sold the machine anyway, then went on to report that times were so bad he was turning himself over to the county sheriff,. Barter was about the only method left. Case appears to have been a good trader, no matter the object or commodities. Occasionally he returned to Racine from a tour during these dismal times driving two horses, leading two more, with a wagon or two, all accepted in lieu of cash for a threshing machine. At other times he accepted hogs and cattle. Now and then a few acres of land. [7 pg 44]
Richard Francis Burton is given $5,000 by the Royal Geographic to lead an expedition to discover the source of the Nile. [9 pg 187]
1858By 1858 he [Samuel M. Kier] had sold nearly a quarter million half pints on his wonderful Rock Oil at $1 a bottle. [28 pg 42]
1859...tea sold around $1 a pound. Hartford believed that this worked a serious hardship on the poorer classes. All the tea retailed in this country was sold through middle men, whose part in the operation kept the price up. Hartford, with Gilman as associate, decided to cut costs by buying tea direct from China. With the Great American Tea company he put his plan into effect. He not only brought the price of tea down to 30 a pound but established the first link in what, in time, became a famous food chain. Thus tea again made a contribution to American history. The Boston Tea Party, historic protest against “taxation without representation,” was a prelude to the Revolutionary War. Hartford’s tea store initiated a cycle of merchandising. [6 pg 170]
{Gilman and Hartford] attracted customers by Barnumesque showmanship: premiums for lucky customers, cashiers’ cages in the shape of Chinese pagodas, a green parrot in the center of the main floor, and band music on Saturdays, they sent eight dapple gray houses pulling a great red wagon through the city and offered $20,000 to anyone who could guess the combined weight of the wagon and team. They gradually added other grocery goods - spices, coffee, soap, condensed milk, baking powder - and by 1876 had multiplied their stores to the number of sixty seven. [28 pg 110]
“Cattle Ranch!” read an advertisement in the Rocky mountain News on April 23, 1859. “Our ranch is on the Platte River about three miles below the mouth of cherry Creek, where we have built a large and secure ‘Correll’ in which the stock put in our care will be put every night. Terms $1 a Head per month.”... If you knew the range and could organize a crew of cowboys, your expenses were low and your profits could be high. The use of the range was free, and there was you year round feed. Corrals were built from local materials that cost nothing, from adobe, or from poles found along the creeks. A few cowboys at $30 to $40 a month were all the labor required. Beef on the hoof sold by the living pound. Cattle fed on the native grasses of the range might gain one quarter of their original weight in a few months. [28 pg 10]
1862According to Harriet Louisa’s formal claim [1902], however, it was a Colonel Burris, not Lane, who made off with 1,200 pounds of bacon in October of 1862, as well as 65 tons of hay, 500 bushels of corn, 44 head of hogs, 2 horses (one with bridle and saddle), 1 “lot of beds and bedding,” 7 wagons, and 30,000 fence rails. A general Sturgis was also responsible for taking 150 head of cattle and a captain Aline for 13,000 fence rails, 1,000 bushels of corn, and 6,000 “rations.” The total value of everything confiscated came to $21,442, the equivalent in present day money of quarter of a million dollars. [14 pg 31]
Raising an army for the Civil War was not an easy task. In order to meet its military quota in 1862, Greenfield (Mass.) voted to offer a bounty of $100 each to the 47 men needed. Apparently this was not enough, however. A few months later another $100 was offered to entice the last five men needed to volunteer to fill the quota. [30 pg A18]
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]
1863Yesterday L.M.M. and I appeared before the Captain commanding this camp with a statement of our cases. He listened to us respectfully and promised to refer us to the General commanding here, General Devens; and in the meantime released us from duty. In a short time afterward he passed us in our tent, asking our names. We have not heard from him, but do not drill or stand guard; so, we suppose, his release was confirmed. At that interview a young lieutenant sneeringly told us he thought we had better throw away our scruples and fight in the service of the country; and as we told the Captain we could not accept pay, he laughed mockingly, and said he would not stay here for $13.00 per month. He gets more than a hundred, I suppose. [46]
Both he [Lincoln] and Secretary Stanton made many positive efforts to find some way of providing for the tender consciences of Friends without being unfair to the rights of others. They even requested American Friends to call a conference to consider how to find a satisfactory solution of the problem. Such a conference was held in Baltimore, December 7th, 1863, and the Friends there assembled expressed great appreciation of "the kindness evinced at all times by the President and Secretary of War." A delegation from this conference visited Washington and, in co-operation with Secretary Stanton, succeeded in securing a clause in the enrolment bill, declaring Friends to be non-combatants, assigning all drafted Friends to hospital service or work among freedmen, and further providing for the entire exemption of Friends from military service on the payment of $300 into a fund for the relief of sick and wounded. [46]
1864[Olmsted writes to wife Mary] “things are worse here [Mariposa estate in San Francisco] than I dare say to anybody but you - and to you with a caution. There is not a mine on the estate that is honestly paying expenses.” He and martin pored over the books and discovered that the previous management had deferred repairs and maintenance in order to show an increase in profits. The richest deposits were rumored to have been held in reserve until just before the sale in order to inflate the price. The prospectus prepared by Fremont included an assayer’s optimistic prediction – “It is my conviction that the amount of gold bearing quartz that could be extracted is beyond all calculation” - and maintained that “the property is now producing from $60,000 to $100,000 per month, half of which, at least is profit.” When Olmsted arrived, he found that production had fallen precipitously to $25,00 per month. Moreover, his own careful inventory of the estate’s physical assets was 40 percent lower than the original owners’ estimate. [26 pg 231]
To decrease costs, Olmsted ordered that single men be compelled t live in the company boardinghouses, which were currently underutilized. As an encouragement, he reduced the rates for room and board from one dollar to eighty five cents a day and declared that henceforth the boardinghouses would be run at cost. This last was a conciliatory gesture, for he also put into effect another policy. He did what any conscientious manager of a troubled enterprise must also do: he trimmed labor costs. The miners found their daily wages suddenly reduced from $3.50 to $3.15. They went on strike. ...after five days the strike collapsed. Olmsted was not vindictive. He offered to pay in full any miner who wished to leave - more than two hundred accepted; many went to the Nevada Territory, where gold had been discovered. They were soon replaced - Olmsted had put advertisements in the San Francisco newspapers the day the strike broke out. He reduced the number of skilled miners and hired less expensive unskilled laborers at $2.40 a day, as well as Chinese workers, whom he paid only $1.75 a day. [26 pg 232]
Olmsted, too prospered. “I am for the present making money pretty fast for such a vagabond as I am,” he wrote his father. His annual salary was a regal $10,000 (about $300,00 in modern dollars), but since his contract specified that he be paid in gold- which was worth more than greenbacks - his real salary was as much as twice that amount. He was finally able to pay off his debts. In January 1864, only three months after his arrival, he was even able to invest $2,500 with his stockbroker in San Francisco. In April he increased this to $4,000. He was a conservative investor. He avoided the volatile mining industry, although he expected California in general - and San Francisco in particular - to prosper. He bought stock in a steamship company, the state telegraph company, and a San Francisco water company. “I look therefore to enterprises which are related to the whole of this field or large parts of it as likely ipso facto to be safe, (if will managed and free from excessive competition),” he wrote Godkin, who had asked him to make some investments on his behalf. In July Olmsted assured him: “The mining stocks here have fallen on an average more than one half since I wrote, but the stocks I recommended have not fallen on an average at all. I have made from 2 ro 3 per cent a month on all my investments.” By the end of the year, the value of his investments was $6,000. [26 pg 239]
The oil mania, sparked by Drake and other Go-Getters, created still another new species of upstart town. The map of the far northwestern corner of Pennsylvania was soon dotted with names like Oil city, Oleopolis, and Petroleum Center. These, and others, were built on oil, on the hope for oil, on the promise of oil, and in a few cases on a real oil bonanza. Oil towns, prospered on the auxiliary services, the making of oil drums, oil derricks, and oil pumps, the trade in oil leases, and on the feeding, housing, clothing, and debauching of the thousands of oil prospectors.
We can trace their meteoric careers in the short life of a town called Pithole. In the spring of 1864, a lucky “oil finder,” using a divining rod in the form of a which hazel twig, declared that a farm which spread on both sides of Pithole Creek held a fortune in oil. On January 7, 1885, the first completed well there was poring out 250 barrels of oil each day. Thousands of the hopeful -some soldiers recently discharged from the Civil War armies, some investors with inflated greenbacks to spend, and some vagrants, wanders, and adventures - flocked to Pithole. When a second well struck oil, the fever became a mania. By the end of June the four wells flowing at Pithole were producing over 2,000 barrels a day, which was a third of the total production of Pennsylvania oil. The land that six months earlier had been nothing but a remote farm became a buzzing center of commerce. Three thousand teamsters were driving wagons carrying oil barrels back and forth from the wells to the river boats and other shipping centers. A standard unit was a one sixteenth interest in a well, which commonly sold for several thousand dollars. The “Working Men’s Pithole Creek Oil association” bought interests in wells and sold $10 shares to those who could afford no more. Adapting their techniques form earlier Western hoaxers who had “salted” their diamond mines with imported diamond chips to trap the unwary some drillers avoided risk of a dry hole by “doctoring” their wells, through the simple process of poring buckets of oil into their hole at night to appeal to buyers the next morning. [28 pg 47]
1865The Tribune did not emerge from the war either physically or fiscally unscathed. The hostilities, as the Tribune complained, occasioned “a sudden and rapid increase in the cost of our paper and other materials.” The newsstand price leaped, in two jumps, to four cents, but still the Tribune lost money. [16 pg 103]
To drive cattle through southeastern Kansas or southwestern Missouri in those days took courage. Texas drovers found their passage blocked by hardy settlers who disliked hiving their crops trampled and feared having their own cattle infected. Thieves would stampede a heard under cover of night, and then offer to hunt up the cattle and return them for $5 a head. The cattle that survived to market were so thinned from heard usage that the brought little profit. [28 pg 14]
By 1863 Rockefeller had bought into a refinery, and in 1865 (at the age of 26) he bought out one of his partners for $72,200. By the end of that year his refinery had grossed $1,200,000 (from a capacity of 505 barrels a day), more than double that of any other in the region. [28 pg 50]
1867Since the end of the war, the editor had called for leniency for the South. “Universal Amnesty and Impartial Suffrage” was the Tribune’s editorial slogan, and Greeley proved he meant what he said when on May 13, 1867, he joined a number of others in signing the $100,000 bail bond that released Jefferson Davis from prison. The storm of abuse from vengeful elements in the North extended all the way to his club, Summoned to a special meeting of the Union League to explain his action, Greeley refused to appear. “Understand, once for all,” he said in a open letter published in the Tribune, “that I dare you and defy you... so long as any man was seeking to overthrow our Government, he was my enemy; from the hour in which he laid down his arms, he was my formerly erring countryman...” [16 pg 102]
Rowell opened an agency on Park Row, New York in 1867. Judging by the drawings of this establishment in his American Newspaper directory, he was in a prosperous way of business. That Directory, in itself, was an impressive achievement. Hitherto agencies in possession of lists of newspapers had hidden them jealously from sight. After the Civil War single copies of a list of newspapers in the Southern states were being sold for $150. In his Directory Rowell, now on the side of the advertisers, began a long battle to persuade newspaper publishers to declare honest circulation. A publisher, he conceded reluctantly, was entitled to say “objects to stating circulation,” but if figures were given they must be accurate ones. Later he offered $100 reward to anyone discovering a “lying circulation report” among his three star entries; he paid out at least twice. [24 pg 110]
[about this time in Texas] steers bought for $3 or $4 a head in Texas, sold for $35 or $40 a head up North. [28 pg 11]
On
September 5, 1867, when the first shipment - twenty carloads of cattle - went out from Abilene (which two months earlier had been only a prairie village), Illinois stockmen gathered in tents specially erected for the occasion to celebrate with feast, wine, song, and expansive speeches. By the end of December, thirty-five thousand head of cattle had been shipped through Abilene, and within a few years, the number totaled tem million. In addition to the moral satisfaction he was seeking of really having done something “for posterity,” McCoy gained many sided profits. When McCoy first picked Abilene he gave $2,400 for the whole townsite (with 480 acres). The managers of the Kansas Pacific Railroad had agreed to give McCoy one eighth of the fright on each car of cattle shipped. By the end of the second year, this gave McCoy a claim against the Kansas Pacific amounting to $200,000. The company then refused to fulfill their contract because, they now said, they had never actually expected that the business would amount to anything! [28 pg 17]
1868John Patterson...toll collector on the Miami and Erie Canal. His salary was $800 a year but he had to spend $300 for office rent and incidentals. After a few months he realized that his net yearly income of $500 was inadequate so he decided to go into the coal business on the side. He hung up a sign proclaiming “Coal and Wood” outside his office. When he received an order he bought coal from a dealer and hired some one to deliver it. His day book was a slate. When an account was settled he wiped it off. In this crude way the future magnate of the cash register began his commercial career. Paterson had big ideas even when he had a little business. He head that a coal dealer located nearby wanted to sell out. He borrowed $250 from a local bank and bought the business. [6 pg 20]
[Andrew Carnegie has] assets of four hundred thousand dollars and an annual income of $56,110. [13 pg 58]
1869 With a booster enthusiasm worth of an upstart Western town, they anticipated greatness by adopting the name The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company in 1869. Perhaps the notion was that this chain of stores would unite the two oceans as did the Union Pacific Railroad, which had been completed that same year. [28 pg 110]
1870'sThe first [threshing] engines burned either wood or coal. A bit later the straw burner appeared. The straw burner was a sensation on the treeless prairies. Here was something to appeal to a farmer on whose place was not a tree other than the few aspens or cottonwoods for shade and windbreak round his house, and whose coal, if any, came expensively from a long way off by railroad, and perhaps a twenty mile haul in a wagon from the depot.
But here was a monster that could live off the country. One happy owner of a straw burner in Dakota Territory wrote to the makers, the Ames Iron Works, that he had threshed 30,000 bushels of wheat with one of their engines at a saving of $200 in fuel cost. [7 pg 59]
The itinerant farm laborer began to appear in the mass, the genuine hobo, too often mistakenly called a bum. A bum wouldn’t work; a tramp worked when he had to; but the hobo was a worker who moved about from city labor to logging camp to construction job and to the harvest. So, in early August Minnesota railroad towns like St. Charles and Winona, and Dakota towns like Wahpeton and Grand Forks, and of course Fargo, saw the advance guard of the hobo army move in, usually on freight trains. They came from everywhere; and down in the jungles by the railroad yards they stacked their bindles, lighted their fires, and cooked their mulligan. This native invasion of Goths was welcomed by the professional man-catchers of the bonanza farms, and by the small farmers as well. Wagons were waiting to haul them to the fields. Though wages fluctuated from year to year, the average wage for field workers in 1879 was $18 a month, with board, room, and laundry free. In every crew there were a few pacesetters who were paid from $2 to $7 a month extra for their stimulating efforts. [7 pg..]
1870Yet, farmers were farmers still, which is to say they were devout believers in tradition, and individualist almost to a man; and they were not to be hurried into paying a small fortune for some damn’-fool contraption, no matter the claims of its makers. For one thing, there was the cost. In 1870 this amounted to approximately $120 for each indicated horse power. Add to the factory price the cost of freight to your nearest railroad station, and the steam engine capable of running a big thresher set you back not far from $1,000. [7 pg 56]
The notorious record of steamboat and locomotive engines was something the farmer knew about. Indeed, right on J.I. Case’s home ground, for instance, The Racine county Argus reported, just as the first Case steam portable was ready, that “scarcely is the ink dry recording a railroad holocaust than a frightful report of a boiler explosion appears that caused the loss of twenty rivers.” ... The snorting monster not only carried death about him; he was also capable of destruction. Even though “fire-Proof Champion” seems to have been a favorite phrase used by makers of portable engines to describe safety from fire hazard, any farmer who could read knew from his newspaper or agricultural journal what was happening, especially at threshing time. In a single issue of a farm journal one reads that “we have near this village one grain stack burned...a barn and contents entirely consumed values at 300 dollars. Both caught fire from a steam engine driving a thresher.” [7 pg 57]
Fire insurance companies were as frightened as the farmers, and at first immediately canceled the policies of anybody who permitted a steam threshing rig on his farm. Even when this summary treatment was stopped, the insurance people imposed an extra fee which ran as high as $50 a day during threshing - if done by steam. [7 pg57]
In the summer President Grant appoints [Trist] postmaster in Alexandria, Virginia. He was paid $2,900 a year, which was more money than he had earned at any time since 1841, but he had less than four years to enjoy this munificence. On February 11, 1874, after suffering a stroke, Trist died. [12 pg?]
In 1870 the price of [a seat on the NY stock exchange] was $2,000. [22 pg 54]
1871[Nicholas Philip] Trist receives the sum of $14,599.90 - money owed him for his salary and expenses in Mexico twenty three years earlier. It came none to soon, for he had to give up his railway job a year earlier, and the Trists were poverty stricken. [12 pg?]
By 1871 the sewing machine, which only twenty years before had been a curiosity to be exhibited at fairs for twelve and a half cents’ admission, was being manufactured at the rate of 700,000 a year. [28 pg 96]
[Aaron Montgomery Ward] became a traveling salesman for a dry goods wholesaler; covering the rural West, he learned the problems of the farmers who bought from a general store. Ward say that he could reduce retail prices if he purchased large quantities for cash direct from manufactures and then sold for cash direct to the rural consumer. This was the seed of his mail order idea. Returning to Chicago, he began to lay his plans. The great Chicago fire of 1871 nearly consumed his savings, but by the spring of 1872 he had scraped together $1,600 of his won, to which a partner added $800. Starting in a loft, 12 feet by 14 feet, over a livery stable, ward issued a single price sheet which listed the items for sale and explained how to order. Within two years the price list became an 8 page booklet and then a 72 page catalogue. By eliminating the middleman, Ward promised savings of 40 per cent: on fans, parasols, writing paper, needles, stereoscopes, cutlery, trunks, harnesses, and scores of other items. The catalogue grew and grew, at the same time becoming more vivid and enticing through illustrations. By the 1880's a woodcut illustrated nearly every item. In 1883, only a decade after the founding with a capital of $2,400, the catalogue boasted goods in stock worth a half million dollars. The catalogue for 1884 numbered 240 pages and listed nearly ten thousand items. [28 pg 122]
1873Except for Washington, who was a good businessman, most of the Presidents of the Virginia dynasty who retired to their plantations soon discovered they were deeply in debt. Madison and Monroe, like their friend Jefferson, died virtually penniless. To avoid this specter, congress doubled the Presidents salary... to $50,000. [1. Pg 18]
(From the Enterprise June 4, 1873) Wednesday morning at half-past 7 O’clock the alarm of fire was struck on our town bell, and the cry on the street was that the Linen-Mill was on fire. The Steamer started with two horses; the torrent with one horse; the other branches with such aids as they could command, and strange as it may appear, with the mercury at 80, in thirty minutes a stream was playing on the fire. The Torrent but a trifle behind; and the union from the North Village which had two miles to go; was but a little behind the others. The fire commenced in the Card Room of the Old mill, which was burned before the department arrived, and the large mill was well on fire. Through the efficient exertions of the fire department the fire was confined to the upper story and attic of the main mill.
The Fitchburg mutual Fire Insurance company, 2nd Department, had
On the Old Mill Building $200
On Machinery $200
On stock $600
Total $1,000
On Main Mill Building, insured for $2,200, loss nearly covered; $4,000 on Machinery, loss nearly covered; $800 on stock in process; Total of $7,000.
The Bleachery building, Machinery and Stock were saved. The Flume was destroyed; no Insurance. Loss, $1,000. Insured in the North American and Franklin of Philadelphia; continental, N.Y.; Royal, Liverpool.
I think the people of Leominster never before had so through a conviction of the activity, efficiency and cheerful endurance of their Fire Department as on this their most severe trial. J.B. [32]
When Glidden & Ellwood first began the sale of the Glidden fence, which was confined to the vicinity of DeKalb, they received 25 cents per pound for the barbed wire. Since then, as production has increased and the facilities for manufacturing have been multiplied and perfected, the price has gradually dropped, until now a farm can be well fenced for forty-five cents, or less, per rod, and to the incalculable advantage of the country over fencing by posts and boards, hedges or rails, as any one may see by a simple dollar and cent comparison of materials at his own door. [37]
1874For these and other reasons [steam engine fire] it is in no way astonishing that as late as 1874 the United states commissioner of agriculture reported that the use of steam power had not made the advance it was justly entitled to on farms simply because the farmer himself “has clogged the wheels with his incredulity and prejudice.” [7 pg58]
By 1874, the year [President] Grant stopped over, (Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, on Martha’s Vineyard) the Methodist campground with its monstrous new tent was the biggest camp meeting in the country and was still the heart of the town. But the rest of Oak Bluffs was a full blown summer resort with its own less pious attractions: bathing, band concerts, boating, croquet, ice cream, and “promenading,” which generally appeared first on lists of “things to do at Oak Bluffs.” A roller skating rink had been built, and avast frame hotel, the Sea view, which looked like a fantasy palace and which offered accommodations (American plan) for $4.00 a day. [16 pg 41]
Caro, a German chemist, invented in 1874 the red color known as eosine, which was brought to this country in the following year and sold for $125 per pound. Its color is destroyed by acids. [41]
1874first appearance on the two cent coin of the motto 'In God We Trust'. The expression to 'put in your two cents worth' become current at this time.
1875Lorenzo Coffin asks: Are there no safety devices available to the railroads? Yes. Eli Janney had already patented an automatic coupler that locked like two hands clasping, and George Westinghouse had developed a workable air brake that could stop a train from controls in the locomotive, Whey weren’t these in use? The railroad officials’ bland, obdurate answer was that their installation was ‘impractical” - that is to say expensive. The dollar and fifty cents a day that the train man earned made him responsible for his won injuries. Air brakes and automatic couplers cost the lines money; maimed railroad men cost nothing. ... To expensive to install, a Chicago and Alton official told hin once. “But I note,” coffin yelled back, “that the Chicago & Alton and most other lines continue to pay their eight per cent dividends regularly.” [11 pg 98]
1876In 1876 Mr. Glidden disposed of his half interest in the concern of Glidden & Ellwood to the Washburn & Moen (wire) Manufacturing Company, of Massachusetts, receiving therefor $60,000 in cash and a royalty on the future goods manufactured, Mr. Ellwood retaining his interest. The new concern began the purchase of prior unused and conflicting patents involving itself in extensive litigation, but, sustained by the courts, soon gained control of almost the entire barb-wire business of the country. Nearly all wire-making companies are now running under license from the parent concern. [37]
1878
Nineteen years after Hartford opened his first “Red Front” tea store in New York, an eight dollar a week clerk in the Moore & Smith Store in Watertown, New York, conceived the idea of piling a miscellaneous lot of slow selling merchandise on a table bearing the sign, “Any Article Five Cents.” Shoppers literally grabbed at the opportunity. The table was cleared in short order. The enterprising young clerk was Frank W. Woolworth. [6 pg..] [one of Woolworth’s first jobs as a clerk found his] salesman so poor that his employer reduced his wages from $10 to $8.50 a week. [28 pg 114]
The "poor settler" catspaw was again made use of. At the behest of the lumber corporations, or of adventurers or politicians who saw a facile way of becoming multimillionaires by the simple passage of an act, the "Stone and Timber Act" was passed in 1878 by Congress. An amendment passed in 1892 made frauds still easier. This measure was another of those benevolent-looking laws which, on its face, extended opportunities for the homesteader. No longer, it was plausibly set forth, could any man say that the Government denied him the right to get public land for a reasonable sum. Was ever a finer, a more glorious chance presented? Here was the way open for any individual homesteader to get one hundred and sixty acres of timber land for the low price of $2.50 an acre. Congress was overwhelmed with outbursts of panegyrics for its wisdom and public spirit. Soon, however, a cry of rage went up from the duped public. And the cause? The law, like the Desert Land Law, it turned out, was filled with cunningly-drawn clauses sanctioning the worst forms of spoliation. Entire trainloads of people, acting in collusion with the land grabbers, were transported by the lumber syndicates into the richest timber regions of the West, supplied with the funds to buy, and then each, after having paid $2.50 per acre for one hundred and sixty acres, immediately transferred his or her allotment to the lumber corporations. Thus, for $2.50 an acre, the lumber syndicates obtained vast tracts of the finest lands worth, at the least, according to Government agents, $100 an acre, at a time, thirty-five years ago, when lumber was not nearly so costly as now. [57]
1880sDuring the eighties, which was the heyday of bonanza farming, the Red River Valley was the universal hobo magnet. Even bank clerks and counter jumpers were caught in the excitement and induced by low railroad fares to see the American valley of the Nile in its fullest bloom. (The true hobo, of course, invariably arrived on the rods or the blinds; it was against his principles to pay fare to the railroad.) It was generally understood that the term “bonanza” could not properly be applied to any farm with less than a thousand acres. All the farms, big and medium, shared variously in this boom which was aided by conspiring factors, including a new process to make a fine grade of flour with one grinding a revolution in spring wheat, which for many years afterward was considered to be superior to winter wheat, fetching a premium of $1 a barrel for spring wheat four at Minneapolis. Another thing was that the Red River Valley was, for several years, free of the pests and disease which were hastening to remove the Lake States from the list of leading wheat producers. A few of the bonanza farmers made fortunes, and as their wealth increased they began to display the traits which Thorstein Veblen, a studious farm boy, son of Norwegian parents, who had worked in the wheat fields, was adding to his notes to support his theory of the leisure class. These few of the wealthiest wheat kings left their farms in charge of agents, to build or rent enormous mansions in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Chicago, to staff them with French maids and English butlers, and thus to add the gilt of wheat to the Gilded Age. They might tour England or the continent in summer, and spend winter along the Mediterranean, but harvest brought them back to the American Nile, to watch Number One spring being cut and threshed. They arrived in state now, rolling into Fargo in their private railroad cars, which were switched to their own spurs, and in these they lived. Either that, or they transferred themselves, their retinues of servants, and their guests, to the master’s house, a rambling vast structure said to be of Dakota Gothic architecture. Here they dined, as befitted the lords of wheat, and scandalized lesser farmers at dinners reputed to have cost $50 a plate, including the vintages; and gambled with the cards, the dice, and the wheels of Satan himself. The bonanza operators were not slow to adopt certain practices which had been thought up and perfected by Commodore Vanderbilt and John d. Rockefeller. The bought machinery and all supplies in great volume and at rock bottom prices. They shipped freight in volume, too; and from the railroads they demanded and got secret rebates, which, vulgarly speaking, were kickbacks of cash, and resulted in a much lower actual rate that was paid by smaller farmers.
The smaller farmers had been arising in numbers through out the eighties, owning in part to the superb advertising furnished by the bonanza farm boom. Within the decade population in the Red River valley increased from 114,000 to 180,000. But the almost incredible increase was not in population but in plowed acreage: from 394,000 acres in 1880 to 3,193,000 acres in 1890. Wheat production soared from less than seven million to more than sixty eight million bushels.
Bonanza boom also touched off a homesteaders’ boon. During 1877 for instance, homestead entries in the Dakota country totaled 213,000 acres. Five years later, in 1885, homestead grants ran to 11,083,000 acres. [7 pg 80]
1880At the age of fourteen, Jesse Livermore began his career, appropriately, in the offices of a brokerage firm in Boston. For a dollar a week, he marked quotation prices on a display board. [22 pg 63]
Leaving the oil country, he went to Wall Street, where he became a broker in oil stocks and lost everything. To save the “inventor” of the oil well from destitution, the Pennsylvania legislature finally gave him a pension of $1,500 a year, but in 1880, in an age of famous oil fortunes, Drake died in obscurity. [28 pg 46]
..in 1880 Christmas was so undeveloped that a manufacturer of Christmas tree ornaments had difficulty persuading F.W. Woolworth to take $25 worth of his product. Within a few years Woolworth’s annual order of Christmas tree ornaments from this supplier alone came to $800,000. ...”This is our harvest time,” Woolworth instructed his store managers in December 1891. “Make it pay.” [28 pg 158]
1881[John and Mattie Truman] As a wedding gift, Solomon gave her a three drawer burl walnut dresser, with a marble top and a mirror with small, side shelves. She was never to own another piece of furniture quite so fine. The ceremony took place at the home place three days after Christmas, December 28, 1881. The couple’s own first home was in Lamar, Missouri, a dusty, wind blown market town and county seat (Barton County), ninety miles due south. For $685 John became the proud owner of a corner lot and a white frame house measuring all of 20 by 28 feet, which was hardly more than the dimensions of the Youngs’ kitchen. It had six tiny rooms, no basement, no running water, and no plumbing. But it was new, snug and sunny, with a casement window in the parlor on the southern side.
For another $200 John bought a barn diagonally across the street and there he opened for business, his announcement in the Lamar Democrat reading as follows: Mules bought and sold. I will keep for sale at the White Barn on Kentucky Avenue a lot of good mules. Anyone wanting teams will do well to call on J.A. Truman. [14 pg 37]
In 1818 there was a rat plague in certain districts of India. The crops of the preceding two years were below average and a large part of them had been destroyed by rats. Rewards offered for rat destruction led to a killing of over 12,000,000 rats. Shipley estimates that a single rat does about 7s. 6d. Both of damage in a year, which makes a charge of sixty cents to two dollars a year to feed a rat on grain. Every rat on a farm costs about fifty cents a year. Lantz adds to this that hotel managers estimate five dollars a year as a low estimate of the loss inflicted by a rat. He thinks in the thickly populated parts of the country an estimate of one rat per acre is not excessive, and that in most of our cities there are as many rats as people. 9see 1909) [27 pg 152]
“Our Eastern farmers are giving up the cattle-breeding,” General James S. Brisbin explained, in 1818. “ They cannot compete with plains beef, for while their grazing lands cost them $50.00, $75.00, and $100.00 per acre, and hay has to be cut for winter feeding the grazing lands in the West have no market value, and the cattle run at large all winter– the natural grasses curing on the ground and keeping the stock fat even in January February, and March.” Brisbin could not imagine “why people remain in the overcrowded East” when out West, fortunes were there for the taking. [28 pg 8]
Speaking in the Senate of the United States June 13, 1882, the bill for National "Aid to Common Schools" being under consideration, Senator Henry W. Blair, of New Hampshire, said:
Excluding the states of Maryland and Missouri and the District of Columbia, and the total yearly expenditure for both races is only $7,339,932, expenditure is, from taxation, $70,341,435, and from school funds $6,580,632, or a total of $76,922,067, (see tables 2 and 7,) or one-tenth of the whole, while they contain one-fifth of the school-population. The causes which have produced this state of things in the Southern States are far less important than the facts themselves as they now exist. To find a remedy and apply it is the only duty which devolves upon us. Without universal education, not only will the late war prove to be a failure, but the abolition of slavery be proved to be a tremendous disaster, if not a crime. [50]
1883..the Woolworth’s increased the maximum price of the merchandise to ten cents inaugurating the now familiar “Five and Ten” stores. [6 pg 172]
[George Porterfield] Gates was partner in the Waggoner-gates Milling company of Independence, [MO] founded in 1866, which hit a bonanza with “Queen of the Pantry Flour,” a product known though the Midwest.
Gates himself was part of a postwar Yankee influx. He had come from Vermont by way of Illinois, joined William Waggoner in the Milling business in 1883, and two years later greatly remodeled and expanded his relatively modest house at the corner of North Delaware and Blue avenue, spending in all, according to the independence Sentinel, a fabulous $8,000. Painted gray with black trim at the windows, the finished clap board “mansion” had fourteen rooms, verandas front and rear, fancy fretwork, tinted (“flashed”) glass in the front bay windows, slate roof, gas illumination, and hot and cold running water. [14 pg 50]
A happy new year to all of the readers of The Prairie Farmer, and may your labors of 1884 be crowned with success. Mr. Granger, what are you doing these long winter evenings? Can't you find time to write a few lines to the readers of The Prairie Farmer? You can send a little report from your county, at least.
Come, let us be a little more sociable and talk more to each other through the columns of our paper. We can learn something by reading each other's views on different subjects. In my next I shall try and tell some of the careless fellows how to run a farm to make it pay. If I fail to give a little light on the subject perhaps some one else will try it. We are having what you might call winter, now. Snow is about six inches deep, but the weather is not very cold. The thermometer has not been below zero but once.
Nearly all of the corn is gathered; only about one-third of the crop is sound enough to keep until next summer. Farmers are feeding their soft corn to hogs and cattle. In that way the soft corn will pay pretty well after all, for fat stock brings a good price. Stock cattle are wintering well, for feed in the fields is good, and most farmers have got plenty of good hay. The weather was so nice the first part of this month that the farmers did a large amount of plowing. Potatoes are plenty and cheap; worth from 30 to 40 cents. Apples are scarce, and good ones bring a big price. Butter is worth from 25 to 30 cents. S.O.A. Knox Co., Ill. [37]
Mr. Calhoun's (grandson of John C.)testimony was given before the Blair Senate Committee on Education and Labor and will be found in the Committee's Report as to The Relations between Labor and Capital. (Vol. II, pp. 157).
New York, Thursday, September 13, 1883
Q. 2. Under what systems are the laborers in your section employed?
—A. There are three methods: we hire for wages, for a part of the crop, or we rent.
Q. 3. When hired for wages what is paid?
—A. When hired by the month we pay unskilled field hands from $10 to $20 per month and board. When hired by the day, for unskilled laborers, from 75 cents to $1. Teamsters, $1 a day and board. Artisans, from $2 to $5. In addition to their wages and board, the laborers are furnished, free of cost, a house, fuel, and a garden spot varying from half toone acre; also the use of wagon and team with which to haul their fuel and supplies, and pasturage, where they have cattle and hogs, which they are encouraged to raise.
. . .Q. 4. What division is made between labor and capital of their joint production when you work on shares?
—A. I doubt if there is greater liberality shown to laborers in any portion of the world than is done under this system. The proprietor furnishes the land and houses, including dwelling, stables, and outhouses, pays the taxes, makes all necessary improvements, keeps up repairs and insurance, gives free of cost a garden spot, fuel, pasturage for the stock owned by the laborer, and allows the use of his teams for hauling fuel and family supplies, provides mules or horses, wagons, gears, implements, feed for teams, the necessary machinery for ginning, or, in short, every expense of making the crop and preparing it for market, and then divides equally the whole gross proceeds with the laborers. In addition to all this, the proprietor frequently mortgages his real estate to obtain means to advance to the laborers supplies on their portion of the crop yet to be grown, thus mortgaging what he actually possesses, and taking a security not yet in existence, and which depends not only upon the vicissitudes of the seasons, but the faithfulness of the laborers themselves. Under this system thrifty, industrious laborers ought soon to become landowners. But, owing to indolence, the negroes, except where they are very judiciously managed and encouraged, fail to take advantage of the opportunities offered them to raise the necessaries of life. They idle away all the time not actually necessary to make and gather their corn and cotton, and improvidently spend what balance may remain after paying for the advances made to them.
Q. 5. When you rent, what division is made?
—A. Where the laborer owns his own teams, gears, and implements necessary for making a crop, he gets two-thirds or three-fourths of the crop, according to the quality and location of the land.
Under the rental system proper, where a laborer is responsible and owns his team, &c., first-class land is rented to him for $8 or $10 per acre. With the land go certain privileges, such as those heretofore enumerated.
Q. 6. How many hours do the laborers work?
—A. This is an extremely difficult question to answer. Under the wages system, from sunrise to sunset, with a rest for dinner of from one and one-half to three hours, according to the season of the year.
. . . Q. Upon these plantations is there any crop raised for consumption anywhere but upon the plantations, save the cotton?
—A. Only in a very limited way. We raise Irish potatoes for the northern markets, and it is an extremely profitable and productive crop with us.
Q. What is the home market price? —A. We do not sell these potatoes at home at all. We get them to Saint Louis, Chicago, and Cincinnati before the ground is really thawed out up there. We get from $5 to $10 a barrel for them.
Q. A barrel of about 3 bushels?
—A. A barrel of about 3 bushels. That of course is a fancy price, and only lasts until the product comes in from other sources.
. . .Q. Under these favorable circumstances which surround the laborer on the plantation one would think he ought to accumulate; but I understand you that as a rule he is rather improvident and fails to accumulate. To what do you attribute that improvidence on the part of the negro laborer?
—A. It is simply from the want of a proper appreciation of the opportunities of advancement from his condition. The negroes are just beginning, as I expressed it, to realize the responsibilities of life, and just as they begin to realize the responsibilities of life here, they begin to prosper. The prosperity of the South has only begun in the last few years, and it has begun to increase just as the race issue has ceased. I will demonstrate that to you by a little paragraph I cut out of the New York Herald last night, taken from the New Orleans Times-Democrat. If you take the assessed valuation of real estate in Alabama, in 1879 it was at $117,486,581; in 1883 it is assessed at $152,920,115. There has been that increase in four years from $117,000,000 to $152,000,000. Now let us take the State of Arkansas: in 1879 our real estate was valued at $86,892,541; in 1883 it is valued at $136,000,000. It goes on just in that same proportion. For instance, this shows that in eight of the Southern and Southwestern States there has been an increase of nearly half a billion dollars—that is, $494,836,686—in value of taxable property during the short period of four years.
. . .Taking the important item of assessed value of property, a comparison between the years 1879 and 1883 gives the following remarkable results: States Assessment 1883 Tax rate Assessment 1879 Tax rate
Alabama $152,920,115 6½ $117,486,581 7
Arkansas 136,000,000 7 86,892,541 6½
Florida 56,000,000 5 29,471,648 7
Georgia 300,000,000 2½ 135,659,530 5
Louisiana 200,000,000 6 209,361,402 6
Mississippi 116,288,810 2½ 129,308,345 3½
Tennessee 252,289,873 2 223,211,345 1
Texas 500,000,000 3 304,470,736 5
Total 1,710,498,798 4 1,215,662,128 5
This shows that in eight Southern and Southwestern States there has been an increase of nearly half a billion dollars—$494,836,668—in the value of taxable property during the short period of four years, while the rate of taxation has been actually reduced. At the same time liberal appropriations have been made for schools, public improvements, and other useful purposes. "Nor is this marvelous advance in valuation," says the Times-Democrat, "the result of any inflation in value, but the natural sequence of grand crops, new industries developed, new manufactories, mines, and lumber mills established." The extension of railroads has been hardly less astonishing. In the eight States above enumerated there were in 1879 11,604 miles of railroad. There are now 17,891 miles, showing an increase in four years of 6,287 miles. The agricultural progress made is shown by the fact that the value of raw products raised in these States, including all crops, lumber, cattle, and wool, has advanced from $398,000,000 in 1879 to $567,000,000 in 1883, or an increase of $169,000,000. During this period the mineral output of Alabama alone has increased from $4,000,000 to $19,000,000, and the lumber product of Arkansas from $1,790,000 to $8,000,000.
The trade of New Orleans is a barometer of Southern industry and commerce. The value of domestic produce in that city in 1881-82 was $159,000,000; in 1882-83 it was $200,000,000. The value of exports of domestic produce to foreign countries in the former year amounted to $68,000,000; in the latter it reached $95,000,000. These figures tell a remarkable story of recent progress in the Southern States. Always rich in natural resources, the South has long been poor through lack of development. It has at last entered upon a new era of industrial activity, and is now making rapid strides toward a stage of material prosperity commensurate with its great natural wealth.—New York Herald, September 12,1883.
. . .Q. The data you consider reliable?
—A. What I read I think comes from the census report; I think this is reliable: In this connection let us glance at Montgomery County, Alabama, which, although not in the belt we are studying, is on the same prairie formation crossed by the Georgia Pacific Railway, on the edge of Mississippi. Compare it with Butler County, Ohio, which "shows the best record of any county in the West."
In live stock Montgomery has $1,748,273;
Butler, $1,333,592. That is the largest producing county in Ohio as compared with Montgomery County, Alabama,
before the war. Montgomery had 63,134 hogs;
Butler, 51,640.
Animals slaughtered: Montgomery, $336,915; Butler, $318,274.
In grain Butler was considerably ahead, but in roots Montgomery led. Montgomery doubled Butler in the production of wool, and had its cotton crop to show besides. The total value of the crops of Montgomery County was $3,264,170; those of Butler only $1,671,132.
Q. At what rates per acre have you known the title to change in some instances?
—A. I have known lands to be bought there, including woodlands and cleared lands, at from $20 to $25 an acre, which would be, say, $40 or $50 an acre for the cleared land,and I have known other planters to refuse $80 an acre, cash. Q. Do you think that $80 or $100 per acre would be a reasonable price for these plantation lands?
—A. They sold before the war for $120 an acre.
.
Q. Upon what price per acre do you think those lands would pay, one year with another, an interest of 6 per cent?
—A. I will best answer that question by the figures of rents which I have given. The rent, without any responsibility attached to the proprietor at all, is from $8 to $10 an acre.
Q. In money? —A. In money. I will say further that I have been living in that country since 1869, and I have never yet known a year when there has not been a sufficient crop made to pay the rent, without a single exception.
By Mr. Call:
Q. What is left to the tenant after he pays this $10 an acre?
—A. That land produces on an average 400 pounds of lint cotton to the acre, which at 10 cents a pound is $40.
Q. You have described with some minuteness the condition of things among the planters and those who work upon the plantations. I should like to ask this question further, whether any of the negroes along the alluvial bottoms are obtaining ownership of lands in fee-simple?
__A. In very few instances in the alluvial lands. When they make enough money to buy a home they generally go to the hill country, where land can be bought at a much more reasonable price.
Q. With what amount of accumulation will a negro get up and go to the hills?
—A. There are negroes right in my section of the country who have an accumulation clear of all expenses of from a thousand to $3,500 a year.
Q. How in regard to the value of the hill lands you have spoken of in the State of Arkansas; as compared with the alluvial, what is the difference in value?
—A. It is very great. There are farms in Arkansas that can be bought, partially cleared up, and with some improvements upon them, for from $5 to $20 an acre, less than the rent of fair lands on the river. There is no finer section of country in the world—I say that unhesitatingly—for a foreign immigrant, or the immigrant from the East, or from anywhere, than is afforded to-day in Arkansas and Texas.
Q. Some pride in their race, to have them get on, I suppose?—A. I think there is a certain pride in that respect; and, again, they want to gain a reputation as teachers.
Q. What compensation does a teacher get?
—A. I think about from $50 to $100 a month.
Q. Do they pay their own expenses, board and shelter?
—A. Yes, sir; but board is cheap, merely nominal.
Q. About what amount?
—A. I should say these teachers can get board for $10 a month.
Q. Is the cost of clothing in your part of the country about the same as here?
—A. This is our market.
Q. You buy the ready-made clothing largely for the population in general, I suppose?
—A. We buy both ready-made clothing and cloth to make up.
Q. I suppose the colored population hardly buy custom goods?
—A. A great many of them buy the cloth, and some of their women are as good tailoresses as you would find anywhere. They buy the cloth and make it up themselves.
Q. That must bring a suit of clothes pretty cheap in a colored family; they really expend nothing but buy the cloth themselves?
—A. They sell very good jeans cloth there at 35 or 40 cents a yard; they generally wear jeans.
Q. All seasons of the year?
—A. Generally in all seasons of the year. In the summer time a laboring man hardly ever wears a coat at all.
Q. What do you think an average colored Southern laborer expends per annum for his clothing, say the head of the family, the man—what does it cost him for clothing a year?
—A. I cannot give you a definite answer. I will only say that we who are the producers of cotton are very glad to see them get in a prosperous condition in order that there may be more consumption, and when a man is prosperous he will buy two suits of clothes, where if he is not prosperous he will make one do.
Q. We have had a good deal of testimony as to what it actually costs a Northern laborer a year for clothing. I have no desire to show that any laborers dress cheaply or poorly; I merely want to get an idea of the relative cost of the laboring man living North or South, in the item of clothing?
—A. I can sell and do sell a man a pair of jeans pants and a coat from $7 to $12 per suit. As I have devoted some space to the general condition of labor in the whole country, and as some of my statements and conclusions may be looked upon as extravagant, I deem it very pertinent to add to the appendix a portion of the testimony of Dr. R. Heber Newton, given before Senator Blair's Committee on the "Relations between Capital and Labor," in New York City, September 18, 1883 (Vol. II., p. 535). Dr. Newton is recognized as a clear thinker and a ready writer not only on theological but on economic questions as well. His testimony on the points to which I have asked attention was as follows:
A Labor Question Coming
The broad fact that the United States census of 1870 estimated the average annual income of our wage-workers at a little over $400 per capita, and that the census of 1880 estimates it at a little over $300 per capita, is the quite sufficient evidence that there is a labor question coming upon us in this due allowance for the inclusion of women and children, a mass of miserably paid labor—that is, of impoverished and degraded labor. The average wages of 1880 indicated that this mass of semi-pauperized labor is rapidly increasing, and that its condition has become 25 per cent worse in ten years. The shadow of the old-world proletariat is thus seen to be stealing upon our shores. It is for specialists in political economy to study this problem in the light of the large social forces that are working such an alarming change in our American society. In the consensus of their ripened judgment we must look for the authoritative solution of this problem. I am not here to assume that role. I have no pet hobby to propose, warranted to solve the whole problem without failure. I do not believe there is any such specific yet out. * * * [50]
1884When Grant & Ward went bankrupt..., the savings of thousands of people were destroyed. Nerveless, the penniless old soldier went on to become the first ex-president to make money out of his memoirs, which he finished only three days before he died of cancer. They earned his family nearly $450,000. [1. Pg 18]
[Henry Knolle] a Pennsylvania Dutchman ...on wages of $1.15 a day...had succeeded in buying a small plot of ground, and was engaged in putting up the walls of a little house for himself in the morning before starting to work and at night after leaving. [2, pg 33]
Mattie’s first child a boy, was stillborn the couple’s first autumn in Lamar. A year and a half later a second child, a boy, was born in a bedroom off the parlor so small there was barely space for the bed. The attending physician, Dr. W.L. Griffin, received a fee of $15, and to celebrate the occasion the new father planted a seedling pine in the front yard. A story that John Truman also nailed a mule shoe over the front door for luck is apocryphal.
The date was May 8, 1884.
Two days later, a Baptist circuit rider took the baby out int the spring air, and holding him up in the sunshine, remarked what a sturdy boy he was.
Not for a month afterward, however, did Dr. Griffin bother to register the birth at the county clerk’s office un the street, and even then, the child was entered nameless. In a quandary over a middle name, Mattie and John were undecided whether to honor her father or his. In the end they compromised with the letter S. It could be taken to stand for Solomon or Shipp, but actually stood for nothing, a practice not unknown among the Scotch-Irish, even for first names. The baby’s first name was Harry after his Uncle Harrison. Harry S. Truman he would be. [14 pg 37]
One day in 1884 Patterson rashly agreed to pay $6,500 for a controlling interest in the shaky new cash register enterprise. Other Dayton businessmen so ridiculed him for his bad judgment that the next day he offered the seller $2,000 to be released from his bargain. But his offer was refused. [28 pg 202]
"Spear, Mitchell Co., N.C., March 19, 1884.—Col. J.M. English, a farmer and prominent citizen living at Plumtree, Mitchell County, N.C., shot and killed a mulatto named Jack Mathis at that place Saturday, March 1. There had been difficulty between them for several months.
"Mathis last summer worked in one of Col. English's mica mines. Evidence pointed to him being implicated in the systematic stealing of mica from the mine. Still it was not direct enough to convict him, but he was discharged by English. Mathis was also a tenant of one of English's houses and lots. In resentment he damaged the property by destroying fences, tearing off weather boards from the house, and injuring the fruit trees. For this Col. English prosecuted the negro, and on Feb. 9, before a local Justice, ex-Sheriff Wiseman, he got a judgment for $100. On the date stated, during a casual meeting, hot words grew into an altercation, and Col. English shot the negro. Mathis was a powerful man. English is a cripple, being lame in a leg from a wound received in the Mexican war. [50]
1885Asa G. Candler buys the Coca Cola formula from the inventor Dr. J.S. Pemberton for less than $2,000. [24 pg 187]
Gen. Russell Thayer, a Philadelphian, in 1885, working on instruction from the U.S. Army Ordnance Board, set out to develop a “monster airship, which is likely to be one of the most destructive implements of battle known to modern science. It will have an ascending force of seven tons, will cost $10,000, and will have a length of 66 feet and a diameter of 60 feet,” the long forgotten article in the London Graphic of June 13.
Cigar shaped, pointed at both ends, the balloon was supposed to move through the air at a speed of 30 miles an hour. Motive power was compressed air, “accumulated by machinery and discharged at the rear end.”
The airship was designed to be steered in any direction, and “tons of dynamite can be dropped as it sails over a fortification or a fleet of ships.”
No report of its completion or performance is test flights was given. There is no record at Army headquarters in Washington, today, that it was ever built. [33 pg 38]
1886Field help became so scarce, at least in southern California, that in June, 1886, seventy Negro hands were shipped from North Carolina to Los Angeles to work in the fields and vineyards of E.J. Baldwin, reputedly the owner of two million acres. The help was to be paid $12 a month, board and room free. This may have been the first organized exodus of Negroes to work in the Far West. [7 pg 84]
In 1886 when a package of watches sent by a Chicago jewelry company was refused by the addressee in nearby Redwood falls, station agent Sears saw his opportunity. In those days it was common for wholesalers to ship on consignment to retailers; in fact, they sometimes tried to unload stock by shipping goods that had not been ordered. Or they would deliberately ship to fictitious addresses. Then, when the railroad station agent informed them that the goods were undeliverable, the wholesaler would offer the goods to the station agent at “half price” suggesting that this would save the shipper the cost of return freight, and that by reselling them, the station agent could make a good profit. Following this pattern, the Chicago company offered these undeliverable watches to Sears for $12 apiece. They were of a stylish type, gold filled, so called “yellow watches” with a hunting case, which retailed for about $25. Instead of paying for the watches himself, Sears took advantage of his location on the railroad to offer them by mail to other agents along his line for $14 apiece. He offered to send them C.O.D. subject to examination, and since the station agents were bonded, there was little risk. The other agents along the line would then be in a position to sell these popular watches profitably as less than their price at the local jewelers. From this casual beginning, using the stock furnished by a Chicago wholesaler, Sears soon built a flourishing watch business. Sears himself extended his business by the old fashioned techniques of sending his watches to nonexistent persons and then offering a moneymaking opportunity to the lucky agents who held the unclaimed parcels.
Having made about $5,000 in six months, Sears gave up his station agent job and , in 1886 set up the R.W. Sears Watch Company in Minneapolis. From an office renting for $10 a month, equipped with a kitchen table, a fifty cent chair, some record books and stationery, he now reached out beyond the market of station agents by advertising in the newspapers. [28 pg 124]
1887In 1887 [Sears] moved to Chicago, which was already the railroad capital of the nation. There he enlisted the help of Alvah Curtis Roebuck, a watchmaker of about Sear’s age, who had also run a job printing business, and Sears quickly showed his flair for advertising. His ingenious selling schemes included a “club plan” under which thirty eight men clubbed together, each pay9ng $1 a week into a pool; each week one man would win a watch by lot, until at the end of thirty eight weeks all the members had their watches. [28 pg 125]
As late as 1887, a town had to have 10,000 people to be eligible for free home delivery. [of mail] [28 pg 131]
1889In 1889 Sears sold his young watch business for about $70,000. But within a few months he was back again in the mail order business, still featuring watches, watch chains, and other jewelry...
.
In the early days, especially when Sears was still relying heavily on newspaper advertising, his ingenuity and his remoteness from the customer occasionally tempted him into the tradition of Western hoaxes. “An astonishing Offer” which he announced in rural weeklies in 1889 was illustrated by a drawing of a sofa and two chairs, all of “fine lustrous metal frames beautifully finished and decorated, and upholstered in the finest manner and with beautiful plush” which “as to anyone who remitted ninety five cents “to pay expenses, boxing, packing, advertising, etc.” customers who sent in their money received a set of doll’s furniture exactly as specified; they had not noticed in the first lie of the advertisement, in fine print, the word “miniature.” Sears’ clever advertising became proverbial. There was the story, for example, of a sears advertisement which offered a “sewing machine” for $1 - for which the customer duly received a needle and thread. [28 pg 126]
The number of farms without occupants in New Hampshire in August, 1889, was 1,342 and in Maine 3,318; and I saw lately a farm of twenty acres advertised "free rent and a present of fifty dollars." [39]
1890s[Henry Miller-see 1850] He was so thrifty that he could not bear to see even a piece of string wasted. Even after he had become a multimillionaire, he always insisted on having his potatoes boiled in the jackets because the skins could be peeled thinner that way; and he would go into a rage if he were given a full cup of coffee after he had asked for only a half cup. Because this meant he was going to have to drink more than he thought was good for him in order to avoid the wastefulness of throwing any coffee out. Yet he was apt to leave a twenty dollar gold piece in one of his boots as a tip for the maid who shined them. One day during the depression of the nineties he called into his office in Merced county, California, everybody in the region who owed him money and gave back all their IOU’s. “It’s time for a clean start,” he said gruffly, wiping $350,000 off his books. [17 pg 22]
... I heard that the old-fashioned farm-house just opposite was for sale. And, as purchasers of real estate were infrequent at Gooseville, [Mass.] it would be rented for forty dollars a year to any responsible tenant who would "keep it up." [39]
I nearly bought a horse for fifteen dollars, and did secure a wagon for one dollar and a half, which, after a few needed repairs, costing only twenty-six dollars, was my pride, delight and comfort, and the envy of the neighborhood. Men came from near and far to examine that wagon, felt critically of every wheel, admired the shining coat of dark-green paint, and would always wind up with: "I vum, if that 'ere wagon ain't fine! Why, it's wuth fifty dollars, now, ef it's wuth a cent!" After a hard day's work, it seemed a gratification to them to come with lanterns to renew their critical survey, making a fine Rembrandtish study as they stood around it and wondered. A sleigh was bought for three dollars which, when painted by our home artist, is both comfortable and effective. [39]
At one auction, where I was the only woman present, I bid on three shovels (needed to dig worms for my prize hens!) and, as the excitement increased with a rise in bids from two cents to ten, I cried, "Eleven!" And the gallant old fellow in command roared out as a man opened his mouth for "Twelve!": "I wouldn't bid ag'in a woman ef I'se you. Let 'er have 'em! Madam, Mum, or Miss—I can't pernounce your name and don't rightly know how to spell it—but the shovels are yourn"! [39]
A country auction is not so exciting as one in the city; still you must be wide-awake and cool, or you will be fleeced. An experienced friend, acquainted with the auctioneer, piloted me through my first sale, and for ten dollars I bought enough really valuable furniture to fill a large express wagon—as a large desk with drawers, little and big, fascinating pigeon holes, and a secret drawer, for two dollars; queer old table, ten cents; good solid chairs, nine cents each; mahogany center-table, one dollar and sixteen cents; and, best of all, a tall and venerable clock for the landing, only eight dollars! Its "innards" sadly demoralized, but capable of resuscitation, the weights being tin-cans filled with sand and attached by strong twine to the "works." It has to be wound twice daily, and when the hour hand points to six and the other to ten, I guess that it is about quarter past two, and in five minutes I hear the senile timepiece strike eleven! [39]
1890Assault with Battery - Claude King, day clerk of the American District Telegraph Company of Sioux City, hooks the office batteries to the iron railing in front of the office. Alderman George Myer sat on the railing and Claudius turned on the current. Myer filed charges. The Judge fined Claude five dollars, more that half his nine-dollar weekly salary. [2. Pg 109]
It was Mamma...who hustled [6 year old Harry Truman] off to Kansas City for expensive eyeglasses. Though he had been badly handicapped by poor eyesight all along - “bind as a mole” in his words - no one seems to have noticed until the night of a July fourth fireworks when Matt say hin responding more to the sound of the skyrockets than to the spectacle overhead. The Kansas city optometrist diagnosed a rare malformation called “flat eyeballs” (hypermetropia, which means the boy was far sighted) and Matt agreed to a pair of double strength, wire rimmed spectacles at a cost of $10. [14 pg 41]
Mamma (Truman) announced they were leaving the farm, moving to Independence, so that Harry could receive proper schooling. With money inherited from his father, John Truman acquired a house and several lots on south Chrysler Avenue, close to the Missouri Pacific railroad tracks. At age forty, having attained nothing like the success forecast in the Jackson county History, John had decided to try again as a stock trader. He paid $1,000 down for house and land, and took out a mortgage for $3,000, certain he had driven a good bargain with the owner, Samuel Blitz, one of the few jews in town. [14 pg 42]
1891Daylight loading came in 1891 and five years later Eastman had a $5 camera on the market. [24 pg 86]
After free [mail] delivery was tried in the cities, the farmers began to ask the same for themselves. But the economy minded found the proposal outrageous. What could be more ridiculous than hiring an army of federal employees to travel miles across the country side to deliver an occasional letter to a farmer who would probably not even be interested in its contents? “The farm Journal wants, and the people want ...1 cent postage. We don’t want our country roads overrun with half paid federal officials delivering 2 cent letters at a cost of 10 cents a letter.” [28 pg 131]
1892The Association collected a war chest, rumored at $100,000, form donations of $1,00 apiece. Secretly they organized an armed band of about fifty men. Twenty six had been recruited by Tom Smith, a former cattle detective who had been indicted for murder for his work in Wyoming and who had served in Texas as a peace officer. To recruits from Paris and Lamar counties in Texas he offered pay of $5 a day and expenses, besides an accident policy of $3,000 and a bonus of $50 for each man they killed. [28 pg 31]
The Americanism “sweat shop” first noted at this time, where women and children worked long hours at piecework for low wages. [28 pg 100]
1893Charles Becker... six feet tall...weighed two hundred and fifteen pounds, and according to one contemporary, “could kill a man with a punch.” ...had saved up the $250 fee levied by Tammany Hall on all would-be policemen. {4 pg 93]
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty third St. 450 room red brick and sandstone structure, patterned after the German Renaissance style...built at a cost of $5 million. [22 pg 21]
The basis for the Sears business, he insisted, was the widest possible distribution of catalogues to the most likely customers. Policy varied from year to year on whether to charge for the catalogue; when it was not offered free, the price varied from five cents in 1893 to fifty cents in 1901, but the best customers always received their catalogue free. As a reward for their loyalty they sometimes were sent a deluxe edition on better paper bound in red cloth. [28 pg 128]
1894...a Detroit café owner, Michael Heintz by name, organized the Heintz Cash Register Co. with a capital stock of $10,000. The company started to make a register called “Cuckoo” which was sold for $85. [6 pg 98]
On April 4...Patterson [NCR] opened the first sales agents training school in the United States. The school house was a small structure located near the NCR factory and came to be known as “the cottage under the elm.” The teacher was Joseph H. crane.
Once the school was established Patterson decreed that all NCR agents must take the course. The company paid the transportation and hotel bills of the students and gave them $3 a week for pocket money. [6 pg 114]
1895John Truman was getting on in the world. There was money now for servants, books, for studio photographs. As a surprise for the children he bought a pair of matched red goats, with custom made harness, and a miniature farm wagon. The little rig became the talk of the neighborhood.
John was an early riser, an all day striver, and thought to be ‘pretty ingenious” besides - because of his backyard gas well and various inventive ideas. He patented a staple puller for use on barbed wire fences. For an automatic railroad switch that he devised, the Missouri Pacific reportedly offered an annual royalty of $2,000. When the Chicago & Alton topped that with an offer of $2,500, four times what most American families had to live on in a year, John asked for double the amount, with the result that both railroads turned him down and adopted another version of the same thing - pirated his idea apparently - and he wound up with nothing. It was a story told usually to show just how stubborn John Truman could be. [14 pg 45]
...when the boy was eleven, John [Truman] traded their house for another several blocks to the north, receiving some $5,400 in the bargain. Though the new house had less property than the one on Chrysler Avenue, it stood on a corner lot at Waldo Street and river Boulevard, a more fashionable neighborhood and within easy walking distance of the courthouse square. Chrysler Avenue had never been the wrong side of the tracks, but for an ambitious man, 909 Waldo was unquestionably progress in the right direction. [14 pg 48]
A piano in the parlor had become part of the good life in America, a sign of prosperity and wholesome home entertainment, and the Trumans had an upright Kimball, the most popular piano of the day, priced at about $200 [14 pg 48]
...[advertisement] in a popular magazine of 1895: Be Brilliant and Eminent. The new physiological discovery memory Restorative Tablets quickly and permanently increase the memory two or ten fold and greatly augment intellectual power; difficult studies etc. easily mastered; truly marvelous; highly endorsed. Price $1.00 post-paid. Send for circular. Memory Tablet company, 114 fifth Avenue, New York. [24 pg 161]
1897[ca.] Vivian [Harry Truman’s brother] in contrast to his girlish sounding name, was a sturdy, man’s kind of boy, who was good at games and wished no part of books or piano lessons. Already Vivian had shown such a knack for horse trading at the age of twelve. Harry, try as he might, had no heart for trade. As he would later explain to Bessie Wallace, “When I buy a cow for $30 and then sell her to someone for $50 it always seems to me that I am really robbing that person of $20. [14 pg 62]
(Sears Roebuck Catalogue) Portable forge $6.30.
Popcorn popper eight cents.
Seven foot miners tent, complete with poles, for $2.30.
Men’s cashmere overcoat for $5.25.
Twelve pound pails of imported herring for 85 cents.
Four panel wooden door (weight 22 lbs.) For $1.10.
Michigan A grade combination market and pleasure Wagon $34.
Pocket Watch for $7.95 - with engraving on cases; script 2½ cents per letter; Old English script, 5½ cents.
Infants’ French Kid Button - Shoe made from a choice selction of genuine kid fancy stitched, had kid sole and is a very pretty shoe for an infant. Cut very full so you will have no trouble to put then on. Color tan, sizes 1,2,3,4,. Per pair 40 cents. The same style, in dongola kid. Black only. 1,2,3,4. Per pair 25 cents.
Bust pads, the kind that usually sell for 50 cents. Our price 25 cents.
Ladies’ Summer Union Suits. In Union there is strength. 75 - 50 - 43 cents.
Glad Sunshine Range - for hard or soft coal, with reservoir.
It has all the latest improvement - ventilated oven, solid end hearth, duplex grate, patent pedal attachment, quick draft damper, etc. We are inclined to think nothing so good and serviceable has ever before been offered for the money required to buy this range. This range has six holes.
Size of covers size of oven shipping weight Price - 80 8 in. 17x18x11 ½ 306 lbs. $19.00
18 8 in. 19x20x12 345 lbs $21.60
Black and blue Cheviouts Suits for men. $5.75, 6.50, 7.50, 8.00, 9.00, 10.00.
Full Beards - On wire 80 cents; ventilated $1.75
Moustache on wire spring , common. 10 cents each. Per dozen 75 cents.
$1.95 bus a $3.25 hat. The Evette. [15 pg 36-37]
The Reveille of New Whatcom, Washington, reported during the third week of July, 1897, that two ships carrying gold had put into Pacific coast ports. The dirty, rusty, stubby Excelsior docked July 15 at San Francisco. She carried a score of prospectors and nearly a thousand pounds of gold. Among the passengers were Mr. And Mrs. Tom Lippy of Seattle. Tom Lippy was somebody nearly everybody on Puget sound knew or knew of - the eighteen nineties equivalent of a high school coach. He had been a clerk and physical education instructor at the Seattle Y.M.C.A.; a wiry, likeable little man, he had tired of Y.M.C.A. penury and had taken a fling at prospecting. But here was Tom Lippy coming home staggering down the gangplank of the Excelsior, barely able to carry his suitcase even with his wife’s assistance. It held more than two hundred pounds in nuggets and gold dust. Gold then averaged seventeen dollars an ounce; good old tom was bringing out more the $54,000. [17 pg 36]
[Cyrus H.K. Curtis] bought the “elderly and indisposed” [Saturday Evening] Post in 1897 (pride $1,000), it had a circulation of less than 2,000, but within ten years he lifted its circulation to 1 million, and the circulation soon thereafter reached nearly 3 million. [28 pg 151]
(Ad) 350 Boy’s suits. Ages 4 to 15. Best values ever offered. These suits have pants with Bouble seat & Knees. $1.50 $2.00 $2.50 $3.00 Shapley Bros. [31]
(Ad) We offer this week a good trade in T. Good Oolong Tea at 25c lb. 5 lb. lots $1.00. Call for a sample pkg. Of Cream of Wheat. Cobb, Aldrich & Co. [31]
(Ad) The Peerless Bicycle Suit. The Peerless Bicycle Trousers. Are made with rubber attachments on each hip which holds the pants in position, but is sufficiently elastic topermit perfect ease and absolute comfort and freedom to all the muscles. The distinctive features are no belt and no fly. $6.50, $7.50, $8.50, $9.00. [31]
(Ad) Columbia bicycles. $100. Standard of the world. Hartfore Bicycles $60, $50, $45. [31]
(Ad) Our men’s $8 and $10 new spring suits far ahead of all competition. Shapley Bros. [31]
(Ad) N.E. Metcalf, Fire and Life Insurence and Real Estate Agent. Several Estates for sale at prices from $1800 to $10,500. [31]
History and Manuals of Vertical Writing
By JOHN JACKSON
Theory and Practice of Vertical Writing, $1.25
Teaching of Vertical Writing, .50
John Jackson, the originator of this system of vertical writing, is the only teacher who has had the years of practice in teaching it that make these the standard manuals for teachers and students. The adoption of vertical writing abroad and in this country is largely due to his persistent work and the marvellous results of his teaching. His series of copy-books were the first to be used in this country, and are considered by experienced teachers, who are not to be misled by mere beauty of engravers work, to contain the only practical well-graded course of instruction leading from primary work to the rapid and now justly celebrated telegraph hand—for these books are the only ones containing copies in this rapid writing. The telegraph hand is the style used by the best telegraph operators in the country—and these writers are universally acknowledged to be the most rapid writers, and writers of a hand which of necessity must be most legible.
Copy-Books (10 numbers), 96 cents per dozen
Copy-Pads (8 numbers), 96 cents per dozen
BOTH SERIES CONTAIN SIMILAR COPIES.
Sample sets to teachers (post-paid), 75 cents
WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON
3 and 5 West 18th Street, New York City
FOR SALE
500 Wentworth's Primary Arithmetics, 10c.each
250 Wentworth's Grammar School Arithmetics 25c.
300 Brooks' Elementary Arithmetics 10c.
150 Brooks' New Written Arithmetics 25c.
500 Colburn's New Mental Arithmetics 10c.
100 Wheeler's Second Lessons, 25c.
200 Harvey's Practica Grammars, not revised, new, 10c.
200 Harvey's Elementary Grammars, not revised, new, 10c.
200 Kerl's Language Lessons, >new, 10c.
125 Dozen Haile's Drawing Books, new, 50c.doz.
100 Dozen Barnes' Drawing Books, new, 40c.
200 Dozen White's, Krone's, etc., new 25c. to 60c,
50 Williams' Composition, not revised, new, 40c. each
50 Kellogg's Rhetorics, 276 pages, new, 50c.
200 Continental Fourth Readers, 25c.
200 Continental Fifth Readers 25c.
100 Lippincott's Fifth Readers 25c.
100 Davis' Fourth Readers 25c.
All of the above books are used copies, good condition, except where marked new.
French and German Books, Arithmetics, Geographies, and Text-Books of all kinds at low prices.
MAPS, CHARTS, &c. BARGAIN LIST.
UNITED STATES— 5 large Standard Government Maps, (82x66 in.) mounted on cloth and common rollers $1.50 each.
5 "Bird's Eye View Maps," (72x65 in.) A large relief map of the United States. Spring rollers. 10.00 " Common rollers 7.50
7 Government Relief Maps, printed in browns, with actual heights of land given in accurate figures. An indispensable map for school work, (size 20x32 in.) mounted on linen, (unmounted, 75 cents) 1.35
MISCELLANEOUS MAPS—
10 Guyot's Physical Maps, small, assorted .75 " Guyot's Large Physical Map, Western Europe 3.00 " 18 Monteith's Wall Maps, assorted 1.25 "
OUTLINE MAPS—
25 sets Outline Maps, (size 24x36 in.) containing two Hemispheres, North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia, United States, &c. Subscription price, $25.00 5.00.
ASTRONOMICAL CHARTS—
43 Astronomical Charts, giving Phases of the Moon, Planets, &c.
(Size 24x36 in.) 1.00
ALPHABET COMMON OBJECTS—
15 Alphabet of Common Objects, imported, mounted on strong cloth 1.10 "
LONGITUDE CHARTS—
50 Callahan's Longitude and Time Charts, mounted on cloth .40 "
GEOMETRICAL BLOCKS—
5 sets, slightly damaged, containing material for demonstration of all Geometrical exercises. Put up in strong box 3.00 "
HISTORICAL CHARTS—
5 King's Historical Portfolio, published at $15.00,
now sold by subscription for $25.00 3.00 "
METRIC CHARTS—
15 Mounted Metric Charts, contain Metric System complete .50 "
EXTRA DISCOUNTS:
Bills of $10.00 or over, 10 per cent. $20.00 or over, 25 per cent.
...SCHOOL BOOKS...
I offer a great many bargains, in Standard School Books, similar to the following:
Brooks' Elementary Arithmetic, (published price, 41 cents) 10 cts.
Brooks' New Written Arithmetic, (published price, 80 cents) 25 cts.
William Beverley Harison, 3 and 5 West 18th St., N.Y. City. [42]
In Greece there is a penalty of $200 for any man belonging to the reserve who does not answer the call of the country, and, moreover, neither distance nor citizenship in another country excuses him. If he does not answer the call, he will be arrested and imprisoned whenever he sets foot again in Greece. [42]
Copies of the very interesting Röntgen or "X Ray" photographs can be obtained now from The Great Round World.
These famous photographs are mounted on cards, size 11 x 14 inches, and are from selected negatives made by
PROF. M.I. PUPIN, of Columbia University, New York,
DR. A.W. GOODSPEED, of University of Pennsylvania, and
DR. W.F. MAGIE, of Princeton College.
A selection of 39 different subjects is offered.
PRICE, 50 CENTS EACH, (to yearly subscribers of The Great Round World, 40 cents net).
Address all orders to The Great Round World, or
William Beverley Harison
3 & 5 West 18th Street New York City [42]
Great Round World Polisher
(Advetisment) Will take rust off your wheel, will polish your skates, your gun, your fishing-reel—any and every polished metal surface can be kept clean with it. ..
It will polish knives—can be used as a knife sharpener. Put up in small packages convenient to carry in your bicycle tool-bag; full directions with each package.
BEWARE OF IMITATIONS. THIS POLISHER IS FULLY WARRANTED BY "THE GREAT ROUND WORLD." If it does not do all that we say, and a great deal more, we will refund amount paid at any time. CHEAP AND DURABLE—will remain good until last morsel is used up. NON-POISONOUS!!
Every boy or girl, man or woman, can use it safely.
Price, 25 cents (13 two-cent stamps), postage paid to any address.
CAN BE OBTAINED BY ALL FIRST-CLASS DEALERS. [42]
1898Bethlehem steel agrees to pay Frederick Winslow Taylor, a new kind of consulting engineer, the thirty five dollars a day he asks to install his new management system.
[2. Pg 30]
Edward Deeds...got a position at $6 a week in the Thresher Electric Company. On his arrival in Dayton he found that Mrs. Thresher, a motherly soul, had engaged a room with board for him. It was a kind and thoughtful act. The trouble was that it cost his full week’s pay. Deeds thereupon rented a room for $4 a week. In order to save the 25 cents cost of transporting his trunk to the new abode he borrowed a wheelbarrow and trundled it over himself on his first Sunday in town. [6 pg 73]
At last, in March, a bill requiring all American railroads to adopt air brakes and automatic couplers came before President Benjamin Harrison. The President signed it and gave the pen to Coffin. [see 1874] [11 pg 99]
{Spanish American war] The World and Journal paid $2.12 per word cable costs for news from Cuba, and their called for bigger and bigger sizes of railroad type to display it, but the Tribune, for the most part, relied on the Associated Press and featured local stories. Both the World and the Journal were selling at one cent a copy. Only grudgingly had Reid cut the Tribune’s price from four to three cents; further he would not go. ... but in 1898 Adolph S. Ochs, who had purchased the critically weak New York Times two years before, put his paper before his pride. He took the Times down to a penny to challenge the World and the Journal, and he made a success of it. The Times tripled circulation and soared past the Tribune. For eleven more years, while Reid railed at the “penny press” and clung to the concept of a newspaper edited “for the gentry,” the Tribune sold for three cents and lost about a million dollars each year. When the editor finally yielded, in 1909, he was too late. Horace Greeley’s Tribune, “the bible of the West” had become known as “the little old lady of Park Row.” [16 pg 108]
1899...Randolph Guggenheimer when he gave a dinner for forty ladies and gentlemen at the old Waldorf-Astoria on February 11, 1899. What did the evening’s’s pleasure cost? Ten thousand dollars - $250 a head. (Again, these were 1899 dollars; the cost in today’s terms was $750 a head.) [23 pg 33]
In
March 1899, the consulting architects of the City of Boston made a report on certain tenements they had found in the North and West Ends of the city. They had found, they said, “dirty and battered walls and ceilings, dark cellars with water standing in them, alleys littered with garbage and filth, broken and leaking drain-pipes, ...dark and filthy water closets, closets long frozen or otherwise out of order .. And houses so dilapidated and so much settled that they are dangerous.”
Even in far more hygienic quarters the overcrowding could be acute. M.E. Ravage, arriving as an immigrant from Rumania, became a tenant, at 50 cents a week, of Mrs. Segal’s apartment on Rivington street in New York’s Lower East Side. [23 pg 51]
By
1899 Woolworth’s’s Christmas trade was reaching a half million dollars. In order to avert a strike at that crucial time of year, Woolworth introduced a system of Christmas bonuses ($5 for each year of service, with a limit of $25). [28 pg 159]
In earlier years the two occupations of preacher and teacher were practically the only ones open to the black college graduate. Of later years a larger diversity of life among his people, has opened new avenues of employment. Nor have these college men been paupers and spendthrifts; 557 college-bred Negroes owned in 1899, $1,342,862.50 worth of real estate, (assessed value) or $2,411 per family. The real value of the total accumulations of the whole group is perhaps about $10,000,000, or $5,000 a piece. Pitiful, is it not, beside the fortunes of oil kings and steel trusts, but after all is the fortune of the millionaire the only stamp of true and successful living? Alas! it is, with many, and there's the rub. [51]
1900During 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]
1901In 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]
1903On 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 ammoniumcitrate) 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. I n 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 meager 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 remodeled, 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 remodeled, 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 fat35.00
One cow 15.00
Three cows70.00
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 load20.00
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]
1905Like 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 bettermethod 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]
1906Harry 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 reachrf 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]
1910By 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]
1911When 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 embarrassCongress 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]
1913Fourteen 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]
1914Six 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,
1915Workers 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,
1915Workers 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
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 water boiler attached, is installed in each kitchen. Bathtubs and kitchen sinks are porcelain enameled. Stationary laundry tubs 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 wageof 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 thefamily 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 opportunitiesoffering 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 theworkingmen'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) 2o,ooo.f
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Begun 1912. Employer for employees. 400 acres. 436 lots planned, averaging in size 50 by100 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 percent interest. No payments down necessary but possible then orat 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. Garden city principles have been applied. Parks, playgrounds and street planting are provided, and each lot has its fruit trees.
AKRON, OHIO. Population (1916) 1 20,000.f Firestone Tire andRubber Company. Begun 1916. Employer for employees. 365acres. Lots average 50 feet frontage and 120 feet in depth; 5^ lotsper 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 percent per month, including interest and taxes. Minimum cost of houses $1,500 to $2,000; $2,500 if fronting on boulevard. Single family detached type houses prevail. For 900 families. Natural features of 13 acres reserved for park purposes; 6> acres for school land 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 working men.
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 home building 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 acres. Capital $16,540; 5 per cent limited dividend. Rented on a basis ofone week's wages per month, or sold on installment plan. Arthur C. Comey, landscape architect. An attempt has been made to form a cooperative and co-partnership 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.*Passed on list originally compiled by R. L. Davison. The figures given for places under 30,000 population are based upon theU. 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. Averagerent $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, 1 ,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, fireplace. Morell and Nichols, planners. Two water systems, tree 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 city planning 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. Acreage1 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 one tenth 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 whichhas 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 & Mac Neille, 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 apark and playground. A few houses rent at $20 a month, but most are sold on installment plan. Life insurance must be carried so that in case of death the house is paid for by the insurance. Checker board 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. Begun1916. 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 Property $2,586,461.26. Rented at $31 to $58 a month, including light, 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 accordancewith 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 two flat 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 two family frame and brick houses, and also rows of two-flat houses. The houses are sold on the instalment plan or rented. The floor plans 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; two family house $2,475, first floor rents for $11.50, second for $12. 270 houses for 390 families. Solid row houses, row containing four six room 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 Truman's. 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]
1917Then 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]
1918In 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]
1919By 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]
1920sBilly 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]
1920George 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]
1921The 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]
1922Truman & 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]
1923On 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]
1925HEALTH 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]
1928Ford..personal income in 1928 had reached $136,000 a day. [22 pg 39]
1929Damon 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 - in 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, 1929Black 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)]
1931The 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]
1932At 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.
1933Richmond 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]
1934Farm 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]
1935In 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 105.00Decorations, paint, and paper for twelve rooms 150.00Architectural supervision, plans where needed and preliminary inspection of several houses 150.00Total $2,798.00These 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]
1938Those 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]
1939Kansas 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]
1940sDuring 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]
1940Not 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]
1941Every 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...]
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Lincoln National Life Insurance Company [offers]:at age 35 a $10,000 policy costs you only $12.80 per month and will, should you die during the expectancy period, pay you beneficiary $10,000 for a monthly income for life. These low cost policy cannot be issued in amounts less than $2,500. [19 pg...]
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Old Spice shave Soap (in pottery mug) $1.00. Old Spice After Shaving Lotion $1.00 - $1.75. Old Spice Talcum $0.75. Old Spice shaving Cream-Lather or Brushless (in tubes) $0.50. [19 pg...]
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Eclipse Rocket (power) Lawn Mower. $85 F.O.B. [19 pg...]
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Make your own Metal Garden Markers. Roovers Label Embosser is the first practical lifetime device for making indestructible metal labels for all plants, shrubs, trees, etc. Tells instantly what is growing where. Great fun to spell out the labels and Emboss, with easy pressure, in beautiful raised letters on ribbon of spray and acid proof Monel Metal. Any desired working or length. Great for marking equipment, tools, etc. Not a”gadget,” but a real indispensable tool to put your garden on parade. Complete $15, plus 10% U.S. Excise Tax. Money-back guarantee. Roovers. Brooklyn. [19 pg...]
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Beautiful Raided Letter Stationery. With the Roovers Steel Die embosser your name and address, monogram or initial is quickly impressed in distinguished raised letters on your favorite note paper and envelopes. Far more beautiful than printing and costs mush less. Will not cut paper. Personal embosser, lifetime guarantee. $2.40 post paid. Notary, corporate and Lodge Seals $3.00 up. Roovers. [19 pg...]
[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...]
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Sheaffer Pens, All colors, $2.75 to $20. s, $1 up. Ensembles, $3.95 up. Dry proof desk sets, $5 up. Chemopure Skrip ink with Skrip-Well, 15 cents, Economy size, 25 cents. Double Length fineline Leads - Reg Pfg. 15 cents. Economy Pkg., 25 cents. Lady Schaffer Lifetime Feathertouch Ensemble, $12,95. Vigilant Lifetime Feathertouch Ensemble (pen & pencil) (Military clip $12.75. Other ensembles (Military clip) $6, $9, $14.
[Natl. Geographic Ad] “Our Navy Ships” 8 full color prints. Paintings of U.S. Navy Ships by Arthur Beaumont, especially prepared for The Geographic. Each print averaging 7x 10 inches. $3 the set in US and Possessions; elsewhere, #3.25 in U.S. funds. Postpaid. [19 pg...]
[Natl. Geographic Ad Hotel Section “Where Shall We Stay?”]
District of Columbia.
The Dodge Hotel. On Capitol Hill opposite Union station Plaza. Renown cuisine. No tipping. Single from $2.50, double from $4.00 H.B. Williams, Mgr.
Hay-Adams House. 16th at H. Opposite the White House. Completely air conditioned. Single room with bath from $3.50. Double from $5.00.
Wardman Park Hotel. Washington’s Largest. 1800 outside rooms. Ample parking. Avoid traffic to all highways. Write for maps. Rates from $3.50
New York
Albany. The Wellington- Albany’s “Garage-IN” Hotel. Known for its unusual “Double service,” Convenience, fine food. 450 Rooms. Rates from $2.25.
New York City. Beekman Tower. 49th St. at East River Drive. Overlooking River. Smart location. 400 outside rms. Near shops, theaters, business, From $2.50. Bktl “N”.
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.
Hotel Edison. 46th to 47th Sts. At B’way. New York’s Newest. 1000 outside rooms. Bath, Radio, Circulating Ice water. Our choicest Rooms from $2.50.
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.
Park Lane Hotel. Park Ave. at 48th. Convenient, distinguished. Single rooms from $5; double from $7; suites from $12. Apartments, permanent occupancy.
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.
The Vanderbilt Hotel. On Park ave. at E. 34th St. A distinctive address. An internationally famous hotel. Single for $3, double from 45, suites from $8.
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]
1943In 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]
1945Look 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]
1946To 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]
1947On 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.
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Movie projector: Kodascope Eight-33. $70.
[Natl. Geographic Ad] The Hotel Whitcomb in San Francisco 500 rooms. From $3 single. From $5 double. [Natl. Geographic Ad] Zenith Radio. Trans-Oceanic Portable. Operates on long-life battery pack (up to one year normal usage) as well as on Ac or Dc current. Specially treated for hogh humidity...works on land or sea, in the tropics, where untreated radios fail. Model 8G005Y (7 radio tubes plus power rctifer) $114.40, less battery. Other Zenith Radios from $26.95 to $395 (West coast prices slightly higher)
1948It was estimated in 1948 that the median Negro family income was 47 per cent lower than the comparable white family income. [23]
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]
1949Presidential salary increased to $100,000. [1 Pg 18]
[Natl. Geographic Ad] American Stationery. 200 Note Sheets, 100 envelopes $1.00[ 20 pg...]
[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...]
[Natl. Geographic Ad] The New Parker “51". Visible ink supply. 14 precision advances make the “51". Pens, $13.50 up Pencils, $6.75 up. Sets from $19.75. [20 pg...]
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Wood Inlay Pictures. Rare and precious woods from al over the world carefully selected and matched to produce lifelike pictures. Ideal for game room, den, living rooms, etc. actual handmade sets, masterpieces in marquetry. Identity (type and country) of each wood listed on back of 5/8" plywood plaque. 24 subjects to select from, sizes 10 x 14 to 16" x 25". Large size “Royal Bengal Tiger” illustrated $24.75. Tower gift Ship, Lawrence, Mass. [20 pg...]
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Kodachrome slides. Full color duplicate from my library of many thousand original Kodachromes. Historical, Travel, Wild Life, Scenic, Gardens, etc. Sets of 25 slides each $10.00 single of selected slides, each 50 cents. [20 pg...]
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Movado. Calendermeto. Travel clock. $125.
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Daylight Television by general Electric plus Fm-Am Radio - Phonograph with LP record Player. 12½ Tube - biggest daylight picture yet. Model 840. $995. [20 pg..]
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Webster’s Biographical Dictionary. 1,730 pages, thumb index. $7.50 [20 pg...]
[Natl. Geographic Ad] New book on fishing FREE! Every fisherman needs “fishing - What Tackle and when” 76 pages of fishing hints, fish pictures, South Bend tackle. Nip-I-Diddee. New, semi-weedless, high floating surface bait. Fish tempting action, 6 finishes. 5/8 oz. $1.25.
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Admiral big 16" screen plus FM-AM Dynamagic Radio. 2 speed phonograph plays standard and the 7", 10" or 12" LP. $695 plus $9.75 Fed. tax.
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Sheaffer’s Sentinel Deluxe threesome Pen, $15.00, Pencil, $5.00 Stratowriter $10.00. Complete Set, $30.00; on. Fed. tax.
[Natl. Geographic Ad] Kodak Flash Bantam f/4.5 Palm size miniature, big in ability. Lumenized lens, 4 speeds to 1/200. Takes 8 exposure Kodachrome film (or black or white). $50 plus tax.
Kodak 35 camera with range finder - Lumenized f/3.5 lens, 5 speeds to 1/200. Takes 20 and 36 exposure Kodachrome film (or black and white). $75 plus tax.
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]
1952The 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. $1,39
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]
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7 - Machines of Plenty - Stewart H. Holbrook - updated by Richard Charlton
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Commencing in the Year 1793, and Ending in 1797.
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Copyright, 1913. By The Atlantic Monthly Company
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Copyright, 1916, BY THE SURVEY COMMITTEE
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48- IF YOU'RE GOING TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY
BY THOMAS H. ORMSBEE AND RICHMOND HUNTLEY
DECORATIONS BY FRANK LIEBERMAN
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1937
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PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE UNITED STATES FOOD ADMINISTRATION
IN CO-OPERATION WITH THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
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A History of the Education of the Colored People of the United States
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An Essay in Economic Interpretation
By UPTON SINCLAIR NEW YORK VANGUARD PRESS
First Printing — January, 1927
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1905 (?)
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BY GUSTAVUS MYERS
VOL. II GREAT FORTUNES FROM RAILROADS
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59- A Good Home for Every Wage -Earner
BY JOHN NOLEN, Sc.D., City Planner
Fellow American Society of Landscape Architects, Cambridge, Mass.
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE TWELFTH ANNUAL CONVENTION or THE
AMERICAN Civic ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON, D. C. DECEMBER 15, 1916
60-
