Monday, July 17, 2017

1915 vs 2015

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a report on the amazingly more prosperous life of an average American worker in 2015 compared to that of an American worker one hundred years earlier, 1915.

How can a comparison be made between different eras? Not by money so much, but by a comparison of what that worker could afford to have in his home.

An article in the 1913 Journal of Home Economics describes an average apartment home in New York City:

". .  a four room flat, rent nineteen dollars, nine in family. . This family of nine has a boarder to help pay the rent. . . There is a bath tub, but the clothes wringer and last winter’s sleds are always kept in it. This is not the home of a very poor family: the father earns twelve dollars a week, two girls are in a factory . ."

(from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)


workers paint the Brooklyn Bridge 1915: pinterest.com

(cont'd tomorrow)

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