90 PAGES · EVERY PRICE FROM 1900–1975, CONVERTED TO TODAY’S DOLLARS

Nobody Ever Wrote It Down. So We Did.

Ask someone who was there what bread cost in 1955 — they’ll tell you to the penny. What Things Cost, 1900–1975 is a 90-page record of those prices and the paychecks that met them, transcribed from the government’s own bulletins and converted — every single figure — to today’s dollars.

Six decade chapters — from the nickel bread of 1900 to the gas lines of 1975 — then three more that do the arithmetic on all of it
Every figure cited to bulletin, table, and page — so you can check us, not just trust us
Large, comfortable type — made to read, made to print, yours forever

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VOLUME I · 90 PAGES · 2027 EDITION

Butter, per pound — 193639.6¢$9.55

A factory week’s pay — 1936$21.56$519.80

Median family income, per year — 1935–36$1,160$27,967

Converted with the Bureau’s own Consumer Price Index — the method is printed in the book.

Three entries from the record. The book holds hundreds — and the further back it goes, the stranger the arithmetic gets.

A Note From the Archive

Every day on our channel, we tell the story of how careful American households actually lived — and every day, the comments fill with the same two sentences: “My mother did exactly that,” and “Can you believe what things cost then?”

This book is the answer to the second one, done properly. Not a nostalgia list — a record. We went back to the government’s own price bulletins, the census tables, the wage series, and wrote down what they say, decade by decade, next to what those numbers mean in today’s money. Where a table needed a human voice, we used the words of people who were there — recorded by the Federal Writers’ Project and the archives that kept them.

One of those voices is Elizabeth E. Miller, of West Newbury, Vermont, who sat down with a Federal Writers’ Project interviewer in 1938 and described her farm years without a trace of nostalgia: “I bought twelve and a half yards of calico and made a dress out of it myself.” She is in Chapter One, beside the 1913 counter she shopped only at the edges of — and she is the one who gave that whole era its epitaph: “Life is nothing but changes.”

We set it in large type on plain letter paper on purpose, because we know what happens to pages like these. They get printed. They end up inside a cupboard door or under a magnet on the refrigerator, where somebody can walk over and check a number in the middle of an argument.

It’s history, not financial advice. It’s made to be read aloud when family visits. And it’s the first volume of the record we’re building — written down, at last.

Forgotten American WisdomTHE ARCHIVE SERIES · EST. MMXXVI

The Whole Ledger, Chapter by Chapter

Six chapters walk the decades — each opens with a voice from the time and lays the prices beside the paychecks. Three more do the arithmetic your grandmother did in her head, and one holds the multipliers so you can do it yourself.

1900–19

The Nickel Decades

The nickel loaf, the dime that opened a post-office savings account, and the war that ended the stillness — where the record begins.

The 1913 loaf ran 5.6¢ a pound — $1.90 in today’s money — against an average year’s earnings of $633.

1920s

The Electric Decade

Radios, washing machines, the Model T at its cheapest — and what “prosperity” cost per week.

The cheapest new Ford there ever was listed at $260 — under eleven weeks of the $24.11 factory week. For that price, you cranked.

1930s

The Careful Years

The Depression household ledger: relief budgets, the $3.86 grocery week, and prices that refused to matter less.

W.P.A. relief work paid $47.29 a month in 1936 — about $1,140 today, and less than half a factory wage.

1940s

The Ration Book

Points, the Sugar Book, and the bond bought a dime at a time — when the government decided how much sugar a family could buy.

The first housing census, 1940: the median American house, $2,938 — about 118 weeks of the $24.96 factory week.

1950s

The $7,990 House

Levittown, the 75¢ minimum wage, and the decade a factory paycheck could buy a home.

A veteran moved in for nothing down and $56 a month — about 39 hours at the 1950 factory wage of $1.44.

1960–75

When the Dollar Began to Run

From the 5¢ stamp to the gas lines — the years the old arithmetic quietly ended.

Gasoline at 31.2¢ a gallon in 1965 — seven minutes of work at that year’s $2.61 factory hour. By 1975: 56.7¢.

RATIOS

The Multiples

Not what the big things cost — how many years of work stood behind them: the house, the car, the rent, a year of college.

The 1960 house the government insured: $14,607, against the $7,168 its buyer earned — 2.04 times a year’s pay, and the agency printed a ratio of its own beside it.

THE REST

What Wasn’t in the Budget

The lines a 1965 household never had, the ones it had that we don’t, and the trade between them stated flat.

Revolving credit, January 1968: $1.32 billion for the whole country — the first month the Federal Reserve had anything at all to count.

TABLES

The Conversion Tables & Full Sources

Decade-by-decade multipliers, the complete citations, and how to convert any old price yourself.

A 1913 dollar converts at ×33.9; a 1975 dollar at ×6.2. One column, and any old price your family names becomes checkable.

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Every figure in those chapters carries the bulletin, table and page it came from.

Open the Book

Real pages from Volume I — set in large, comfortable type on paper made to be printed.

The 1936 grocer's counter, priced line by line: butter 39.6 cents a pound beside $9.55 in today's dollars, bread 8.2 cents beside $1.98, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics bulletin and table cited beneath the ledger — THE 1936 COUNTER — FROM CHAPTER THREE

One table tracking six staples — butter, round steak, eggs, bread, sugar and delivered milk — at eight checkpoints from 1900 to 1975, each cell showing the price as the government recorded it and again in today's dollars — THE CENTURY AT A GLANCE — SIX STAPLES, EIGHT DECADES

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Checked Against the Record

Not memory. Not folklore. Not internet lists.

“These agencies distribute the schedules to approximately 2,000 food dealers on the date set for price collection… selected from those patronized largely by wage earners.” — BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, BULLETIN Nº 635, PAGE 10

Prices transcribed from the original government bulletins — Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census, USDA — page by page.
Conversions use the Bureau’s own Consumer Price Index. The method is printed in the book so you can check any figure.
The complete bibliography is part of the book — every table traces to its source.

A grocery storefront in Greensboro, Alabama, 1936 — the week's prices hand-painted on the window and boards, the same counter the Bureau's agents were transcribing that year — GREENSBORO, ALABAMA, 1936 · WALKER EVANS, F.S.A. · LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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Set in large type on letter paper — print it and it lives by the kitchen door, not in an app.

Fair Questions

Asked by careful people. We’d ask them too.

What exactly do I get?

One PDF, 90 pages — dense ones, delivered to your email the minute you order. Six decade chapters, two hundred verified prices with today’s-dollar conversions, wage and income panels, first-person voices from the archives, three closing chapters that do the arithmetic — the century at a glance, the multiples, and what wasn’t in the budget at all — and the full source list. Large type throughout. Print it, or read it on any tablet or computer — it’s yours forever.

Did a person actually research this, or is it AI-written filler?

The research is government bulletins, census tables, and Federal Writers’ Project archives — and the bibliography is printed inside the book, so you can check any figure yourself against the original source. We use modern tools to organize and draft faster; we don’t use them as a substitute for going to the record. If a number is ever wrong, it is ours to fix — see the Cited-Source Guarantee below.

I lived through some of this. Is there anything in it for me?

Probably more than you’d expect — starting with this: your memory is most likely right. People who were there almost always name the old price correctly. What memory doesn’t carry is the other half of the sentence — what that price is in the money you spend now, and what the paycheck standing beside it was doing that same year. That pairing is the book: the 1955 counter next to the 1955 wage, the 1940 house next to the 1940 factory week, the 1965 gallon of gasoline next to the 1965 factory hour. The conversion tables put the rule plainly: when someone names an old price, don’t correct the memory — convert it. This won’t tell you what you already know. It hands you the half nobody carries in their head, on a page you can put on the table and point at.

Is this financial advice?

No — and we’d be suspicious of anyone selling “advice” wrapped in history. This is a record of what things cost and what people did in their time. It changes how you see a dollar; what you do with yours is your business.

I’m not great with computers. Will I be able to open it?

Yes. It arrives as one PDF — the same kind of file a doctor’s office or the bank emails you. It opens by itself on any phone, tablet, or computer, with nothing to install. If you’d rather hold paper, press Print and it comes out in large, comfortable type. And if anything at all gives you trouble, write to contact@oldwisdombook.com — a real person answers and will walk you through it.

What if it’s not for me?

The Cited-Source Guarantee. Read it, check any figure against the source we printed for it, and if it doesn’t hold up — or simply doesn’t earn its place on your shelf — write us within 7 days and you get every cent back, no questions asked. The risk is ours; that’s how sure we are of the record.

Why $28 — and will the price change?

$28 is the founding-reader price for this first edition. On January 1, 2027, Volume I’s standalone price rises to $34. And if you later want the complete set, you pay only the difference — never for the same book twice. No fake countdowns here; when we say a price ends, it ends on the printed date.

Why is it called the 2027 Edition?

Because it’s the edition you’ll use all through 2027. Every figure is converted with the government’s own price index as of May 2026. In January, when the government publishes the year’s final index, we re-run every conversion and send the updated files to everyone who bought, free.

Own the Record.

What Things Cost, 1900–1975 — Volume I, 90 pages, instant PDF
Two hundred verified prices, every one converted to today’s dollars
The full bibliography — check us against the record
Large-print-friendly design, made for reading and printing

Ask them what bread cost the year you were born. When the answer comes back to the penny — and it will — this is the book that proves them right.

$28 founding-reader price · instant download

SEND ME VOLUME I — $28

Questions first? Write us: contact@oldwisdombook.com — a person answers.

There are three volumes in the Archive.

SEE ALL THREE & THE COMPLETE ARCHIVE