In the opening of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mr Bingley causes a stir by being worth £5,000 a year. He is then eclipsed by the even bigger catch – Mr Darcy – who is rumoured to have £10,000 a year. Yes, £10,000!
But what do these sums actually represent? (As a side observation, Mr Darcy’s beloved ‘Pemberley’ grew from a substantial mansion in the 1995 TV show, to stately home Chatsworth House in the 2005 film. There’s inflation for you.)
Quick excuse for a pic of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy…
I found it fascinating – and hard! – to research money when writing my debut Under A Gilded Sky, set in the Midwest and Boston in 1874.
It is not just the numbers; it is about trying to get an understanding of what those dollars were worth, back then. And things are not straightforward…
To quote Adam Smith (and why not?) : “The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.” The Wealth of Nations, 1776 (The wise banker in my book says something similar.)
I started with a simple calculation. According to one Consumer Price Index website, $1 in 1870 has a relative worth of $21 today. I was sceptical of the simplicity of this number.
How much did people earn? I found an experienced farm hand in Iowa was paid $1.49 per day in the summer, in 1870. That would have been $8.94 for a week of 6 days work. Now, this was getting useful for my novel and its agricultural setting.
(It came as no surprise to find that the average monthly wage for a woman servant was $9.04)
I wanted to know what people paid for goods and services. For example, my male protagonist, Lex, has a haircut, and it turns out the prices at barbers were a hot issue in the Midwest in the early 1870s.
An article in the Fort Scott Daily Monitor said that there was “no longer an excuse for going unshaved and unshorn,” as barber prices had been undermined. No longer 40 cents, men could now get a haircut for 25 cents, and a shave for ten. Bargain! Maybe the prices were being undercut by Chinese immigrants who were offering deluxe services? Confusingly, another website quoted 2 cents for a “Chinese shave” in 1872, which is 39 cents in 2015
I was fascinated to find women making a stir in Sedalia, Missouri, in 1883 when they set up some competition: “A young man dropped in during the afternoon and seated himself nervously in the chair… She drew the razor over his face and was troubled by the wrinkles made by his grin.”
My heroine, Ginny Snow, goes shopping at the local store. If she was spending what feels like £40 today, is that a little over $2 in 1874? Which would be a more than she would pay her farm labourer for the day. And about four haircuts at the barber. Did this feel right?
There is a farm auction at a critical moment in the book and it was important that I could give realistic figures.
In my mind, the book is set in Pulaski County, Missouri, so I went to the 1870 Agricultural Census returns for that county. I spent ages deciphering the beautiful copperplate handwriting.
I settled on William Strassburg’s farm as a guide (see extract below). He had 60 acres of improved land, 66 acres of woodland and 14 acres of unimproved land – so that is what I gave Ginny. The cash value of the Strassburg farm was $3,000 but there was also the value of machinery and livestock. William Strassburg had far more livestock than most of the farms in the area – which was something I wanted for my fictional Snow Farm. Perfect!
What did I conclude?
A simple inflationary calculation of what a dollar was worth in the 1870s to what it’s worth now, is not very enlightening. Producing food was much more expensive then than now, but most forms of labour were much cheaper. It’s about what things were worth.
And the important thing for the reader is that, whilst I have done this research, only the essential details are in the novel. It’s the passion between Ginny and Lex that drive the story onwards.
Sources
https://www.measuringworth.com/ A great, detailed explanation of the difficulties in measuring worth
www.DaveManuel.com Inflation calculator
http://www.kristinholt.com/archives/7413 A fascinating website covering endless historical snippets and provided all the barber information.
https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/pricesandwages/1870-1879 A fantastic source for original documents
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1800- This website has lots of technical detail