Took me a while to find actual numbers that could give good approximations of how true this is. http://www.tenement.org/encyclopedia/housing_rent.htm http://ww

Took me a while to find actual numbers that could give good approximations of how true this is. http://www.tenement.org/encyclopedia/housing_rent.htm http://www.tenement.org/encyclopedia/housing_rent.htm Turns out, it's actually pretty accurate. But food was much more expensive, sucking up maybe ten days of income (and that's 100% groceries, which is rare enough these days, I suppose). Clothing, though, that's where you see the real change. Cheaper these days in non-inflation adjusted dollars than it was in the 1890's, in you can believe it (maybe I buy fewer articles of clothing than most people, but likely not less clothing than people in 1890).