5 ms·

> Many of the women who worked in the mills would "retire" in their mid-late 20s or early 30s, having saved up the majority of their wages. Thanks for sharing.

by vostok 8y ago

> Many of the women who worked in the mills would "retire" in their mid-late 20s or early 30s, having saved up the majority of their wages. Thanks for sharing. I was under the impression that this was a relatively new phenomenon with the advent of sky high compensation in tech roles. Do you happen to know how common it was for them to be making, say, $300k in inflation adjusted terms by, say, age 26? I'd love to read more about this if you have any links. All the stuff I remember reading in school was about how horrible it was.

badpun 8y ago
My guess was that standards of living were drastically lower back then, so the accumulated factory wages could make a difference. Back then, people lived in crappy little houses with no electricity, no water/sewage, obviously had no cars etc. There was relatively little stuff in their lives, so, as long as the land provided you with food, you didn't need much money. My grandma used to live like this in rural Poland - they occasionally bought something with money, like salt or matches, both mostly were self-sufficient.
- jfindley 8y ago
  Isn't that likely to be the same as what people 90 years in the future will say about us, though?
  - CamTin 8y ago
    In most of the developed world, literally all of our necessities (housing, healthcare, even food) require interaction with the money economy, which is the opposite of what is described here, so probably not. Even the Amish have to interact enough with the "English" economy to buy things like nails, and to pay their property taxes. Possibly we can operate this way again, with nano-factories turning homegrown soybeans into jeans and iPads or something, and a self-healing infrastructure, but that's far future sci-fi, not current reality.
nostrademons 8y ago
It was exhibit panels at a museum, so there's no online link, but looking up some historical prices: Wages in the Lowell Mills in 1845 were about $25/month. [1] As of 1825 farmland went for roughly $5/acre. [2] So for every month you worked in the mills, you could buy a 5 acre farm. Save up for 10 years and you could get a roughly 600 acre farm, which is pretty substantial. Mill girls had very low expenses because their room & board was often paid for by the company and they didn't have time to go out and have fun, so they banked a lot of their earnings. A house in Brooklyn went for $2500 [3], so if you wanted to be a city girl, save up for 8 years and you could own it free and clear. It's hard to talk about "$300K in inflation-adjusted terms" because life was qualitatively so different back then. You couldn't buy an iPhone at any price, nor electricity, nor running water, nor basic sanitation and medical care. The poorest American today lives a much better life than the richest industrialist back then, except for having to look around him and see how everyone else is living even better ones. But by the standards of the day, someone who saved for 10 years in the mills could become quite wealthy, at least relative to the peers they left behind. Conditions were horrible - quality of life for mill girls was usually a lot worse than the farms they left behind. That goes for middle-class kids who become programmers in Silicon Valley as well. ;-) But economic gain is different from quality of life: part of the reason wages were high was because they needed to be to attract people from their old lives and put up with the new one, and one way to do that is to say "Well, when you're done here, you're gonna be the big man/woman in your old village." Also, we tend to judge the past by the standards of today, which isn't really fair. The choice these workers had wasn't "Work in the mills or live in the post-WW2 era of 40 hour work weeks", it was "Work in the mills or work on the farm." [1] http://courses.wcupa.edu/johnson/lowell1845.html http://courses.wcupa.edu/johnson/lowell1845.html [2] http://www.afrigeneas.com/forumdarchive/index.cgi/md/read/id/2344/sbj/price-of-land-per-acre/ http://www.afrigeneas.com/forumdarchive/index.cgi/md/read/id... [3] https://247wallst.com/investing/2010/09/16/the-history-of-what-things-cost-in-america-1776-to-today/2/ https://247wallst.com/investing/2010/09/16/the-history-of-wh...
- vostok 8y ago
  > A house in Brooklyn went for $2500 [3], so if you wanted to be a city girl, save up for 8 years and you could own it free and clear. That's fascinating and does sound roughly analogous to today.

by vostok 8y ago

badpun 8y ago

My guess was that standards of living were drastically lower back then, so the accumulated factory wages could make a difference. Back then, people lived in crappy little houses with no electricity, no water/sewage, obviously had no cars etc. There was relatively little stuff in their lives, so, as long as the land provided you with food, you didn't need much money. My grandma used to live like this in rural Poland - they occasionally bought something with money, like salt or matches, both mostly were self-sufficient.

jfindley 8y ago
Isn't that likely to be the same as what people 90 years in the future will say about us, though?
- CamTin 8y ago
  In most of the developed world, literally all of our necessities (housing, healthcare, even food) require interaction with the money economy, which is the opposite of what is described here, so probably not. Even the Amish have to interact enough with the "English" economy to buy things like nails, and to pay their property taxes. Possibly we can operate this way again, with nano-factories turning homegrown soybeans into jeans and iPads or something, and a self-healing infrastructure, but that's far future sci-fi, not current reality.

nostrademons 8y ago

It was exhibit panels at a museum, so there's no online link, but looking up some historical prices: Wages in the Lowell Mills in 1845 were about $25/month. [1] As of 1825 farmland went for roughly $5/acre. [2] So for every month you worked in the mills, you could buy a 5 acre farm. Save up for 10 years and you could get a roughly 600 acre farm, which is pretty substantial. Mill girls had very low expenses because their room & board was often paid for by the company and they didn't have time to go out and have fun, so they banked a lot of their earnings. A house in Brooklyn went for $2500 [3], so if you wanted to be a city girl, save up for 8 years and you could own it free and clear. It's hard to talk about "$300K in inflation-adjusted terms" because life was qualitatively so different back then. You couldn't buy an iPhone at any price, nor electricity, nor running water, nor basic sanitation and medical care. The poorest American today lives a much better life than the richest industrialist back then, except for having to look around him and see how everyone else is living even better ones. But by the standards of the day, someone who saved for 10 years in the mills could become quite wealthy, at least relative to the peers they left behind. Conditions were horrible - quality of life for mill girls was usually a lot worse than the farms they left behind. That goes for middle-class kids who become programmers in Silicon Valley as well. ;-) But economic gain is different from quality of life: part of the reason wages were high was because they needed to be to attract people from their old lives and put up with the new one, and one way to do that is to say "Well, when you're done here, you're gonna be the big man/woman in your old village." Also, we tend to judge the past by the standards of today, which isn't really fair. The choice these workers had wasn't "Work in the mills or live in the post-WW2 era of 40 hour work weeks", it was "Work in the mills or work on the farm." [1] http://courses.wcupa.edu/johnson/lowell1845.html http://courses.wcupa.edu/johnson/lowell1845.html [2] http://www.afrigeneas.com/forumdarchive/index.cgi/md/read/id/2344/sbj/price-of-land-per-acre/ http://www.afrigeneas.com/forumdarchive/index.cgi/md/read/id... [3] https://247wallst.com/investing/2010/09/16/the-history-of-what-things-cost-in-america-1776-to-today/2/ https://247wallst.com/investing/2010/09/16/the-history-of-wh...

vostok 8y ago
> A house in Brooklyn went for $2500 [3], so if you wanted to be a city girl, save up for 8 years and you could own it free and clear. That's fascinating and does sound roughly analogous to today.