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> the QOL of someone that lived in the American West a hundred years ago I don't think you have a good idea of what life was like in the 1920s, even in the Ame

> the QOL of someone that lived in the American West a hundred years ago I don't think you have a good idea of what life was like in the 1920s, even in the American West. Here is what Cheyenne looked like in the 1910s - http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/cheyenne1900s.html http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/cheyenne1900s.html . People had cars then - and horses. Train service started in 1867. The local library started in 1886 so you could get books for entertainment. You can see in the pictures there was even phone service. Sears was making millions each year as a catalog mail-order company, so even if you lived in the middle of nowhere you could order just about anything for your house - including the house! In their 1920 book they wrote "Sears, Roebuck and Co. supply the needs of more than eight million families." https://archive.org/details/storyofsearsroeb00sear/page/2/mode/2up?q=million https://archive.org/details/storyofsearsroeb00sear/page/2/mo... So, go back another 50 years, to the 1870s of "Little House in the Big Woods". The family had venison, fish, pork, bear meat, squirrel, rabbit, "potatoes and carrots, the beets and turnips and cabbages" from their garden, red peppers, pumpkins, squashes, and yellow cheeses - all in the first chapter. Plus maple sugar, store sugar, honey from the bee tree, berries, pickles, milk from the cows, and made from all of those, "pumpkin pies and dried berry pies and cookies and cakes ... salt-rising bread" https://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/wildersewell-woods/wildersewell-woods-01-h-dir/wildersewell-woods-01-h.html https://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/wildersewell-woods/wildersew... Rather more than "the same 5-10 things repeatedly".

campboy 3y ago
> So, go back another 50 years, to the 1870s of "Little House in the Big Woods". It’s cute for sure but I don’t know if I’d use a novel for children as an accurate portrayal of the median subsistence living experience 150 years ago.
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago
  Thoreau was talking about the perils of excess consumption in Walden, published in the 1850's.
  - giantrobot 3y ago
    And going to his mom's house on weekends and washing his clothes and eating out of the pantry.
    - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
      I was aware of that, not sure what it has to do with the conversation here though. Nor what a failing visiting your mum on weekends is.
      - giantrobot 3y ago
        It's not a personal failing but it's a huge dissonance with the themes in Walden. It's annoying when people hold up Walden as an example of personal independence but ignoring or not knowing the context in which it was written.
- eesmith 3y ago
  I wouldn't either, but it's meant to show that keiferski's views of 1920 are clearly wrong when a book that came out in 1932 was not laughed off as a wildly unrealistic portrayal of the 1870s. Here is a glimpse of life in rural Oregon in the 1870s, as recorded in 1932: https://www.loc.gov/resource/wpalh2.29080415/?sp=7 https://www.loc.gov/resource/wpalh2.29080415/?sp=7 . Her mother carded and dyed the wool herself, to make clothes. Peddlers would come by with bundles to sell, with "fancy shawls, printed goods, silks, and such other luxuries", sometimes sold for as high as $150/bundle. She bought a statue of Dickens from a peddler. "The menu for a fine dinner would be: Chicken stew with dumplings, mashed potatoes, peach preserves, biscuits, and hominy." Dumplings and cobbler were staples. They had brown sugar and molasses. There was bread and milk, and teas made from local herbs. They had a schoolhouse. Most women wore calico (store-bought) and linsey-wollsey (locally made). Seems they had geese too. For the big 4th of July event in Corvallis, her mother made 200 gooseberry pies. Young women enjoyed the magazines Godey's, Peterson's, and the Bazaar. This seems in decent alignment with the children's story. It does not seem like the spartan life keiferski suggests for some 50 years later.
keiferski 3y ago
The average person a hundred years ago obviously didn’t have YouTube, or the internet, or GPS phones, or a million other consumer goods we take for granted today as a baseline. That was my point. Whether some middle class people had a model T car or a library card is kind of missing the point I’m making entirely.
- eesmith 3y ago
  Then make your point using real examples, not made up ones ignorant of history that end up blunting your argument. Yes, Louis XIV didn't have internet service. Does that make the Sun King poor? Clearly, no. The usual way to do this through something like measuring the cost-of-living - the US started gathering this information during World War I. Your $100/month now corresponds to $6.50/month in 1920, says https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ , or $78/year. We can look up actual numbers. From the Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics #357 at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158004110184&seq=1 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158004110184&se... dated May 1924 and covering the years 1918-1919 we can see breakdown of expenses for different places in the western US: In Butte, Montana, the poorest family (1 out of 102 surveyed, with 4 people) made $900-$1,200 per year, and had $1,022.50 in expenses. (see page 14). Of that, about $900 was spend on food, clothing, rent, and fuel/light. In the gold rush town of Cripple Creek District, Colorado (page 22) one family of 80, with 3 people, made under $900, and had expenses of $853. In Trinidad, Colordo, 2 of 78 families (average of 4.5 people per family) made less than $900/year, and had expenses of $973. And these are the poorest of the poor! They are in the city, which does affect the numbers - farm living can be cheaper, but surely not by a factor of 10. So the idea that $78/year was in any way representative is clearly low-balling it by a lot, even if you only meant for a single person rather than a family. The tables show a 1920 far different than the world you are thinking of. Look at the miscellaneous items for those in the Western states making at most $900/year, at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158004110184&seq=450 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158004110184&se... . 72% of them had life insurance, 11% paid membership to social clubs, 50% paid for movies, 89% got a newspaper, 78% paid for a physician, 22% paid for glasses, and so on. If 1920 is your comparable, then in 2023 you also need to pay for those, on top of lodging, food, heat, and furniture, for your $100/month. I have no doubt there were a handful of people in 1920 who lived on $6.50/month, perhaps living by themselves in the back-country of Alaska, but that will be on the extreme low end, far below the baseline of nearly everyone living in the American West a hundred years ago, and hardly representative.

campboy 3y ago

> So, go back another 50 years, to the 1870s of "Little House in the Big Woods". It’s cute for sure but I don’t know if I’d use a novel for children as an accurate portrayal of the median subsistence living experience 150 years ago.

tonyedgecombe 3y ago
Thoreau was talking about the perils of excess consumption in Walden, published in the 1850's.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  And going to his mom's house on weekends and washing his clothes and eating out of the pantry.
  - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
    I was aware of that, not sure what it has to do with the conversation here though. Nor what a failing visiting your mum on weekends is.
    - giantrobot 3y ago
      It's not a personal failing but it's a huge dissonance with the themes in Walden. It's annoying when people hold up Walden as an example of personal independence but ignoring or not knowing the context in which it was written.
eesmith 3y ago
I wouldn't either, but it's meant to show that keiferski's views of 1920 are clearly wrong when a book that came out in 1932 was not laughed off as a wildly unrealistic portrayal of the 1870s. Here is a glimpse of life in rural Oregon in the 1870s, as recorded in 1932: https://www.loc.gov/resource/wpalh2.29080415/?sp=7 https://www.loc.gov/resource/wpalh2.29080415/?sp=7 . Her mother carded and dyed the wool herself, to make clothes. Peddlers would come by with bundles to sell, with "fancy shawls, printed goods, silks, and such other luxuries", sometimes sold for as high as $150/bundle. She bought a statue of Dickens from a peddler. "The menu for a fine dinner would be: Chicken stew with dumplings, mashed potatoes, peach preserves, biscuits, and hominy." Dumplings and cobbler were staples. They had brown sugar and molasses. There was bread and milk, and teas made from local herbs. They had a schoolhouse. Most women wore calico (store-bought) and linsey-wollsey (locally made). Seems they had geese too. For the big 4th of July event in Corvallis, her mother made 200 gooseberry pies. Young women enjoyed the magazines Godey's, Peterson's, and the Bazaar. This seems in decent alignment with the children's story. It does not seem like the spartan life keiferski suggests for some 50 years later.

keiferski 3y ago

The average person a hundred years ago obviously didn’t have YouTube, or the internet, or GPS phones, or a million other consumer goods we take for granted today as a baseline. That was my point. Whether some middle class people had a model T car or a library card is kind of missing the point I’m making entirely.

eesmith 3y ago
Then make your point using real examples, not made up ones ignorant of history that end up blunting your argument. Yes, Louis XIV didn't have internet service. Does that make the Sun King poor? Clearly, no. The usual way to do this through something like measuring the cost-of-living - the US started gathering this information during World War I. Your $100/month now corresponds to $6.50/month in 1920, says https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ , or $78/year. We can look up actual numbers. From the Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics #357 at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158004110184&seq=1 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158004110184&se... dated May 1924 and covering the years 1918-1919 we can see breakdown of expenses for different places in the western US: In Butte, Montana, the poorest family (1 out of 102 surveyed, with 4 people) made $900-$1,200 per year, and had $1,022.50 in expenses. (see page 14). Of that, about $900 was spend on food, clothing, rent, and fuel/light. In the gold rush town of Cripple Creek District, Colorado (page 22) one family of 80, with 3 people, made under $900, and had expenses of $853. In Trinidad, Colordo, 2 of 78 families (average of 4.5 people per family) made less than $900/year, and had expenses of $973. And these are the poorest of the poor! They are in the city, which does affect the numbers - farm living can be cheaper, but surely not by a factor of 10. So the idea that $78/year was in any way representative is clearly low-balling it by a lot, even if you only meant for a single person rather than a family. The tables show a 1920 far different than the world you are thinking of. Look at the miscellaneous items for those in the Western states making at most $900/year, at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158004110184&seq=450 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31158004110184&se... . 72% of them had life insurance, 11% paid membership to social clubs, 50% paid for movies, 89% got a newspaper, 78% paid for a physician, 22% paid for glasses, and so on. If 1920 is your comparable, then in 2023 you also need to pay for those, on top of lodging, food, heat, and furniture, for your $100/month. I have no doubt there were a handful of people in 1920 who lived on $6.50/month, perhaps living by themselves in the back-country of Alaska, but that will be on the extreme low end, far below the baseline of nearly everyone living in the American West a hundred years ago, and hardly representative.