Dining on a Morgan Dollar in 1885

But...in 1885 I'll bet that one dollar was what most people made in earnings in a few days or even a week. So it seems pretty much relative. Taking four people out for a really nice meal like mentioned above today would cost a few hundred dollars, especially when wine and dessert is included, which is what a lot of people make in a few days, maybe even a week working in places such as Starbucks..

 

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Nah the average wages for a man in 1885 was about $1.50 per day or roughly $10 per week.

 

Minimum wage in 1956 was $1 per hour so the meal was about one hours wage. And if someone was making $1.50 a day in 1885 a 15 cent meal would be about one hours wage. (Many work days back then were 10 hour days.)

 

Yeah but today the minimum wage is around $9/hour.

Do you think you can get a decent meal at a sit-down restaurant for $9 today?

Nope!

However if you look at it in terms of silver. A Morgan Dollar has 0.77 troy oz of silver. Today that's about $20.

$20 sounds reasonable for a decent meal at a sit-down restaurant.

What's interesting is that the same amount of silver that would buy you a nice meal back then will buy you one today.

 

Go back even further and you can drag a woman by her hair to your cave and have her cook for you for free. Oh but, don't go to sleep, you may not wake up!

 

I wouldn't mess with a cave woman.

She could take down a bear if it came down to it.

 

I agree with vista's comments.

A "reasonable" meal does vary with everyone. It could be a simple lunch sandwich to premium steak for dinner and more.

What I'm trying to get at is that food might have been cheap back then but the buying power of a dollar or even a cent was a lot more.

Imagine working so hard for 10 hours and you lose the dollar coin somewhere. I suppose that's not any different from losing a $100 bill today.

 

Many of those items listed in those menus were single items not meals and many of them were priced at around an hours wages. The few that actually listed dinners were running around 5 to 7 hours wages so $45 to $63. and it also would depend on how fancy the restaurant was. If you in a non fancy sit down family restaurant an entrée is probably around an hours wages and a dinner about two.

And back then your average working man didn't go out for one of those dinners unless it was a real special occasion, he couldn't afford it. But he might splurge and get the occasional entrée.

 

W.C. Fields paid 35c for a light lunch in the 1941 movie "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" - a menu sign in the background also offers liver & onions for 35c

 

1941 is wayyy after Morgan Dollars. I believe Morgan’s ended in 1921.

 

Agreed - in 1941, I'm sure that Peace dollars were still circulating and the occasional Morgan was not unheard of - the 35c entree in Los Angeles was common, and dinner specials at the Brown Derby were priced under a dollar.

 

I wonder if coins containing precious metals (aka “hard money”) is why prices stayed low for so long.

The price of a basic restaurant meal between 1850-1960 seem to be relatively similar because the coins were real money as they were made of silver.

For 110 years the price for one person at a restaurant was under $1.

Then the government stopped issuing real money of gold and silver and started printing it on paper so things got expensive quick. The more dollars printed the less each dollar is valued.

Now 60 years later the price of a decent restaurant meal at a sit down restaurant is about $15.

I would love to go to a restaurant; eat a big meal, then toss a single silver coin down and walk away.

 

More they stated the same because wages were stable. The value of the silver in the coins varied considerably so I'm not sure how much the fact they were silver stabilized prices. In the 188's the silver in a dollar was only worth about 80 cents. by the 1930's the value of the silver dropped to about 20 cents, and by 1960 it was approaching $1.

Now I will agree that the purchasing power of the dollar began dropping after the coins went to base metal and then began a more rapid slide after the last of the convertibility to precious metal was removed, but a greater reason was probably the greater embracing of deficit spending. It was also around that time that the Congress gave up an pretense of doing their job and passing the budget and spending bills by the legally mandated start of the fiscal year. (Fiscal year for the US Government starts Oct 1st so by law the budget and appropriation bills have to be passed by Sept 30. I believe they have actually accomplished that one time in the past 45 years.)

 

I wasn't so much referring to the value of the silver itself.

Mostly just the quantity.

A Morgan Dollar was 0.77 oz of silver and it's interesting that 0.77 oz of silver could buy a lot back then.

In some ways I think having coins made of precious metals was so cool but at the same time I know why they stopped. The government wants to be able to inject liquidity during a crisis and they can't do that with precious metals.

Like the financial stimulus checks that the government has been issuing out. They couldn't do that without finding enough gold to back it up.

 

Just reminiscing!

In 1965, we took our senior class trip to New York to attend the World's Fair. We stayed at the Astor Hotel in Times Square.

Some of us dropped in a cafe at 39th & Broadway to have lunch. The special of the day was roast beef, mashed potatoes & gravy, two vegetables, roll and soft drink (or iced tea). The two slabs of roast beef were HUGE, and the large platter was totally covered with food. Cost: $1.19

 

I believe it!

 

2000 years ago, it took all day for a common laborer to earn this little silver coin, dime-sized but thicker:


It's worth about $80 on the market today, so a laborer earning $10 an hour would have to work an 8-hour day to earn it. So, it's still a full day's wages for a low-paid worker.

 

But not as much as a silver dollar could. Like I said earlier the silver was worth a lot less than the face value of the coin. It bought more as a coin than it did as silver. Trade dollars typically would be accepted for LESS than a dollar even though they had more silver than the regular silver dollars. The reason, because the trade dollars had had their legal tender status revoked and so only passed as bullion.