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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;fiddlehead, post: 6076029, member: 31286&quot;]Really?&nbsp; Are you serious.&nbsp; &quot;most people don&#039;t spend all of their pay&quot; .&nbsp; geez, do some research.&nbsp; &quot;most people&quot; don&#039;t have shit for savings and they even had less in the 19th century.&nbsp; American citizens are wealthier than they have ever been and half the country can&#039;t raise $2000 in an emergency. &quot;Most&quot; People in the 19th century lived in poverty, few had any savings.&nbsp; Real wages were even less than today.&nbsp; Ever heard of the &quot;shirt waist fire?&quot;&nbsp; Do you suppose those women were working 12 hours days for about $1 a day in 1911 because they wanted to save money.&nbsp; No, they wanted to pay the rent and eat (and yes, they paid rent, they didn&#039;t own shit).&nbsp; Sometimes it astounds me what people think people&#039;s lives were like in the &quot;good old days.&quot;&nbsp; My father, who grew up in the 30&#039;s, who worked every day of his life, tells&nbsp; me stories about getting an orange for xmas (That&#039;s right, ONE ORANGE) and trading last year&#039;s presents with his sisters.&nbsp; A harmonica was a treasured thing. Most people didn&#039;t own property, most people, even in the city didn&#039;t have indoor plumbing.&nbsp; Geez!&nbsp; A twenty dollar gold piece was a fortune.&nbsp; That&#039;s why there are so many in AU and better condition.</p><p><br /></p><p>BTW, home ownership by American Families didn&#039;t crack 50% until after WWII.&nbsp; So, other than in rural America where I might assume the rate was a bit higher - although there were many sharecroppers - not many people were able to save enough to make the downpayment on a home.&nbsp; And realize as well, that owning an automobile was quite a luxury up until WWII and the suburbanization of America - i.e.,&nbsp; &quot;Levitwown&quot; (sp?)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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