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Message:: [QUOTE="doug444, post: 1524753, member: 38849"]For 1900, you're way too high at $5 per day.  A Chicago Tribune article quoted Census data as follows:  ...Median family incomes in 1900 were $490 per year and in 1950 had grown only to $3,319... The "median" is half above, half below. In addition, a good many employees worked 52 to 56 hours per week, but with no income or sales taxes -- and no medical or retirement benefits.  If you figure a very conservative 260 working days a year (i.e., no Saturday work, which would be exceptional), your median daily income is more like $2.  In addition, households were larger, and sometimes included a Civil War veteran who received a tiny pension to contribute to the family.  A household, by the way, is the occupant(s) of one housing unit; a family is two or more persons related by blood, marriage, or process of law (such as adoptions). My great-grandfather's HUGE brick house at the edge of a small Illinois farming town, cost $488 to build in 1904, including land. Incomes and living expenses were reasonably stable until the onset of World War I.  EDIT, forgot to add this point:  "In 1914, Henry Ford started an industrial revolution by more than doubling wages to $5 a day—a move that helped build the U.S. middle class..."[/QUOTE]