The high cost of living in the progressives' economy

Journal of American History

Volumn 88, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 898-923

  Rauchway, Eric ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33750875011     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2700392     Document Type: Article

References (126)

1. See, for example, Gary Gerstle, "Theodore Roosevelt and the Divided Character of American Nationalism," Journal of American History, 86 (Dec. 1999), 1280-1307;
2. Rogers M. Smith, "Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America," American Political Science Review, 87 (Sept. 1993), 549-66;
3. and Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, 1999).
4. W. Jett Lauck, "Political Consistency and the Cost of Living," Journal of Political Economy, 18 (May 1910), 392-94, esp. 394.
5. Margo Anderson, The American Census: A Social History (New Haven, 1988), 237;
6. John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (Boston, 1975), 103.
7. See also William R. Brock, Investigation and Responsibility: Public Responsibility in the United States, 1865-1900 (Cambridge, Eng., 1984), 148-84;
8. Ewan Clague, The Bureau of Labor Statistics (New York, 1968);
9. and Joseph T. Goldberg and William T. Moye, The First Hundred Years of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Washington, 1984).
10. Clague, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16;
11. "The Biggest Problem in the Country," World's Work, 19 (Feb. 1910), 12534-35;
12. "The Burning Question," American Banker, April 2, 1910, p. 6599. Other groups tried to give meaning to the cost of living; on the efforts of unions and the working class, see
13. Lawrence B. Glickman, A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society (Ithaca, 1997), esp. 78-91.
14. On government surveys, see Henry J. Harris, Recent Official Investigations on the Cost of Living (Princeton, 1912).
15. The social construction of economies is the favorite example throughout John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (London, 1995).
16. See also J. Adam Tooze, "Imagining National Economies: National and International Economic Statistics, 1900-1950," in Imagining Nations, ed. Geoffrey Cubitt (Manchester, Eng., 1998);
17. Susan Buck-Morss, "Envisioning Capital: Political Economy on Display," Critical Inquiry, 21 (Winter 1995), 434-95;
18. and Louis Dumont, From Mandeville to Marx: The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology (Chicago, 1977). Probability sampling (the technique of random selection to create "scientific" samples used for most polling) seeped slowly into government practice, aided by politics and military necessity. See
19. Joseph W. Duncan and William C. Shelton, Revolution in United States Government Statistics, 1926-1976 (Washington, 1978), esp. 9 and 47.
20. Estimates of the cost of living dropped almost steadily as methods of data collection changed: see I. M. Rubinow, "The Recent Trend of Real Wages," American Economic Review, 4 (Dec. 1914), 793-817;
21. F. W. Jones, "Real Wages in Recent Years," American Economic Review, ibid., 7 (June 1917), 319-30;
22. Paul H. Douglas and Frances Lamberson, "The Movement of Real Wages, 1890-1918," American Economic Review, ibid., 11 (Sept. 1921), 409-26;
23. Paul H. Douglas, Real Wages in the United States, 1890-1926 (1930; New York, 1966);
24. and Albert Rees with Donald P. Jacobs, Real Wages in Manufacturing, 1890-1914 (Princeton, 1961).
25. Wesley Clair Mitchell, "Statistics and Government," Publications of the American Statistical Association, 16 (March 1919), 223-35, esp. 230;
26. Carroll D. Wright, "Address of Carroll D. Wright, President of the American Statistical Association, at its Annual Meeting in Boston, Jan. 17, 1908," ibid., 11 (March 1908), 1-16, esp. 5;
27. Theodore M. Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton, 1995), 76. On the question of national interest and internal divisions, cliometric work on the nationalizing tendencies in the American economy during this period emphasizes the persistence of regional divisions, especially with respect to the South. See
28. Kris James Mitchener and Ian W. McLean, "U.S. Regional Growth and Convergence, 1880-1980," Journal of Economic History, 59 (Dec. 1999), 1016-42;
29. Joshua L. Rosenbloom, "Was There a National Labor Market at the End of the Nineteenth Century? New Evidence on Earnings in Manufacturing," Journal of Economic History, ibid., 56 (Sept. 1996), 626-56;
30. and Lance E. Davis, "The Investment Market, 1870-1914: The Evolution of a National Market," Journal of Economic History, ibid., 25 (Sept. 1965), 355-99.
31. Mitchell, "Statistics and Government," 6.
32. For Mitchell's frustration at the politics of economic data and of war, see Lucy Sprague Mitchell, Two Lives: The Story of Wesley Clair Mitchell and Myself (New York, 1953), 303-5.
33. Wright, "Address of Carroll D. Wright, . . . 1908," 1-16, esp. 8 and 14;
34. Carroll D. Wright, The Industrial Evolution of the United States (London, 1896), 349.
35. On Wright's career, see James Leiby, Carroll Wright and Labor Reform: The Origin of Labor Statistics (Cambridge, Mass., 1960);
36. and Henry F. Bedford, ed., Their Lives and Numbers: The Condition of Working People in Massachusetts, 1870-1900 (Ithaca, 1995).
37. Wright, "Address of Carroll D. Wright, . . . 1908," 15.
38. Carroll D. Wright, "The Evolution of Wage Statistics," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 6 (Jan. 1892), 151-89, esp. 187.
39. Leiby, Carroll Wright, 71, 121-22, 78-79. See also
40. Clague, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 9; and Wright, "Address of Carroll D. Wright, . . . 1908," 12-13.
41. Carroll D. Wright, Analysis and Index of All Reports Issued by Bureaus of Labor Statistics in the United States Prior to November 1, 1892 (Washington, 1893), 221-33;
42. Goldberg and Moye, First Hundred Years of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 23.
43. For the statement by Frederick Wines, see Theodore Roosevelt, "Veto Message, February 5, 1909," in A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (20 vols., New York, 1911-1917), XIV, 7177. On census reform in this period, see
44. Anderson, American Census, 116-30.
45. Edith Abbott, "The Wages of Unskilled Labor in the United States, 1850-1900," Journal of Political Economy, 13 (June 1905), 321-67, esp. 329n20.
46. On the distinction between authoritative and suspect statistics in Wright's thinking, see Leiby, Carroll Wright, 66.
47. Carroll D. Wright, The History and Growth of the United States Census (Washington, 1900), 74.
48. Leiby, Carroll Wright, 72;
49. Grover Cleveland, "Second Annual Message, December 3, 1894," in Messages and Papers of the Presidents, XII, 5983;
50. Theodore Roosevelt, "Sixth Annual Message, December 3, 1906," Messages and Papers of the Presidents, ibid., XIV, 7037.
51. Theodore Roosevelt, "First Annual Message," in Messages and Papers of the Presidents, XIV, 6676;
52. Roosevelt, "Veto Message," 7176;
53. U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States, Taken in the Year 1910 (11 vols., Washington, 1912-1914), IV, 15;
54. Anderson, American Census, 125.
55. Wesley C. Mitchell, "The Trustworthiness of the Bureau of Labor's Index Number of Wages," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 25 (May 1911), 613-20, esp. 614;
56. New York Times, Aug. 8, 1904, p. 3.
57. See also Goldberg and Moye, First Hundred Years of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 37-38.
58. Leiby, Carroll Wright, 129;
59. Goldberg and Moye, First Hundred Years of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 70; Mitchell, "Trustworthiness of the Bureau of Labors Index Number of Wages."
60. Rubinow, "Recent Trend of Real Wages," 800.
61. Congressional Record, 61 Cong., 2 sess., Jan. 28, 1910, pp. 1171-75. On Canada, see Walter Russell Morson, The High Cost of Living and Its Remedy (Toronto, 1913).
62. Harris, Recent Official Investigations on the Cost of Living, 4;
63. Great Britain, Board of Trade, Cost of Living in American Towns: Report of an Enquiry by the Board of Trade into Working Class Rents, Housing, and Retail Prices, together with the Rates of Wages in Certain Occupations in the Principal Industrial Towns of the United States of America (London, 1911), lxxvi.
64. Richard Whately Rice, "Increased Cost of Living," 1916, card on leaf 156 of volume "Poetry," item number 1897.c.12.(156.) (British Library, London, Eng.). For the terms of the British debate, see William J. Ashley, The Rise in Prices and the Cost of Living: An Enquiry into its Extent and Causes (London, 1912).
65. Economists have confirmed the British Board of Trade's conclusion that U.S. workers enjoyed higher wages than those in the rest of the industrialized world: see Kevin H. O'Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy (Cambridge, Mass., 1999).
66. But observations about the inequality of wage structures in America may qualify it: see Peter R. Shergold, Working-Class Life: The American Standard in Comparative Perspective, 1899-1913 (Pittsburgh, 1982);
67. and Claudia Goldin, "The Political Economy of Immigration Restriction in the United States, 1890-1921," in The Regulated Economy: A Historical Approach to Political Economy, ed. Claudia Goldin and Gary D. Libecap (Chicago, 1994), 223-57. There were also geographical inequities, specifically for New York City: see
68. Robert Coit Chapin, The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families in New York City (New York, 1909).
69. As a contemporary noted, "there is something sinister in the enormous excess of rent paid in New York City." Frank Hatch Streightoff, The Standard of Living among the Industrial People of America (Boston, 1911), 18. Workingwomen formed a special class of low earners whose wages were seen "to supplement inadequate family incomes" instead of standing on their own.
70. Louise Marion Bosworth, The Living Wage of Women Workers: A Study of 450 Women in the City of Boston (New York, 1911).
71. Board of Trade, Cost of Living in American Towns, lxxvi.
72. On the openness or otherwise of the electorate, see Eileen Lorenzi McDonagh, "Representative Democracy and State Building in the Progressive Era," American Political Science Review, 86 (Dec. 1992), 938-50.
73. "'Cost of Living,'" Nation, Jan. 27, 1910, p. 78. On the monetary implications of the gold supply, see
74. Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 (Princeton, 1963), 187-88.
75. Theodore Roosevelt, "A Confession of Faith, August 6, 1912," in The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Hermann Hagedorn (20 vols., New York, 1926), XVII, 287-91. On the continuation of Populist voting patterns, combined with an argument for the Populist shape of Progressive reform, see
76. Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917 (Chicago, 1999).
77. Stephen J. Whitfield, Scott Nearing: Apostle of Radicalism (New York, 1974), 29.
78. Scott Nearing, Reducing the Cost of Living (Philadelphia, 1914), 107, 46-47. Even when reformers focused on the poor rather than the well-off, their conclusions could be framed in moral terms: budgets revealed "the character of the families" and "whether they can afford to develop desirable traits"; "the poor must be taught how to spend their money wisely." Streightoff,
79. Standard of Living among the Industrial People of America, 9, 171.
80. Nearing, Reducing the Cost of Living, 61, 224. On Nearing and country life, see
81. John A. Saltmarsh, Scott Nearing: The Making of a Homesteader (White River Junction, 1991).
82. B. H. Hibbard, review of The High Cost of Living by Frederic C. Howe, American Economic Review, 8 (Sept. 1918), 601-8, esp. 601;
83. Frederic C. Howe, The High Cost of Living (New York, 1917), 75, 62. See
84. M. Lippitt Larkin, "The Butter Market," Journal of Political Economy, 20 (March 1912), 267-75;
85. and Alexander James Field, "The Magnetic Telegraph, Price and Quantity Data, and the New Management of Capital," Journal of Economic History, 52 (June 1992), 401-13, esp. 410.
86. Howe, High Cost of Living, 13, 270.
87. Early price indexes counted a basket of goods, including chuck roast, round steak, oranges, butter, and navy beans, purchased from a subjectively chosen sample of merchants, leading to complaints about whether those were items ordinary Americans often ate, and shops where ordinary Americans bought and even about whether different methods of labeling and reporting in shops substantially affected the statistics. See Fritz Reichmann, "The Necessity of the Supervision of Weights and Measures," Publications of the American Statistical Association, 12 (June 1910), 146-53;
88. Nearing, Reducing the Cost of Living, 107-14;
89. and Shergold, Working-Class Life, 116-38.
90. On the centrality of the urban family, see Simon N. Patten, "The Standardization of Family Life," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 48 (July 1913), 81-90.
91. On the centrality of family to Progressive reform, see Eric Rauchway, The Refuge of Affections: Family and American Reform Politics, 1900-1920 (New York, 2001).
92. Robert F. Hoxie, "'The Rising Tide of Socialism': A Study," Journal of Political Economy, 19 (Oct. 1911), 609-31, esp. 615 and 629;
93. Karl Kautsky, The High Cost of Living: Changes in Gold Production and the Rise in Prices, trans. Austin Lewis (Chicago, 1914), 59-60, 111-12. See also
94. Arnold Petersen, The High Cost of Living: Real Causes Underlying Increased Cost of Commodities Explained (New York, 1914).
95. Upton Sinclair, The High Cost of Living and H. G. Wells, This Misery of Boots (Girard, 1919), 18.
96. T. Gushing Daniel, The High Cost of Living: Cause - Remedy (Washington, 1912), 120, 19-21, 32.
97. Oscar Perry Eversole, The High Cost of Living: The Real Causes, the True Remedies (Fort Wayne, 1912), 7, 57, 13, 102-3, 6.
98. Census Bureau, Thirteenth Census, I, 60-61.
99. Coleman Du Pont, The High Cost of Living and Its Relation to the Distribution of Farm Products and Good Market Roads (n.p., n.d.), 8;
100. Fabian Franklin, Cost of Living (Garden City, 1915), 18;
101. Nearing, Reducing the Cost of Living, 41;
102. Rubinow, "Recent Trend of Real Wages," 814.
103. Em. Walker, Walker's Everyday Cookery Book and Guide to the Cost of Living in Malaya (Kuala Lumpur, 1918).
104. The High Cost of Living, dir. Alice Guy Blaché (Solax, 1912). On Blaché, see
105. Alison J. McMahan, Madame a des envies: A Critical Analysis of the Short Films of Alice Guy Blaché (London, forthcoming), esp. chap. 4.
106. A Fool and His Money, dir. Alice Guy Blaché (Solax, 1912).
107. U.S. Fisheries Bureau, The Crayfish, Try It, It Knocks H. out of H. C. of L. (Washington, 1916);
108. Frank G. Gilbreth and L. M. Gilbreth, The One Best Way to Do Work: A Solution to the Problem of the High Cost of Living (Montclair, 1920);
109. R. N. Burgess, Cut! Cut! Cut It Out!: The High Cost of Living: Raise Chickens in the New Mount Diablo District (San Francisco, 1913), 1;
110. The Browns Declare War on the High Cost of Living, dir. unknown (1920);
111. Jack Cusimano, Economical Italian Cook Book, Containing Many New and Delicious Receipts and Designed Especially to Meet the Present High Cost of Living (Los Angeles, 1917).
112. See Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley, 1985).
113. Frank Mandel, The High Cost of Loving, 1914, typescript, item number NCOF p.v.438 (New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York, N.Y.).
114. Frank Mandel, The High Cost of Loving, 1914, 438 (Ibid.
115. Undercranking was a term of art in the early film industry. Cameras were turned (cranked) by hand; if you cranked at normal speed, the film when played back represented human motion at normal speed. If you cranked slowly (undercranked), more motion elapsed between frames, and when such film was played back at normal speed, characters appeared to move more quickly - an effect usually used in silent comedies such as The Cost of High Living. The Cost of High Living, dir. unknown (Vitagraph, 1916).
116. Cf. the discussion of class in Elizabeth Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars: Life and Culture on the Lower East Side (New York, 1985), 219.
117. Irving Fisher, Why Is the Dollar Shrinking? A Study in the High Cost of Living (New York, 1914), 189;
118. Irving Fisher, The Purchasing Power of Money: Its Determination and Relation to Credit, Interest, and Crises (New York, 1913)
119. Irving Fisher, "Objections to a Compensated Dollar Answered," American Economic Review, 4 (Dec. 1914), 818-39, esp. 818 and 824. See also
120. Irving Fisher, "A Remedy for the Rising Cost of Living: Standardizing the Dollar," American Economic Review, ibid., 3 (March 1913), 20-28;
121. Irving Fisher, "The Monetary Side of the Cost of Living Problem," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 48 (July 1913), 133-39, esp. 134.
122. Irving Fisher, Stabilizing the Dollar: A Plan to Stabilize the General Price Level without Fixing Individual Prices (New York, 1920), ix, xxvi, xxvii, 121, xxviii. On Fishers career, see
123. Irving Norton Fisher, My Father, Irving Fisher (New York, 1956).
124. Duncan and Shelton, Revolution in United States Government Statistics, 47-49.
125. Simon N. Patten, Product and Climax (New York, 1909), 18-22, 45-47. The 1910s were a transitional period from widely affordable nickelodeons to more expensive movie theaters; see
126. Douglas Gomery, Shared Pleasurest History of Movie Presentation in the United States (London, 1992), 18-31.