Cowhide boots for a dollar

When I read Henry Thoreau's Walden the first time, I remember I smiled at his account of contemporary costs of living, like that "a thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will last as many years, ... cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair" ... thinking how little we can buy today for $5 or $1.5! Thoreau goes on calculating how much "life" do things cost that we buy:

"... the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer's life, even if he is not encumbered with a family -- estimating the pecuniary value of every man's labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less; -- so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam will be earned."

One dollar for a day of work seems awfully little these days, but let us make a calculation based on simple numismatic facts. The classic "head of liberty" 1-dollar gold coin was 1.672 grams of .900 gold, it therefore contained .04837 ounces of pure gold. On todays' prices over $700 per ounce it would be 700 times 0.04837 = $33.86 per day. Assuming 25 working days per month (Saturday was not free at that time), we get a 846.5 dollar monthy wage, which would be quite acceptable for a blue-collar worker in today's Hungary, especially considering that not much tax (if any) was deducted from this amount.

Now turning to the housing prices he quotes $800 for an "average house", which would be $27088 today. Well, you cannot buy a flat in Manhattan for that price, but you certainly can buy an old house in rural Hungary for even less!

(C) 2007, Zoltan Barczikay