By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall
“What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar” -attributed to Vice-President Thomas Marshall, 1914
In response to someone’s long speech in the Senate regarding the country’s needs, Vice-President Marshall is said to have said, in exasperation, “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”
Mr. Marshall on another occasion referred to the Senate as “that cave of winds,” much to the delight of most everyone except the Senate.
But about the nickel: last week I found a 1948 nickel in my pocket change. That I count pocket change at all dates me because almost no one else does so. This nickel and I both appeared in 1948 and both are a bit worn but still here.
What could this nickel have bought in 1948?
Sources on the InterGossip disagree with each other so much that they are hardly worth citing, but generally they kinda / sorta agree on these details:
In 1948:
A six-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola quenched one’s thirst for that nickel.
Another nickel would buy a pound of carrots.
A ticket on the New York subway cost at nickel, and you were not likely to be
shot, stabbed, or robbed.
A can of Campbell’s tomato soup was 10 cents.
Cucumbers and celery were also in the neighborhood of a nickel a pound.
Three nickels would bring home a two-pound bag of apples.
A cauliflower was also 15 cents, but who would want one?
The minimum wage was 40 cents.
A loaf of bread was about 13 cents.
Mile was 85 cents per gallon.
The average annual salary was around $3,000 (I don’t believe it was anywhere
near that high, certainly not in East Texas).
A pound of bacon was 50 cents.
A thirteen-ounce box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes was 19 cents.
Remember that these prices are only a vague, fuzzy average; a box of corn flakes will always cost more in New York than in Kansas.
All of this is only mildly interesting because then, as now, prices were pegged to wages, availability, and the more-or-less-free market economy.
What is really different is that whatever an American bought in 1948 was made in America: a pen, pin, pocketknife, clock, typewriter, coat, hat, a thermometer for the porch, pencil, flashlight, wrench, scissors, radio, camera, toy, bicycle, car, record player, coffee pot, electric fan – everything was labeled Made in America.
The few other industrialized nations – England, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Czechoslovakia – were wreckage. The great colonial empires were also in bad shape and their members were agitating for independence, so not only was this country the world’s center of manufacturing, it was also mostly its own source of raw materials. Our nickel and all its cousins circulated mostly in this country.
Now our poor nickels and our massive debts are outbound to Communist China for manufacturing and the Family Saud for oil. We have forbidden ourselves to use our own coal (which can be burned cleanly with existing technology) or to drill for our own oil, and almost no wants to get his delicate hands dirty turning a pipe wrench or operating a drill press.
And now, given changing prices and expenses and market conditions, I accessed my made-in-Communist China computer to look up the value of my 1948 nickel. It’s worth about a nickel. A 2023 nickel, not a nickel in 1948.
The manufacturing of a coin now costs more than the coin will ever be worth, but as with rotary telephones and manual typewriters, there’s still some sentiment in pocket change.
LogoSophia Magazine 