How Much Was A Penny Worth In 1793?

This is the oldest CPI chart I could find:

http://www.minneapolisfed.org/commu...hist1800.cfm

The way it works is you divide the value for one year by the other. For example, the value for 2013 is 701.5 and 1800 is 51, so a cent in 1800 is worth 14 cents today.

A penny was worth about 2 cents, there were 240 pennies to the pound and pound was worth about $5.

Seriously trying to determine a reasonable correlation in value between then and now is rather difficult. Inflation calculators are questionable because for the past 20 to 30 years the way inflation has been calculated have been politically manipulated so that it no longer resembles the real world. Comparing prices of commodities or manufactured goods is questionable because although the prices have gone up considerably, productivity has also increased greatly which brought costs down. This acts as a multiplier to the apparent price increase. How do you allow for this?

They closest I can come is to compare what the average semi-skilled worker, able to raise his family, earned, compared to what the average salary man has to earn today to raise his family. Even this isn't accurate because the average person today lives much more comfortably than the worker in 1793 and a great many households today have two wage earners to make ends meet compared to one back then. Also the work week in the 1790's was six ten hour days a week so a worker back then worked about 1.5 years each year compared to todays workers. A semi-skilled worker back then earned about 200 dollars per year compared to the national average today of about $30,000 or about 150 to 1 (1 cent equals $1.50). If you adjust for the fact that today's worker only works 2/3rds as many hours it comes out to about 224 to 1 (1 cent equals $2.24).

What Dave said, about $2.38 in todays money.

Good points on the political manipulation of inflation and monetary values. I was going to say you have to consider the cost of things as well as the value of money, but I think I've been soundly beaten to these talking points. Suffice it to say a cent had more buying power then. :)

Is condor101 a reputable source here on CCF? I think so, and hopefully your teacher will too! Nice explanation condor101, Well done.

A nights stay at an inn cost about the same as a beer? Bet they didn't let you keep the little soaps.

I have some old Church minutes from 1829. In it the workmen who built the church were paid 1 and 3/4 of a cent a hour.

Let's put that into perspective. In 1829, land was selling for $2 an acre. So at 7/4 a day, divided by 800/4 for an acre of land, it would take a little over 114 hours to earn enough money to buy an acre of land. Or a bit over 11 days wages. And that sounds reasonable. Especially when you realize that it would have taken longer than that since they would have had to pay for food and drink, and other sundries and necessities.

This Link will show some of the cost in the British Army, I would suspect out coinage would have similiar value since they were all based on the same weights of copper at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briti...enth_century

This link gives a good overview on the cost of a loaf of bread. http://www.johnhearfield.com/History/Breadt.htm

Essentially a loaf of bread in 1800 cost 1 and a Half Cents. In 1793 it would have cost the same.

Hope this helps

I can see another difficulty. If you equate a Two Cents to a loaf of bread, then you could say that a penny is worth 50 times more now than then. On the other hand if you equate 2 cents to an 1/100 of the price of an acre of land. And that same acre is currently worth about $6000, then a cent of 1793 would be worth $30.

Bread is cheaper now than then, with more volume for the mills, and the processes industrialized. So while the comparisons are interesting, they are not direct. The same with Cement which used to be very labor intensive and so very expensive. But with industialization is now very very cheap.

I would think land is a good vehicle for your comparison.