The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1928-11-26

day. TOday's story shows the great
increase In the prosperity Of the aver
age working man.
BY BRUCE CATION
NEA Service Writer
A N atmosphere of colonial
IN America hangs over Thanks
giving. The very word suggests
old New England farmhouses, roll
ing fields of stacked corn enclosed
in snake-ral fences, old-fashioned
Surreys overloaded with hungry
folk on the way to record-break-
ing dinner at grandpa's place in
the country.
The era of skyscrapers, automo-
biles and radios hardly seems to
fit.
A life that used to be simple has
grown complex. Haste has re-
placed leisure. The simplicity that
brought Thanksgiving into being
as a heartfelt rite has given way
to hustle and hustle, simply an
occasion for football games and
hearty dinners.
So some of us, as the Indian
summer haze drifts over the
countryside, look back rather
longingly to the days that used to
be. We feel that people, some
how, were better off, happier,
richer in the things that count.
We talk about "the good old days"
with sort Of regret.
n
ATOW these good old days"
IN when, according to tradition,
a five-dollar bill would keep a
family in groceries for thirty days,
and a good house could be had
for an annual rent no greater
than it would bring a month now
adayS, were far from perfect in
these respects.
Mark Twain said that Fenimore
Coopers Indians belonged to IAN
extinct tribe that never existed"
The good old days" when the
workingman was in clover were,
similarly, days that never dawned.
When Thomas Jefferson was
writing Of sacred and inalienable
rights, the papers were carrying
advertisements asking for the re-
turn Of runaway apprentices.
Slaves we're held in every colony.
Indentured servants, a scant
step above them, were common.
The workingman never dreamed
of calling himself independent
unless, by a lucky stroke, he could
lay hands on bit Of farm land
or a fishing smack Of his own.
DUT you don't need to carry
ID your researches back to COLO
NAL times to find that the good
old days" had their shady side.
In May, 1851, the carpenters of
Philadelphia we're on strike. They
were getting $3.50 a day and we're
demanding SITS. Conservative
citizens were Mortified at such
swollen greed.
Horace Greeley Of the New York
Tribune, decided to investigate.
He figured out the weekly ex-
penses of a carpenter with a wife
and three children, and got the
following figures:
Flour, 50 cents; sugar, 80 cents;
butter, 81 cents; milk, IA cents;
meat, $40; potatoes, so cents;
tea and coffee, IS cents; candles
and oil, IA cents; fuel, 40 cents;
household articles, IS cents; bed
ding, 20 cents; rent, So; clothes,
50; newspapers, IL cents; sundriei,
40 cents.
This totaled $1O.37. If the car
penter worked six days week, his
income, under the old pay scale,
would be just $1.37 shy of this;
under the new scale, he would
have a margin of Is cents week,
out of which to start savings
account, pay doctors bills and in
dulge in such luxuries as his fancy
dictated.
NTOW it must be borne in mind
IN that the carpenter then, as
now, was one of the most highly
paid Of workingmen. Bricklayers
and founders got more, but nearly
every other classification, in those
days, got less.
Shoemakers, bookbinders, print
ers, cabinetmakers and matters
averaged between 81 and 81 a
week. Day laborers got---well, a
few years before this Philadelphia
strike a group of Irish laborers,
who had been working in Brook
lyn for IS cents a day struck for
IS cents.
The contractor promptly took
on a gang of newly-landed Ger
man immigrants, and when the
strikers tried to picket his place
not too gently, no doubt-the
militia was called out to chase
them away.
4 ND that is not all.
N Most workmen of those
days were not paid solely in cash.
In nearly all factories that tri-
umph of Yankee ingenuity, the
company store, existed, and the
worker was compelled to take a
good part of his wages in trade.
The storekeeper fleeced him un
mercifully, dividing the profits
with the employer; it has been
estimated that these overcharges
cut the workers pay by at least
IS per cent.
Such were the "good old days.
as far as the worlIingman was
concerned. There must have been