Changes in Family Expenditures in the Post-War Period

Abstract

IN THE period since the World War, technological advances in agriculture, in engineering, and in production methods, which had been developing over a long period, combined to place at the disposal of wage earners and clerical workers in the United States a wide array of consumers' goods which had not been available to them before. Some of these goods were actually new; for example, canned tomato juice, rayon fabrics, and certain types of electrical equipment. More of thein had been in the markets before, but at prices higher than moderate-income families could pay. New developments in agricultural production and in transcontinental refrigerator cars began to bring oranges and grapefruit, lettuce and spinach to urban markets the year round at prices considerably lower than those prevailing before the war. Motor-car production entered a new phase. Passenger automobiles had been produced commercially since the nineties, but the cost of a car was for a long time far out of the reach of the average American family. In 1908, less expensive models were introduced, and in 1922 the wholesale price of a currently acceptable touring car was $298, f. o. b. Detroit. Substantially the same car would have cost $525 at wholesale at the end of the war and $850 in 1908 when it was first introduced. It had little in common with the automobiles which are purchased new today, but it met the needs of American families in the 1920's.