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Post by kiev4a on Dec 17, 2007 12:50:45 GMT -5
WE were driving through Meridian, Idaho the other day. In the 1940s and early '50s my dad was the foreman at the weekly newspaper in that town. When I was seven (1952) my mom took me to the newspaper to pick up dad. They were folding the newspapers prior to mailing. The publisher showed me how to fold the papers and I probably folded 25 copies. When we were leaving the publisher came over and handed me a check for one dollar--my "wage." It was the first money I earned. After I cashed the check dad's boss gave it to him and I still have it. The photo is of the building where I earned my first dollar. It looked a lot different 55 years ago but at least it still is standing. I had to play around with the perspective control in Photoshop to get the wall sort of vertical.
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Post by doubs43 on Dec 17, 2007 16:59:23 GMT -5
Wayne, there are important personal events in our lives that remain with us long after most things are forgotten. Even altered, I'm sure that building will always bring a smile as you recall earning your first check.
My first check was for $12 when I was 10 or 12 years old. I picked sweet corn by hand for a day to earn it. The farmer who gave it to me was named Earl Page, a name I easily recall more than half a century later.
Walker
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Post by kiev4a on Dec 17, 2007 18:48:25 GMT -5
When the newspaper was in the building the glassed arch wasn't there--just windows on the side and entry through the front. The Publisher's name was Oscar Budadahl (spelling probably incorrect--it was an unusual name). I did my folding inside on the ground floor--behind the window just to the right of the glass arch. Funny how things stick in one's memory.
I also remember there was a large dumbwaiter inside they used to sent the forms down the the press in the basement. It was large enough for a man (or a kid) and I loved pulling myself up and down.
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Dec 17, 2007 18:51:58 GMT -5
I remember the first money I ever earned (outside of family chores in the garden). It was during the early part of the war when I was 12 going on 13. Because of the need to grow home-produced food, children under the age of 14 were allowed to work up to 8 hours a week on farms as casual labour.
One Saturday some friends and I went 'spud hocking', or potato picking. We followed a plough along the field, picked up the potatoes it unearthed and put them in a trailer being pulled slowly alongside by a tractor. For the 8 hours back-aching work I was paid £4 19s 6d (£4.97, or roughly $9).
I had a special reason for wanting to earn money. New push-bikes were in very short supply, but a local shop got some in. Genuine pre-war bikes, with lots of chromium plate, not wartime austerity bikes which were all black paint. The shop owner let me pay 10s (50p) deposit to reserve one for three weeks while I got the rest of the money. I was still 10s short, so it had to wait till the following Saturday and another day's spud hocking. That Saturday evening, just before the shop shut, I became the proud owner of a new bike, my first 'full-size' bike, with knife-edge saddle, full-drop handlebars etc.
The following week I spent my earnings on having a Sturmey-Archer three-speed hub put in, a saddlebag and a Miller dynamo lighting set. Proud? I was the envy of my schoolmates, and my 12-year-old world was complete! But no more spud hocking, it made me just too tired by Saturday evening.
Looking back, I'm pretty sure Dad would have put up the rest of the money if I hadn't been able to meet the three-week deadline, but he didn't say so, he wanted me to learn independence. I had that bike until I joined the RAF six years later.
PeterW
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SidW
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Post by SidW on Dec 17, 2007 19:44:50 GMT -5
Wayne, a thing I've noticed when adjusting vertical perspective. If you get everything truly vertical, you sometimes get an illusion of the sides leaning out. Sometimes it's better to stop just short of truly vertical and get an illusion of their being vertical. I suppose the illusion is due to the eye expecting some amount of perspective just to look right.
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Post by doubs43 on Dec 17, 2007 19:47:21 GMT -5
Peter, that's an inspiring story. Picking up spuds all day is harder work than picking sweet corn because the corn is on stalks and doesn't require bending except for the lowest ears. There's little doubt that you appreciated that bike because your own sweat went into it. I'll bet you were as proud as a peacock! I can't speak for English children but Amerian children today - on average - are given far too much. i.e., they're spoiled! Your conversion of your wages is based on today's exchange rates I believe. When you earned the money, it was likely worth more than $20 US in 1940 or so. Am I wrong about that? Walker
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Dec 18, 2007 9:15:28 GMT -5
Walker, you asked
Basically, Walker, you're not wrong. I don't know what the official rate of exchange was in 1940-41, but figures you find on the internet don't tell the whole story.
Sorry that this a long posting, but I'll try to put things into some sort of perspective:
For one day's work I received nearly £5 which is more than many skilled workmen would get for a week's work only two or three years previously, particularly in the north of England where the depression of the 1930s had hit very hard. Here in the south there was more work and wages were slightly better.
It all changed in 1940 after the fall of France. The Government put the country on a war production, maximum effort, footing, assuming directive powers under dozens of War Emergency Orders which didn't have to be voted on in Parliament.
Many factories, even the smaller ones, were directed to change from producing domestic goods to making parts for armaments, military vehicles, aircraft, munitions and so on, as well as millions of uniforms, equipment, admin supplies and the thousands of other bits and pieces needed to equip rapidly expanding armed services.
Industrial strikes, for any reason, were made illegal, and high production was encouraged by high piece-work rates. Skilled factory workers were classed as being in a 'Reserved Occupation', exempt from military service, and found that if they worked fast enough they could earn up to three times what they had been getting only a few years before.
With millions of men conscripted into the armed services the unskilled labour pool was very depleted. It was made up by women - many of whom went on to become skilled factory workers, young people below the age for military service and older men over the age for military service.
Children under the age of 14 were not allowed to work in factories, but the U-boat blockade and the massive losses of merchant ships meant that Britain had to become as self-supporting as possible, particularly in the production of food. Children from 12 to 14 were allowed - encouraged - to work up to 8 hours a week on farms, and their high, for the period, wages were met by heavy Government subsidising combined with strict retail price control of food.
The Government's attitude was that we were alone in Europe, the only platform from which any future invasion of mainland Europe could be launched, and we were fighting for survival. Tell the people the seriousness of the situation, encourage them, and they'll respond. Get the job done; bugger the cost, we'll count that when, and if, we survive.
Hence Churchill's famous speech of May 13 1940 when he first became Prime Minister of a coalition government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat ... You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. "
Yes, there were mistakes, and there was inevitable waste from hurried under-planning but, by and large, the programme worked. We survived even though it left the country next-door to bankrupt, and with massive American help the invasion of mainland Europe which led to victory was launched four years later.
Yes, there were cases of hardship, and there were many shortages of domestic goods, but many people were better off than they had been during the 1930s depression, and the all-important morale of the civilian population remained high. This, I'm sure, combined with winning the battle for control of the sky over Britain, deceived Germany into thinking not just that we were determined, which we were, but much stronger than we really were.
Not many countries wanted to invest in buying Pounds Sterling (GBP) because they didn't think we would survive. Foreign exchange rates were quoted, and controlled by the Government, but for everyday life they had little if any significance.
Sorry for the social history lesson, but don't take all you read on the internet by earnest young students and newly graduated historians as Gospel, and take all printed exchange rates and comparative values in the 1940s with a generous pinch of salt.
PeterW
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Post by doubs43 on Dec 18, 2007 11:41:48 GMT -5
Thanks, Peter. Having lived through the whole war at an age between childhood and being old enough to serve must have been a very interesting experience. You also have a great sense of history that shows itself when you talk about German cameras and the German camera industry. My father told me that when he was a young man, the exchange rate was pretty constant at $5 US to one Pound Sterling. Your explaination that the war changed the value of the Pound makes perfect sense. Regardless, 5 Pounds to a youth of 12 or 14 would have been a great deal of money. Picking up potatoes all day, you no doubt earned every penny! Walker
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Post by John Farrell on Dec 18, 2007 14:03:26 GMT -5
My first job would have been when I was 13 or 14, working for the local grocery shop, in the summer holidays. I weighed out bags of sultanas, dates, raisins, and cut large blocks of cheese into saleable chunks, and wrapped them. I would deliver grocery orders, on a big old bicycle with a large basket on the front. For this I was paid 1/6 an hour (15 cents in todays New Zealand money, or around 10 cents in American).
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Post by nikonbob on Dec 18, 2007 14:57:43 GMT -5
My first job was with the Naval reserve at $7.50 a day around 1969 or so. I still wonder what I did with the $98.00 I cleared every two weeks. At least meals and accommodation were supplied so it wasn't bad.
Bob
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Post by kiev4a on Dec 18, 2007 15:33:40 GMT -5
When I went to Army Basic training in 1966 a Private E-2 made somewhere around $75 per month--not much different than the pay during WWII.
In high school a kid could detassel corn for $1 an hour (some crews only paid 75 cents) or "Buck bales" (haul hay in from the fields for $1.25 an hour. On the hay crew the farmer either took you to a cafe for lunch or his wife cooked lunch. On corn crews you were on your own.
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Dec 18, 2007 16:53:53 GMT -5
Walker:
Thanks for the compliment. History and English have always been my two favourite subjects, right from schooldays.
I don't want to prolong this thread, but would just like to mention that in the 1930s the rate was around $4 US to £1, and a 'dollar' became market trader slang for 5 shillings (20 shillings = 1 Pound). So on pre-war reckoning my day's wage in 1940 was $20, as you guessed in an earlier post, but £1 in 1940-41 didn't buy as much as it did in, say, 1938-39.
For example, in 1940 my bike cost £5 19s 6d, near enough £6 in round figures. In the 1930s depression many prices actually fell just to sell the goods, and my bike in, say, 1939 would have been about £4. It was a simple case of supply and demand.
PeterW
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Post by kiev4a on Dec 19, 2007 13:14:25 GMT -5
Peter:
Seems like I remember as late as the fifties it took three or four dollars to equal a pound. I think that only declined in the latter part of the 20th century.
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