Frazz by Jef Mallett for October 06, 2021

Old sayings are never to be taken literally since most don’t make sense if you do.

I can remember when that made sense because it COST me about a dollar a day (not counting rent) to live. Rent was another buck fifty.

During the Depression, people were working for $6-10 a week. That might be when that phrase was coined.

Another day, another trillion dollars in debt.

I got paid better. I used to get a buck three eighty.

Sailors in the 1800s were paid a dollar a day once the voyage was done and profit made, and since the days didn’t change much, the promise of another dollar was all they had to show for their time each day.

According to lore, in the late 1800’s-early 1900’s, ranch hands were paid $30 a month and found. The 1894 Sears-Roebuck catalogue listed a full outfit of jeans, shirt, longies, socks, and hat for about $5. Boots were another $5. Nowadays, another day, another dollar might just refer to what’s left after the cost of living for that day.

Back when the Model T was a production vehicle, Henry Ford offered $5 a day. It was considered a really great salary at the time.

If I recall, before Honus Wagner became the greatest baseball player of his time, he hauled coal for less than a dollar a day. Late 1800s, definitely post-dates US currency.

“Another day, another dollar.” “Oh, you got a raise?”

“The historian John Bach McMaster suggested that in the 1790s, ‘The average rate of wages the land over was… $65 a year, with food and perhaps lodging.’ Source: A History of the People of the United States, vol. 2, p. 617.”

Average salary for female teachers in Michigan in 1900-01 was $36.68 a month. That would be about $1.67 a day if they didn’t work Saturdays and Sundays.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000060034496&view=1up&seq=93

Hmmm. I would guess that it was true in the early 1800’s …

Average annual pay for a US public school teacher in 1900 was $328.

No, people didn’t make anything close to that on average in North America before the establishment of the U.S….

“Comparing the thirteen-colony average income per capita with the average for Great Britain (Broadberry et al. 2011) finds virtual equality in 1774: the colonial $69.1 (or £15.6) was about the same as Great Britain’s $69.5 (£15.7).”

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19861/w19861.pdf

By old school silver weight that dollar is about $17.50, about what may have been “reasonable” for scutwork.

In 1825 a common laborer in the US made $1/day, on average.https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89071501472&view=1up&seq=64

For some of us, it’s “Another day, another 70 cents.”