Shopping in 1929

Do you remember the prices of some everyday items when you were young? History books tell us the Great Depression started with the crash of the stock market on October 29, 1929. The Depression had a profound impact on the lives of many of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents that lived in Muskogee that year. The prices mentioned in this article all appeared in advertisements in the Muskogee Daily Phoenix in October, 1929. Some of the brand names popular then are still sold today.

The attached picture was taken on May 30, 2007, at 419-21 West Broadway. It shows the site where the Sears Roebuck and Company store stood in 1929. At that time, Sears was selling single barrel shotguns for $6.79. Look closely, the store name is still faintly visible under the windows.

In 1929, a Muskogee business man named Connie Ogden owned a store located close to the railroad tracks at 409 North C Street. The price of three bars of Ivory soap was 22 cents. Ogden also sold meats, vegetables and bakery goods. "Dressed" chicken fryers sold for 29 cents a pound. "Dressed" means they were plucked, cleaned and ready to cook.

The same issue of the Phoenix contained ads for clothing. A popular item was the union suit; a special kind of underwear that joined the tops and bottoms to make one piece. At Futterman's Department Store, located at Okmulgee and Second Streets, union suits for men, women and children were for sale. Many people wore union suits to take the chill off in their poorly insulated homes. Sheep-lined coats sold for $5.95. Men's overalls went for 97 cents.

The usual products were offered in Muskogee drug stores. Squibb and Company sold cod liver oil by the jar for eighty-eight cents. Gillette razor blades were 28 cents a package. Kleenex tissues were a quarter a box. Steinberg's Drug Store offered to develop your Kodak film for free. The "free" part was the negatives; prints of the negatives sold for four cents each.

Drug stores were beginning to sell electrical products as well. Steinberg's had an electric corn popper for $1.49. As more homes became wired for electricity, families were looking for labor saving devices. Gaddis Drug Store was selling electric curlers for 79 cents. (Note the difference in spelling from the Gaddy's Drug Store located at 12th and West Broadway.) Gaddis' phone number, shown in the ads, consisted of only two digits: "76." Seven digit numbers were introduced much later in Muskogee, when many more people had phone service in their homes and businesses.

Here are some of the prices of everyday products in 1929:
10 lbs. sugar 59 cents
1 lb. butter 43 cents
1 lb. coffee 39 cents
6 lbs Crisco $1.19
1 ea. head of lettuce 7 ½ cents
1 qt. peanut butter 43 cents
4 ea. 5 cent rolls of toilet paper 17 cents
3 cans tomato soup 25 cents
1 can tuna 19 cents
1 can Drano 19 cents
1 lb. cheese 29 cents
1 doz. Jonathan apples 33 cents
2 doz. Sunkist oranges, small 33 cents

This year, due to last winter's freeze, just one orange sells for more than two dozen oranges did in 1929. Mass production, globalization, rapid shipping and better insulated modern buildings made changes in what we buy and the prices we pay today. It's interesting to note some prices, such as a can of tuna, have not changed as much as the prices of fresh fruit.

Here's an idea to spark discussion at your next family gathering. Ask your older relatives about the items and prices they remember from their younger years. You might even want to take a field trip to the Muskogee Public Library to look at microfilmed copies of old newspapers.