50 and 25K Salaries
One hundred years ago today … The Herald ran a feature on the increasing numbers of people in the US making salaries at the benchmark levels of $50k and $25k.
A $50k salary in 1921 would be roughly equal to at $750k salary in 2021.
New York Herald, 9 January 1921, p. 73. Chronicling America.
“Salaries of $25,000 are growing frequent, if not common, while there are hundreds, if not thousands, of men actually earning $50,000.… There are also women in executive positions who are very near the $50,000 class.”
The Herald explains the phenomenon by arguing that there is “an increasing demand for men and women who can get results … instead of pose and evolve theories.”
Accompanying the main article is a series of “personal sketches” of the high-salaried. Among the names are two New Yorkers influential in public transportation. Frank Hedley, who had immigrated from Britain as a child, was president of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (I.R.T.), having been general manager of the company since 1903, the year before it launched its first subway. In its continuation page the article features Alfred Hammond Smith, who was serving his second term as president of the New York Central Railroad, which, now defunct, connected NYC to the Great Lakes region of the US.
New York Herald, 9 January 1921, p. 78. Chronicling America.
The paper also celebrates the compensation of several figures we have featured in NY1920s: Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, New York Yankees player Babe Ruth, screenwriter Frances Marion and singer Enrico Caruso.
New York Herald, 9 January 1921, p. 73. Chronicling America.
Marion is one of two women profiled in the piece, which featured white people only.
– Jonathan Goldman, January 9, 2021
TAGS: finances, salary, money, economics, transportation, subway, transit