Understatment...

[rusty]

Remember when 65c bought you a good hatchet?
And 7c got you an extra hickory handle?

[Stoney]

And you only made $5.00 for a 60 hour week.

[rusty]

Well,I still have the 60 hour week....LOL~

[Stoney]

I wish I did.  I only get about 14 to 16 due to dialysis.  They tell me it will get better.

[Nolatoolguy]

And you only made $5.00 for a 60 hour week.

Wow, please tell me your just joking?

[Stoney]

That's what my Dad made as a weaver in the '30's and that was the second highest paid job in the mill.  He worked 6, 12 hour days a week.  My mother, who was a battery hand, made $3.50 for 6, 12 hour days.

[lbgradwell]

Actually, $5 for 60 hours comes out to ~8.3 cents/hr and that is very low in both nominal and real terms!

In the 1920s, hourly wages in coal mines decreased from 84.5 cents in 1923 to 62.5 cents in 1929 at the beginning of the Depression. After an unsuccessful attempt to introduce a national minimum wage of 25 cents in 1933, the minimum wage was finally re-established in the United States in 1938 once again at $0.25 per hour.

An hourly rate of 8.3 cents must have been quite some time ago!

[Papaw]

I worked weekends in the oilfields for $1.25/hour in the late 50's and early 60's.

[Stoney]

I've chopped cotton and hauled hay many a day at the astounding rate of $3.00 a day.

[Nolatoolguy]

Wow I am spoiled making 9 bucks an hour now at my job.

[Branson]

My two first jobs paid $.75 an hour, when the minimum wage was $1 per hour.  I thought it was a good deal then.  It wasn't bad -- a Browning Auto 5 cost $134 at that time, and a Jaguar XKE was $5,000.  I got the Browning, but not the Jag.

[amertrac]

my first job was when my father farmed me out to a neighbor farm for 15 dollars a month with room and board . my father got the money that was when I was 11 years old and i never lived home again.went into the service at 16 and was on my own since  bob w.

[rusty]

>a Browning Auto 5 cost $134 at that time

So, at $1/hr, 134 hours,  times todays $7....still a pricy toy...

[scottg]

 My first job was placing handbills under the windshield wipers of every car on the street @ .25 per hour.
 But even at 10, I walked away from that the second day.
   
 The worst paying job I ever had was selling newspaper subscriptions door to door.
 Because everyone already knew how to get hold of the newspaper if they wanted one.
  And nobody else wanted one! 
  So it was basically nothing per hour.
         But they made you do it if you had a paper route. 
   
 I got pretty good at slinging papers sidearm off my bike and never slowing down too much.
 Could lay one right up against the door 19 times out of 20. 
 That had to be worth .37 cents an hour right there!
  yours Scott

[Papaw]

My favorite job as a young man was at the local movie theater. My neighbor's father was the projectionist and he hired Sam and me to clean the seating area once or twice a week at $6.25 a week each, PLUS FOUND! We also got free popcorn and free movies.

Mind you, it only cost $.09 to get in the movies, and you could stay as long as you wanted and see the same movie as many times as they ran it.
A quarter on Saturday was a fortune for us, movie, popcorn, a candy bar, and maybe some gum with the pennies left over.