Newspaper History presents media sourced from a United States newspaper dating back 108 years.

  • The Cost of Living

    From the Rock Island Argus, March 18, 1913.
     By S. E. Kiser.
     
    
     “Man wants but little here below”—once that perhaps was true;
     I have no right to think I know, no more, indeed have you;
     Man may have once been satisfied to skimp along somehow,
     But it is not to be denied that much is needed now.
     
     There was a time when eggs were not quite worth their weight in gold,
     When bacon did not cost a lot and steaks were cheaply sold.
     When beans and bread and milk and cheese had not, in fact, obtained
     A place among the luxuries from which the poor abstained.
     
     Man needs a fortune here below to live in comfort now;
     No wonder that the wrinkles show so plainly on his brow;
     He has to have a lot to drive starvation from his door,
     And month by month they still contrive to keep him needing more.