On daily expenses in nineteenth-century america

This year, 2021, has been an interesting one for most people, different than most years anyone has experienced. And now, after all the supply chain disruptions caused by a Chinese energy crisis, blocked canals, backlogged ports, government expenditures, work disruptions, and the massive death toll of COVID-19, severe inflation has taken hold. This blog will take a stroll back through time to explore the cost of commodities and other daily expenses in 1869 as reported in an 1871 "Special Report on Immigration" published by Edward Young, the then chief of the Bureau of Statistics, particularly evaluating the cost of living between states during the industrial revolution and the massive growth of the United States of America.