Prices and Wages by Decade: 1840-1849

Extensive tables show average wages paid each year for a variety of occupations, reported by state and sometimes by city, often broken out by sex, in the following industries:

• Building trades, 1840-1900
  Listed wages for bricklayers, carpenters, electricians, stationary engineers, stationary firemen, hod carriers, building laborers, marble cutters, stone masons, painters, plasterers, plumbers, stone cutters, granite cutters and tile layers.
• Farm labor, 1841-1899
• Glass and clay products, 1841-1898
  Listed wages for glass blowers, potters, kiln placers and turners.
• Iron and steel workers, 1840-1899
  Listed wages for furnace keepers for pig-iron blast furnaces and other jobs in iron and steel.
• Laborers, 1840-1900
• Metal trades other than iron or steel, 1840-1900
  Listed wages for blacksmiths in railroad shops, machine shops and other places, boiler makers in foundries and machine shops, core makers, horseshoers, foundry laborers, lathe hands, machinists, millwrights in flour mills and other places, iron molders, pattern makers, tool and die makers.
• Mining -- Coal mine and iron mine industries, 1840-1900
  Wages for coal mine drivers, loaders, coal miners, iron miners, drilling machine operators, timbermen for the mines
• Printing and publishing, 1842-1900
  Wages for bookbinders, press feeders, proof readers, compositors for newspapers and other shops, pressmen (operators of the printing press), stereotypers
• Textiles - Cloth manufacture, 1842-1900
  Wages for doffers, drawing frame tenders, cotton dyers, loom fixers, cotton spinners, cotton weavers
• Textiles - Hosiery and underwear manufacture, 1842-1900
  Wages for knitters of hosiery and underwear, weavers and winders of silk goods, dressers and dyers of woolen and worsted goods, loom fixers, spinners, wool sorters
• Transportation industry wages, 1840-1900
  Wages for railroad brakemen, conductors for passenger railroads, conductors for freight railroads, locomotive engineers and firemen, longshoremen, 1-horse teamsters, 2-horse teamsters and teamsters non-specified.
• Woodworking trades, 1845-1900
  Wages for cabinet makers, coopers, sawyers, loggers, lumber laborers, woodworkers

Click "MORE..." to see wage breakouts for 29 occupations.

Shows wages paid on some farms in Rhode Island, New York state and New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Oregon. Source: USDA publication Farm Labor in the United States published 1892.

Two-page table shows data collected from twenty states including Michigan, Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky as well as the eastern and southern states.

The Gold Rush brought about extreme wage inflation. "Laborers' wages were a dollar an hour; skilled mechanics received from $12 to $20 per day. The carpenters struck work because they were getting only $12 a day, and insisted on being paid $16." Source: Annals of San Francisco, published 1855.

The 1872 Report of Commissioners on Bureau of Labor Statistics to the [New Hampshire] Legislature is an incredibly rich source of both prices and wages dating as far back as the 1600s. The book is not organized chronologically. Use Hathi Trust's keyword search feature or browse page by page.

Find salary information listed under state names in the tables of contents for this source, the American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge. Enter the page number found in the table of contents in the "Jump to page" box. This is not a government document.

Historical chart shows salaries of members of the U.S. Congress, along with dates of enactment and statutory authority for each pay increase.

Shows monthly pay to bank cashiers, tellers, clerks, bookkeepers, porters, watchmen and bank administrators at the State Bank of Missouri at St. Louis and its branches in other Missouri towns. Table extends from page 74-122.

Shows wages recorded in manuscripts found at local historical societies and state archives. Requires MU login to access, but non-affiliated individuals may pay for limited-time access.

This item is presently in copyright so it will be necessary to either find it in a library, or contact us for a lookup.

Reports monthly wages paid in January and July of each year to individual, unnamed male and female employees in a variety of jobs at selected establishments in the northeast U.S. Not all listings date back to 1840, so it is recommended to use the "Search in this Text" box to quickly find the right pages. This advantage of the source is that it tracks how much individual businesses paid for various jobs over several decades, and it shows what was paid to male and female employees, sometimes in the same job title (see example). Pay for apprentices or "learners" are listed separately from more experienced staff. Industries/states covered: agricultural implement manufacture (MA), brewers (NY), book and newspaper publishers (CT, NY, MD), building trades (CT, MD, MA, NJ, NY, PA, RI), railroad car and ship building (DE), wagon and carriage manufacture (NY), city public works (MA, NY, PA) and cotton milling (MA). Source: 1893 report of the U.S. Congressional Committee on Finance titled "Wholesale prices, wages and transportation."

Federal report states that "the average wages of women in textile factories from 1833-1850 appear to have been $2 a week plus board, which varied from $1.25 to $1.50 a week."

Household servants in New York were said to have been paid between $4.00-10.00 per month, according to this congressional report on the history of women in the labor force.

Notes that there were only seven vocations outside the home open to women (p.12). Source: Early Factory Labor in New England, from the 14th Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor.

American journalist John Aiken collected farm wage data for Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Belgium and Germany. About Ireland he wrote "Wages in Ireland are exceedingly low in every department of industry. In agriculture, any number of men can be employed at from nine to twelve pence sterling a day, and a woman at half that sum." This is not a government source.

American journalist John Aiken visited England, Ireland and Scotland in the Autumn of 1847 and reported wages being paid to factory workers in Belfast, Manchester, Leeds, Grenock and Glasgow, and compared these wages to those being paid in Massachusetts. See further background in the Notes section of the book. This is not a government source.

This book gives anecdotal evidence of wages in each county around 1845-1846. In other chapters, it tells typical amounts required for rent and the cost for articles of clothing. Source: Report on the Irish Coercion Bill, Causes of Discontent in Ireland, Condition of its People...by T. M. Ray, printed in Dublin in 1846. See title page.

There is data on 1840s wages in Ireland in the book Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century published in Cambridge in 1900. This chapter on Ireland discusses not only wages, but discusses the difficulty of finding work, number of hours typically worked, the daily cost of food and ways that the Irish supplemented their income with family "potato patches," etc. This chapter extends from pages 45-53.

See chapter titled "Course of Wages in Ireland" on pages 45-53 of the book Wages in the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century. Shows wages for a variety of occupations in different places around Ireland. Discussion provides context on the limited buying power of the wages they did earn.

Brief 30-page booklet reviews overall wage trends from 1800-1899. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Staff Paper #2.

Provides explanations and charts to help users calculate the current value of historic dollar amounts. Source: Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Association, Vol. 101 #2. Source

Website provides online calculators, guides and tutorials to help researchers understand the modern value of historic money in America, Australia, Spain and the United Kingdom.

This article by Donald R. Adams provides great context for the data. It appeared in the September 1986 issue of Journal of Economic History. Available to MU affiliates and other JStor subscribers.

Article by Donald R. Adams was printed in the March 1992 issue of Journal of Economic History. Available to MU affiliates and JStor subscribers.