Big or small, numbers have historical value.
That value can depend on when and how we look at them.
The Langley Advance reported a week after Armistice Day – we now call it Remembrance Day – that the four local branches of the Auxiliaries to the Canadian Legion had raised $125 in their annual poppy drive.
Doesn’t sound like much, does it?
But that was 1932. And the town barber was advertising haircuts for 35 cents, with children’s trims running at two bits. Compare that to the price of a haircut today, and throw in the fact that the community, along with the rest of Canada and most of the world, was in the throes of the Great Depression.
And things weren’t getting better in a hurry. Just a year later, numbers with dollar signs were replaced with barter, as Bert the Barber’s advertisements indicated that he had joined the trend set by a number of businesses, including the Advance itself, offering to swap eggs, butter, cream, “or whatever you have got” for hair cuts.
There were other ways of dealing with the stalled economy, of course. One fellow who was deep in the hole tried to dig his way out with a still.
Maybe he would have been better off to have used a shovel. As a relief worker, he would have earned a whopping 50-cent raise in 1934, from $1.50 up to $2.00… that’s per day, of course.
Instead, his production of illicit alcohol out in the boonies of Wix Road (24th Ave.) earned him a $200 fine and three months in jail.
Yes, I know. That’s equal to only a portion of a traffic ticket today… except $200 would have got you a fairly decent used car around about then. You could buy a brand new Buick for under $1,000, and twice that would get you a fine little speedster.
Not everything was expensive, local farmers were pleased to learn that the price of dynamite had dropped 15 cents to only $5.85 per box. Today you have to register to buy certain types of fertilizer… for the same reason you can’t buy dynamite over the counter at all anymore.
By 1934, dog owners were barking their outrage over a new requirement to licence their mutts at two bucks a pop… or pup, depending on the age of the licencee, and regardless of its actual value.