$100 in 1913 is worth $175 in 1919,
because prices increased 74.7% over that period, an average of
9.75% a year.
$100 in 1913 has
the same buying power as
$175
in 1919
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
74.7%
Average inflation rate
9.75% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$175
Price difference ($100 base)
$74.75
CPI in 1913
9.9
CPI in 1919
17.3
Inflation in 1913
n/a
Inflation in 1919
14.57%
$100 in 1913 → 1919
$175
$100 in 1919 → 1913
$57.23
What happened to prices between 1913 and 1919
Between 1913 and 1919, the Consumer Price Index went from 9.9 to 17.3.
Cumulatively, prices increased 74.7%, which works out to an average of
9.75% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1913 bought what
$0.57 buys in 1919: the 1913 dollar
lost 42.8% of its purchasing power over
these 6 years.
1913 is where this site’s price history begins, because it’s where the Bureau of Labor
Statistics’ own consumer price data begins. The CPI wasn’t published in real time back then;
the BLS built the earliest index retroactively from retail price records collected starting
in 1913, which makes every dollar figure on this site ultimately anchored to that year’s
prices. It was also the year the machinery of modern federal economic policy was built. The
16th Amendment, ratified in February, cleared the constitutional path for a federal income
tax, and the Revenue Act that followed in October imposed a top rate of just 7% on income
above $500,000, a narrow tax that would later be reshaped into the broad-based system that
funds the government today. In December, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, creating
the central bank that would eventually take on fighting inflation as one of its core jobs,
including the 19%-plus interest rates it deployed against the 1970s and early 1980s
price surge. Consumer life in 1913 was correspondingly simple by later
standards: a first-class stamp cost 2 cents, a price that held from 1885 all the way to
1917, and the Ford Motor Company introduced the moving assembly line at its Highland Park
plant that year, a manufacturing breakthrough that would spend the next decade driving down
the cost of a car faster than prices elsewhere were rising.
Every 1913 amount converts to 1919 at the same ratio, 1.75: $1,000 becomes
$1,747, and $10,000 becomes $17,475.
Amount in 1913
Value in 1919
$1.00
$1.75
$5.00
$8.74
$10.00
$17.47
$20.00
$34.95
$50.00
$87.37
$100
$175
$500
$874
$1,000
$1,747
$5,000
$8,737
$10,000
$17,475
$100,000
$174,747
$1,000,000
$1,747,475
Inflation by spending category, 1913–1919
The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1913
spending costs in 1919, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1913 →
All items (CPI-U)
9.75%
$175
Food
10.90%
$186
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1913: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), apparel (1914–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1913
$100 from 1913 had already become $110 by
1916, on its way to $175 in 1919; each row shows the CPI, that
year's inflation rate, and the running value.
Within the span, inflation peaked at 18.0% in 1918, and the smallest rise was 1.0% in 1915.
In 1919, prices rose 14.6% and $100 from 1913 had the buying
power of $175; the year's average CPI of 17.3 is the level
behind every 1919 figure on this page.
The fighting in Europe ended in November 1918, but American prices kept
climbing through 1919 almost as fast as they had during the war itself,
rising 14.6% for the year. Wartime price and production controls were being
dismantled, millions of soldiers were returning to the civilian labor
market, and demand that had been held back for years ran into supply that
had not caught up, a combination that kept the cost of living rising even
with the guns silent. Workers, whose pay had fallen behind three straight
years of double-digit inflation, pushed back: a general strike shut down
Seattle in February, Boston’s police force walked out in September, and a
nationwide steel strike that same month drew in roughly 350,000 workers and
ran into the following January. One price did fall that year: first-class
postage reverted to 2 cents on July 1, ending the wartime 3-cent rate that
had funded part of the war effort since late 1917. By year’s end, prices had
risen close to 75% since the CPI’s 1913 starting point,
compressing more than a decade of typical peacetime inflation into six years
of war and its aftermath.
MLA: “Inflation from 1913 to 1919: $100 is worth $175 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1919/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1913 to 1919. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1919/