$100 in 1913 is worth $173 in 1923,
because prices increased 72.7% over that period, an average of
5.62% a year.
$100 in 1913 has
the same buying power as
$173
in 1923
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
72.7%
Average inflation rate
5.62% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$173
Price difference ($100 base)
$72.73
CPI in 1913
9.9
CPI in 1923
17.1
Inflation in 1913
n/a
Inflation in 1923
1.79%
$100 in 1913 → 1923
$173
$100 in 1923 → 1913
$57.89
What happened to prices between 1913 and 1923
Between 1913 and 1923, the Consumer Price Index went from 9.9 to 17.1.
Cumulatively, prices increased 72.7%, which works out to an average of
5.62% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1913 bought what
$0.58 buys in 1923: the 1913 dollar
lost 42.1% of its purchasing power over
these 10 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 1923 at the same ratio, 1.73: $1,000 becomes
$1,727, and $10,000 becomes $17,273.
Amount in 1913
Value in 1923
$1.00
$1.73
$5.00
$8.64
$10.00
$17.27
$20.00
$34.55
$50.00
$86.36
$100
$173
$500
$864
$1,000
$1,727
$5,000
$8,636
$10,000
$17,273
$100,000
$172,727
$1,000,000
$1,727,273
Inflation by spending category, 1913–1923
The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1913
spending costs in 1923, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1913 →
All items (CPI-U)
5.62%
$173
Food
4.41%
$154
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–).
Decade by decade: 1913 to 1923
Prices climbed fastest in the 1910s, averaging 10.57% a year, and fell in the 1920s (5.1% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1913–1923 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1913, at end
1913–1920
10.57%
102.0%
$202
1920–1923
-5.09%
-14.5%
$173
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1913
$100 from 1913 had already become $153 by
1918, on its way to $173 in 1923; 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 prices fell 10.5% in 1921, the deepest deflation of the period.
In 1923, prices rose 1.8% and $100 from 1913 had the buying
power of $173; the year's average CPI of 17.1 is the level
behind every 1923 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.8% in 1923, the first increase since 1920 and a sign
the postwar deflation had run its course; the economy settled into the
steadier growth that defined much of the rest of the decade. The year’s
biggest shock was political rather than economic: Warren Harding died August
2 in San Francisco while returning from a trip to Alaska, and Vice President
Calvin Coolidge was sworn in the next day at his family’s farmhouse in
Plymouth Notch, Vermont, administered the oath of office by his own father,
a notary public, by lamplight. Coolidge would go on to preside over the low,
stable inflation of the “Roaring Twenties.” The contrast with Germany that
year was stark. The Weimar Republic’s currency collapse reached its peak in
November 1923, with prices doubling every few days and a loaf of bread
costing billions of marks; Germany introduced a new currency, the
Rentenmark, that month to halt the spiral. U.S. consumer prices, by
comparison, had moved in single digits or held flat every year since 1921, a
gap that shaped how American economists would later think about what made
the postwar inflation of Europe so different from the mild swings at home.
First-class postage stayed at 2 cents.
MLA: “Inflation from 1913 to 1923: $100 is worth $173 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1923/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1913 to 1923. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1923/