$100 in 1913 is worth $173 in 1929,
because prices increased 72.7% over that period, an average of
3.47% a year.
$100 in 1913 has
the same buying power as
$173
in 1929
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
72.7%
Average inflation rate
3.47% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$173
Price difference ($100 base)
$72.73
CPI in 1913
9.9
CPI in 1929
17.1
Inflation in 1913
n/a
Inflation in 1929
0.00%
$100 in 1913 → 1929
$173
$100 in 1929 → 1913
$57.89
What happened to prices between 1913 and 1929
Between 1913 and 1929, the Consumer Price Index went from 9.9 to 17.1.
Cumulatively, prices increased 72.7%, which works out to an average of
3.47% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1913 bought what
$0.58 buys in 1929: the 1913 dollar
lost 42.1% of its purchasing power over
these 16 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 1929 at the same ratio, 1.73: $1,000 becomes
$1,727, and $10,000 becomes $17,273.
Amount in 1913
Value in 1929
$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, 1913–1929
The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1913
spending costs in 1929, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1913 →
All items (CPI-U)
3.47%
$173
Food
3.18%
$165
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 1929
Prices climbed fastest in the 1910s, averaging 10.57% a year, and fell in the 1920s (1.7% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1913–1929 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1913, at end
1913–1920
10.57%
102.0%
$202
1920–1929
-1.73%
-14.5%
$173
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1913
$100 from 1913 had already become $181 by
1921, on its way to $173 in 1929; 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 1929, prices rose 0.0% and $100 from 1913 had the buying
power of $173; the year's average CPI of 17.1 is the level
behind every 1929 figure on this page.
Consumer prices were unchanged in 1929, the CPI’s annual average flat for
the second time in six years and a fitting close to a decade that began with
wartime inflation and ended in rough price stability. By year’s end the
index stood 14.5% below its 1920 peak and roughly 73% above its
1913 starting point, a reminder that even a “stable” decade
left prices well above where they had started. The stability in the cost of
living masked what was building in financial markets. The National Bureau
of Economic Research dates the start of the Great Depression to that
August, the month the business cycle peaked, months before most Americans
noticed anything was wrong. The break came that October: panic selling hit
Wall Street on Black Thursday, October 24, and returned even worse on Black
Tuesday, October 29, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 12% in
a single session. Billions of dollars in paper wealth disappeared within
days, and the crash marked the start of a downturn that would pull consumer
prices into their steepest sustained decline of the 20th century over the
next four years. First-class postage was still 2 cents, a price that would
hold until 1932.
MLA: “Inflation from 1913 to 1929: $100 is worth $173 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1929/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1913 to 1929. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1929/