$100 in 1913 is worth $268 in 1952,
because prices increased 167.7% over that period, an average of
2.56% a year.
$100 in 1913 has
the same buying power as
$268
in 1952
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
167.7%
Average inflation rate
2.56% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$268
Price difference ($100 base)
$168
CPI in 1913
9.9
CPI in 1952
26.5
Inflation in 1913
n/a
Inflation in 1952
1.92%
$100 in 1913 → 1952
$268
$100 in 1952 → 1913
$37.36
What happened to prices between 1913 and 1952
Between 1913 and 1952, the Consumer Price Index went from 9.9 to 26.5.
Cumulatively, prices increased 167.7%, which works out to an average of
2.56% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1913 bought what
$0.37 buys in 1952: the 1913 dollar
lost 62.6% of its purchasing power over
these 39 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 1952 at the same ratio, 2.68: $1,000 becomes
$2,677, and $10,000 becomes $26,768.
Amount in 1913
Value in 1952
$1.00
$2.68
$5.00
$13.38
$10.00
$26.77
$20.00
$53.54
$50.00
$134
$100
$268
$500
$1,338
$1,000
$2,677
$5,000
$13,384
$10,000
$26,768
$100,000
$267,677
$1,000,000
$2,676,768
Inflation by spending category, 1913–1952
The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1913
spending costs in 1952, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1913 →
All items (CPI-U)
2.56%
$268
Food
2.74%
$287
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 1952
Prices climbed fastest in the 1910s, averaging 10.57% a year, and fell in the 1920s (1.8% a year). Each step below chains into the full 1913–1952 change:
Years
Avg. yearly inflation
Price change
$100 from 1913, at end
1913–1920
10.57%
102.0%
$202
1920–1930
-1.79%
-16.5%
$169
1930–1940
-1.75%
-16.2%
$141
1940–1950
5.58%
72.1%
$243
1950–1952
4.86%
10.0%
$268
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1913
$100 from 1913 had already become $131 by
1933, on its way to $268 in 1952; 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.
Long periods are sampled every 2 years; the calculator above covers any pair of years.
The destination year: 1952
In 1952, prices rose 1.9% and $100 from 1913 had the buying
power of $268; the year's average CPI of 26.5 is the level
behind every 1952 figure on this page.
Consumer prices rose 1.9% in 1952, down sharply from 1951’s
7.9% as the price and wage controls imposed the year before held the cost
of living in check even with the Korean War still underway. Labor strife
tested those controls that spring: to head off a strike that could have
disrupted war production, President Truman ordered the government to
seize the steel industry that April, over the objections of steel
companies fighting the price the Office of Price Stabilization had set for
their product. The Supreme Court ruled the seizure unconstitutional in
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer that June, a landmark limit on
presidential power, and steelworkers then struck for 53 days before a
settlement. Politics delivered the year’s biggest change that November:
Dwight Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson, promising to “go to Korea” to
end the war and returning Republicans to the White House for the first
time since 1933. The Cold War’s technological edge sharpened that same
month, when the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb at Enewetak
Atoll on November 1, a device hundreds of times more powerful than the
atomic bombs used against Japan in 1945. Consumer prices finished 1952
167.7% above their 1913 level. First-class postage held at
3 cents, and the minimum wage stayed at 75 cents an hour.
MLA: “Inflation from 1913 to 1952: $100 is worth $268 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1952/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1913 to 1952. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1913-to-1952/