$100 in 1914 is worth $173 in 1919,
because prices increased 73.0% over that period, an average of
11.59% a year.
$100 in 1914 has
the same buying power as
$173
in 1919
Detailed inflation statistics
Cumulative price change
73.0%
Average inflation rate
11.59% per year
Converted amount ($100 base)
$173
Price difference ($100 base)
$73.00
CPI in 1914
10
CPI in 1919
17.3
Inflation in 1914
1.01%
Inflation in 1919
14.57%
$100 in 1914 → 1919
$173
$100 in 1919 → 1914
$57.80
What happened to prices between 1914 and 1919
Between 1914 and 1919, the Consumer Price Index went from 10 to 17.3.
Cumulatively, prices increased 73.0%, which works out to an average of
11.59% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1914 bought what
$0.58 buys in 1919: the 1914 dollar
lost 42.2% of its purchasing power over
these 5 years.
Consumer prices barely moved in 1914, rising just 1.0% for the year, even as
the country’s financial plumbing was rebuilt from the ground up. The Federal
Reserve Banks, created by the Federal Reserve Act signed the previous
December, opened their doors on November 16, giving the U.S. a central bank
for the first time since the 1830s. Weeks earlier, the outbreak of war in
Europe had spooked the New York Stock Exchange into closing for more than
four months, the longest shutdown in its history, as officials worried
European investors would dump American securities for gold. Domestically, the
bigger story was labor: Henry Ford’s decision to pay factory workers $5 a
day, announced in January, roughly doubled wages on his assembly lines and
pushed other manufacturers to raise pay just to keep workers from leaving. A
first-class stamp still cost 2 cents, a price that had held since 1885 and
would keep holding for three more years, even as the war reshaping Europe
began pulling the American economy toward the sustained wartime inflation of
1917.
Every 1914 amount converts to 1919 at the same ratio, 1.73: $1,000 becomes
$1,730, and $10,000 becomes $17,300.
Amount in 1914
Value in 1919
$1.00
$1.73
$5.00
$8.65
$10.00
$17.30
$20.00
$34.60
$50.00
$86.50
$100
$173
$500
$865
$1,000
$1,730
$5,000
$8,650
$10,000
$17,300
$100,000
$173,000
$1,000,000
$1,730,000
Inflation by spending category, 1914–1919
Between 1914 and 1919, apparel rose the most, up 141.3%, while food rose the least, up 82.4%, against 73.0% for all items. The headline number is an average; here is what $100 of 1914
spending costs in 1919, by category:
Category
Avg. yearly inflation
$100 in 1914 →
All items (CPI-U)
11.59%
$173
Apparel
19.27%
$241
Food
12.77%
$182
Not shown because the BLS began these indexes after 1914: core (all items less food & energy) (1957–), energy (1957–), housing (1967–), medical care (1935–), transportation (1935–), recreation (1993–), education & communication (1993–).
Year by year: CPI and the value of $100 from 1914
$100 from 1914 had already become $109 by
1916, on its way to $173 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 1914 had the buying
power of $173; 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 1914 to 1919: $100 is worth $173 today.” InflationCalculator.com, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data, https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1919/
APA: InflationCalculator.com. Inflation from 1914 to 1919. Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U data. Retrieved from https://inflationcalculator.com/inflation/1914-to-1919/