I agree with Paul the CPI Index is unrealistic. When my parents went to work in the "sock factories" of Fort Payne AL in 1930 their starting pay was 10 cents per hour, $1.00 for a 10 hour day. Though both grew up on 200 acre farms in DeKalb and Jackson Counties AL at that time in the South it was very hard for large families to make a good living on the farm.
This pay shows Paul's multiplier of 20 for 1930 at least for the rural South is if anything on the low side.
In the South for all practical purposes there was very little in the way of a middle class before WW2. Only after WW2 was there a large and growing middle class just about any where in the country.
When I enlisted in the US Navy in 1956 my salary was the princely sum of $69.00 per month as another example.

Clay Gullatt
Mount Airy NC


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