In 1922, Emily Post described the “old days” of visiting from the previous century when “Ladies in visiting dresses with trains and bonnets and nose-veils and tight gloves, holding card cases, tripped demurely into this house, out of that, and again into another.” By the 1920s, informal visiting could be arranged with a new form of technology – the telephone! From Illustrated Catalogue of the Busiest House in America, 1889.
Examining the prices of these items would be great for introducing inflation to my students. Looking at these items and then researching how much similar items in this century we could discuss and try to determine the rate of inflation since the early 1900’s.