It won’t be long now before we start receiving forms in the mail or elsewhere, to be used in preparing our income taxes for 2025.
We’ll get to see how much we earned over the last year. There’s always a general curiosity about how much people make each year, whether it’s now or back during the Great Depression. Some love or hate the fact that one can now make seven or eight-figure salaries — without the decimal points.
Back in 1936, many were fascinated by those making six-figures, decimal-free. None were that well paid, locally.
As The Oneonta Herald of Jan. 9 reported, “Such 12-month pay checks as $500,000 for William Randolph Hearst and $399,166.65 for Mae West were sprinkled among the 1934 salary list made public by the House Ways and Means committee.
“Submitted by the treasury, as required by the 1934 revenue act, the figures covered some 8,000 corporations involving more than 18,000 pay checks.
“Hundreds of corporation officials were revealed as making as much salary in one year as most men dream of accomplishing in a lifetime of work. Salaries of $100,000 or more were not rare.” Enter this into an inflation calculator and that would be about $2.33 million in 2026.
The story also told how film star Charlie Chaplin was bringing in $143,000, while film maker Walt Disney was making a measly $51,500. Things soon got better for the latter.
Closer to home, the Herald of Jan. 30 told how, “WPA workers in Oneonta were paid $3,360.87 in wages during December, according to the reports of foremen submitted to City Engineer Frank M. Gurney.”
The story told in Oneonta how 10 men were at work on a renovation project at the Municipal Building, today’s 242 Main St., while 30 men were on a watershed project on upper East Street, and another 34 men at work on a Silver Creek project to prevent further flooding. That’s about $45 per worker during December.
Oneonta’s railroad yard workers were busy, and the pay was better, but nowhere near six-figures, as Herald readers learned on Jan. 16, “More than 1,000 new coal cars to supplant others being razed at Carbondale are being made at the car shops of the Delaware & Hudson railroad in this city, it was announced Tuesday.
“In having the cars replaced, the D. & H. is maintaining a policy of constant improvement to its rolling stock.”
Hearst or West salaries were unheard of locally. Residents got by with the vastly lower figures. Job security might play into a line of work one could get into. If one didn’t mind hard work and low pay, security could be found in farming.
As the Herald of Jan. 30 reported, “‘Most persons study agriculture because they have learned from their own experience and from the experiences of others that it pays; and for the past 15 years, an ever increasing number of New York farmers have turned to the Cornell farm study courses for help in managing their farms,’ says George S. Butts, supervisor of the courses.
“The studies are taken right at home and with practically no expense, he points out. Enrollment is open at any time during the year. A rigid schedule is not followed, and within limits, students may set their own pace. A year is allowed to complete any one course.” Twenty courses of study were offered, and one could request a booklet by writing to Cornell University in Ithaca.
Part of this writer’s family came to Oneonta to farm during the 1930s, on Southside Drive. The work was hard and it was steady, but they got by at a fraction of Walt Disney’s annual salary.
On Tuesday, a prosperous 1956 was in the works locally.