
Books vs. Cigarettes (1946) - lermontov
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/cigar/english/e_cigar
======
pjmorris
> Adding the other batch of books that I have elsewhere, it seems that I
> possess altogether nearly 900 books, at a cost of £165 15s.

In 1946, one pound was ~$4 [0], making 165.15 roughly $660. Using a US dollar
inflation calculator [1], $660 in 1946 dollars is $8534 in 2018 dollars.
Fudging a little, this works out to about $10 per book.

Later, he estimates his annual reading expense as 25 pounds, which works out
to about $1300 annually. That's more than I spend on
books+e-books+subscriptions, maybe by about double, but this is George Orwell
we're talking about, I'd expect he'd be a better reader than I.

[0] [http://www.miketodd.net/encyc/dollhist-
graph.htm](http://www.miketodd.net/encyc/dollhist-graph.htm) [1]
[https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)

~~~
xyzzy123
To put another spin on it:

In Australia, at $56 for 40 grams of loose tobacco at Coles, the 170 grams or
so he smoked would cost ~$240/week in 2018. If you added a pint at the pub per
day at city prices that’s another $70/week.

That’s $16000/year and would buy you a _lot_ of books.

(This comparison for amusement purposes only... sin taxes seem to have
increased much faster than inflation!).

~~~
zeveb
> sin taxes seem to have increased much faster than inflation

I think that's because back then, everyone smoke & drank, and rather more than
we nowadays do, whereas now it's common to look down upon smokers in
particular. They're a despised minority, so the ruling class see no problem
increasing their taxes. After all, they're free to quite any time they like!

~~~
posterboy
Smokers often overestimate the numbers, and underestimate how much of a
minority they are. I read a number of ca. 10% (of adults I guess) for Germany.
In some circles it feels like 99% and on average like 50%. Observation bias
persists.

------
gandalfian
Footnote from Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman:

"NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to
understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the
original British monetary system:

Two farthings = One Ha'penny. Two ha'pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A
Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or
Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and one Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half
Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One
Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.

The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought
it was too complicated."

~~~
robotresearcher
And now five cents is a nickel, two nickels are a dime, five nickels a
quarter, four quarters a dollar, a hundred dollars a benjamin, ten benjamins a
grand, etc.

Like now, most of that is nicknames and people didn’t use them in
combinations. For reference, the actual currency was pounds, shillings and
pence. Ratios of 1, 1/20, and 1/12 respectively.

In modern decimal London, 20 pounds is a pony and 100 is a ton. We still have
the colorful shorthand.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yeah US money was on the old "another coin for every doubling". But base-ten
doesn't admit to that very well. So we used 1-2-5-10-20-50. We had 1 penny, 2
penny (gone), nickle, dime, quarter(? where is the 20-cent piece?), 50-cent-
piece (no name for this?), dollar, two-dollar (gone, then back, then gone
again), $10, $20, $50, $100

~~~
howard941
> 50-cent-piece (no name for this?)

That's a half-dollar

Unrelated to your post is two bits == quarter, if memory serves me it's by way
if Spain.

~~~
dredmorbius
Spanish real, pieces of eight. Two bits == two pieces == one quarter.

~~~
njarboe
From when you would literally cut up the single coin into bits to use for
smaller payments.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'm not finding aany substantiation of that. The coin was actually 8 reals,
not 1 real as I'd indicated above. Also known as a peso or Spanish dollar.

Peso: "a weight"
[https://www.etymonline.com/word/peso](https://www.etymonline.com/word/peso)

~~~
njarboe
You are right. "pieces of eight" seems to come from the phrase pieces of eight
reals, with the real being the Spanish unit of silver money. Although I would
guess and this site states that they did get cut up from time to time to make
change[1].

[1][https://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3...](https://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3/march05/iotm.cfm)

------
mijustin
So odd to get this window into a different time.

“The economics of content” were very much a topic back then!

Aside:

“Eight pounds a year covers the cost of two daily papers, one evening paper,
two Sunday papers, one weekly review and one or two monthly magazines.”

Folks read a lot of newspapers back then!

~~~
LeonM
> Folks read a lot of newspapers back then!

Well, there was no internet back then.

It wouldn't surprise me of we are actually consuming more (written) content in
2018 then we did in 1946.

~~~
fb03
I am certain that we are reading more. The quality of that content has fell
sharply imho, tho.

As we are littered by content via our always-on lifestyles, we tend only to
skim and read shallow stuff, or stuff that's gonna help us get by our current
hurdles. That odd quick read on StackOverflow counts as that too.

Sitting down and actually grasping a full book is becoming a rare skill,
because of this imposed-adhd lifestyle of ever-greater everything.

~~~
qubax
> Sitting down and actually grasping a full book is becoming a rare skill

Nope. People are more literate today than 70 years ago. People are better
educated today and have more schooling. On average, more people have read a
full book than before.

Strange to think that people are nostalgic for an era were women ( half the
population ) were discouraged from going to college and minorities were denied
equal access to education. Even stranger that people think that people were
better educated then.

It's statistically impossible for your version of the past to be true.

~~~
HarryHirsch
_People are better educated today and have more schooling_

Proof by insistence? When you see the written reports the kids produce at my
university you can only disagree violently. Two or three years in, and they
still have no command of their own native language. If they read books or the
daily paper you'd expect them to pick up proper usage by osmosis, but no, not
here, not at this regional 4-year college.

~~~
Nasrudith
Sounds like a case of "elite bias" that crops up in history naturally.
Previously mostly the far end of the bell curve would be the only ones you
tended to hear about because they were the ones writing stuff down in detail.
Roman graffiti while insightful doesn't tell you much more than humanity
doesn't change much when it is just some guy boasting about his sexual
conquests or insulting his neighbor. Not good for telling you who is in charge
or how good a job they did.

The noneducated got largely forgotten because they left little trace. Go to a
retirement home and ask about what they did for a living and how much
education they had - you will find a very high percentage without even a high
school diploma - and that is the recent enough that they are still alive past.

Look at the internet - when it was just universities everyone was more
technically knowledgeable but now that it is widespread and accessible there
is a broader range. That doesn't mean that technical adeptness is going down.

~~~
HarryHirsch
You see the Miners Institutes in South Wales and the Workingmens Institutes in
Yorkshire - and the people who founded those were in school until they turned
16 and then went to work for their coal mine or cotton mill. No university
required.

------
cafard
An NYRB Classics series paperback costs about $20. That is right around the
price of two of glasses of of one of the least expensive wines at the nearest
bar to my office.

------
gandalfian
"These figures are guesswork, and I should be interested if someone would
correct them for me."

Interesting to see that the standards of internet journalism are not entirely
new...

------
graffitici
"Given to me or bought with book tokens"

Book tokens?! Is this some kind of 40s cryptocurrency?

~~~
samfriedman
Seems like an early kind of gift certificate scheme.
[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2007/nov/17/weekend...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2007/nov/17/weekend.lucymangan)

~~~
circlefavshape
We still have book tokens here (Ireland). They're a gift voucher that's only
redeemable for books, and not tied to a specific shop

~~~
feintruled
They were/are much prized as an 'improving' birthday present or prize for
children.

------
mysterypie
What does "twelve and sixpence" mean? Is it 12 pence plus 6 pence? Is it 12
shillings and 6 pence (so 12x12 + 6 = 150 pence)?

The article would be more enjoyable if converted to decimal currency _and_
adjusted for inflation.

~~~
jimduk
Second is correct. 20 shillings in the pound so 12 and sixpence is 5/8 of a
pound

------
alexpotato
This article made me wonder: if you had 900 books, how would you ever be able
to reference anything in those books?

For example, today, I might think "Let me look up that quote in one of the
books in my Kindle app. I know I highlighted it so I can just search those."

Back then, did people have their own mini card catalogs or notebooks with
quote-book-page data?

~~~
lecarore
I guess it depends on the person, but my grandfather's flat used to be filled
worth annotated books with little bits of paper bookmarks going out. I guess
one would find a way. You could also make an index notepad listing quotes
accompanied by the book name and page number.

------
hprotagonist
I thought this was going to relate to the printing of cigarette ads inside of
books, and immediately thought of Harlan Ellison’s “dead gophers” interview
...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB_hekYXWiw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB_hekYXWiw)

------
Damogran6
As a Yank, I don't think I'll ever fully understand British financial
nomenclature. Bobs, Shillings, et. al.

~~~
pjc50
“NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to
understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the
original British monetary system:

Two Farthings = One Ha’penny. Two ha’pennies = One Penny. Three Pennies = A
Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or
Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half
Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One
Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.

The British resisted decimalised currency for a long time because they thought
it was too complicated.”

\-- _Good Omens_ , Pratchett & Gaiman

~~~
tom_
The interesting part to me is that currency is indivisible past a certain
point, so it actually makes sense to have something with more factors! Compare
to distance or mass units, for example, where the sub-units are irrelevant. No
problem having a distance of 1/7 foot, say, even though a foot has 12 inches
in it. £(1/7), on the other hand, is impossible.

Since the divisibility argument is often trotted in defence of continued use
of non-metric measurement systems, it seems odd it's more rarely used to
defend non-decimal currencies, where it might actually be useful. Though the
fact nobody uses meaningfully-non-decimal currencies any more is some evidence
for arguing that this just isn't as useful as the convenience of the easy
decimal numbers.

Still, however many currency sub-units you have, inflation makes the issue
less pressing over time.

