For a snapshot of the cost of living a century ago, these grocery ads appeared a hundred years ago today, January 6, 1922, in the Seattle Star. The prices look cheap, but these are all in 1922 dollars. According to this inflation calculator, a dollar in 1922 was the equivalent of $16.54 in 2022 dollars. So you need to multiply all of these prices to get the corresponding value. So ten pounds of sugar for 57 cents is close to $10 today. Coffee was 42 cents a pound, but that’s close to $7 today. Pot roasts were 12-1/2 cents per pound, which is about $2 today, which isn’t bad. I don’t know if the supermarket today as a “fresh killed jack rabbits,” but back then, they were 35 cents each, or $5.76 in today’s money.

If you did your grocery shopping at these stores, what would you buy? Click on the ad to see a full-size version.