PRICES & PAYCHECKS.

Historical prices only become meaningful when placed beside wages, household budgets, and the cost of ordinary life.

DEEP DETROIT CONTEXT

Putting a price beside a paycheck.

Compare wages with rent, groceries, gasoline, clothing, transit fares, restaurant meals, and entertainment.

Use period advertisements and newspaper prices as primary-source snapshots rather than pretending one price represented the entire city.

Track how police pay, industrial wages, and household costs changed across the decades.

Use inflation comparisons carefully: purchasing power and consumer choices changed as well as nominal prices.

SOURCE METHOD

Prices carry dates and sources and are read beside wages and ordinary household costs whenever the record permits.

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