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2 members (gfretwell, Scott35),
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 3,682 Likes: 3
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This is a letter a friend of mine found in his grandfather's papers. His grandfather was subbed out by by the power company to install the "New" Wiring jobs in a house. If you look at the date at the top of the letter, I believe it was dated 3/2/1916, and I guess they were sending out these letters to everyone that they could in order to get them to wire up their houses. Enjoy
Harold Endean
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Joined: Jul 2007
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A 5 room house for $12.50, I will take it!! Always neat to see stuff like this, thanks for posting it.
Jimmy
Life is tough, Life is tougher when you are stupid
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Joined: Dec 2002
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Manual typing too! Couldn't just churn out a thousand on the computer then.
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Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 7,382 Likes: 7
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Can't determine if "JPW" wants 2000 or 20,000 copies. Postage back then was .02 for a normal letter, and .01 for a post card. So the advertizing cost for the direct mail was probably between .08 and .12 total.
Nice find Harold!!
John
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Joined: Oct 2000
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I think we have a printed ad with similar pricing. If I find it I'll post it here. Bill
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Joined: Oct 2000
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Joined: Dec 2001
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I suppose they didn't type each letter - more likely they typed it onto a sheet of wax or special carbon copy paper and made a bunch of prints (some systems could produce up to 500 copies from one original I think).
It would be interesting to put those prices into perspective - what did an average worker make per week back then? If he made say $3/week, wiring a house was still quite expensive for him!
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Joined: Jan 2011
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Lights were much nicer looking then, too.
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Joined: Jan 2011
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