Did Edith Give TR $20 a Day?
There's a story floating around that Edith gave TR an allowance of $20 a day.
It showed up in an October 30th, 1932 article that appeared in the New York Herald Tribune written by Edith’s personal Secretary Isabella “Belle” Hagner. 1932 was when the 1929 Great Depression bottomed out under Hoover.
Belle wrote TR met a friend at a bookstore who wanted to buy a book, but only had 25 cents in his pocket. She said, TR laughed and remarked Edith gave him $20 every morning and by the end of the day he didn't know where it went. In Sylvia Jukes Morris's biography Edith Kermit Roosevelt - Portrait of a First Lady, she brings up the same story and sites Hagner as the source.
Is a fun story, but loaded with problems. To put things in perspective, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index, $20 in 1902 is equal to $753 a day in 2026, or the equivalent of $274,845 a year. That's some allowance. Today that's like $5,285 a week in pocket change.
Here's what TR could have bought every day with $20 back in 1902. Heat a normal size home for the entire year (5 tons of coal), 1,400 lbs. of potatoes that would typically feed a family of four for 2 years, a refrigerator, enough chicken breast to feed 70 people, 80 tickets to a Broadway show, a cow, a stove, a washing machine, a sewing machine or a large 1,500 lbs. solid steel concrete filled fire resistant safe.
If Theodore Roosevelt could spend $20 a day in 1902 and not have anything to show for it and not know where the money went would have been remarkable and worrisome.
