There's an easy to use web site which will tell you what 1880 wages (or any other dollar figure) is worth at any other time period from 1790-2006: _www.measuringworth.com/calculators/compare_ (http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/compare) . You enter the $ value, the year, and what year you want to compare it to, which in most cases would be 2006. The site then tells you what that dollar value is worth using a variety of comparisons. For my Irish immigrant ancestors, who were predominantly unskilled laborers, I use the unskilled wage rate, figuring that's the most comparable. For the price of houses in the 1930 census, I use the CPI which is probably more accurate. It really helped when I wanted to determine today's value of Civil War pension payments, and real estate and personal property holdings from censuses. Robin in Maryland ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com