The Dollar Store – 1928 style

Bernard-Hewitt Summer Fashions, 1928

What could you buy for a buck in 1928? Certainly the product options were a lot different that you'd find in a dollar store today, judging by this page from Bernard-Hewitt.

They offer shoes, hats, pearls (imitation), sheets, pillows, towels, and even boys' clothes. You could get a real camera, or – in a curious juxtaposition – either a Bible or a “smoking set.”

But adjust that 1928 dollar for inflation and you're looking at $14-$15 dollars in current currency. Suddenly these prices seem not that far off the mark in the present day (although leather shoes for $15, well…)

The 1920's equivalent to the dollar store was the “five and dime”  — including Woolworth's, Ben Franklin's, W.T. Grant, H.L. Green and many others. Bernard-Hewitt was one of the many ubiquitous general merchandise houses which flourished in the first decades of the 20th century. It looks as if they didn't survive the Great Depression. Their catalogs regularly used the  phrase “Don't Send a Penny”…and perhaps their customers took that too literally.