58. July 1920? Part 1

In this part of a rather long letter, Jonas Victor compares the state of the economy in Sweden and America, his family, garden, and World War I.    Roselyn


Cleburne, Ks. July


Dear Brother Albert with Family.  God's Peace!
     I got your letter two weeks ago.  I was happy to hear from you.  Thanks for you letter and its contents.  We learned a lot from you.  I knew that everything had gone up in price, but I did not think that the woods at home became so high.  Everything is more expensive where you are, but the workers are very costly, here.  You say that the farm hands get 1.000 Swedish money per year.  Here they get $50 or up to $60 or $70 every month , but in spite of that it is difficult to get farm hands.  In Swedish money it is high.  Everything they wear is cheaper than in Sweden.
     I have just come home from a little trip to a town 30 miles from here.  Our fourth son, Petter Luther, lives there.  He is married to an American woman.  They have a daughter.  He has a store, where he has 10 persons employed, 4 ladies and 6 men.  One of the ladies sits at a place 3 feet above the floor.  She gets all the small change, but nobody needs to go to her with the money.   There is a stretched steel wired going from all directions to her and on it are small pots, which go on a pulley.  They put the money in the small pots and send to her.  She empties it and sends it back.  I think the same thing is in Sweden.
     When I went to town, I saw hardly any horses.  Everybody has a car.  They park them right in the middle of the street.  The street was so wide that you could go on each side. How fast everything is in the world now.  There is a man who has factories where they build 3,000 automobiles every day, and in spite of that they are two months late with the orders.  
     During the War he built a ship every day.  It was these ships which destroyed so many submarines.  The ships cleared out the lanes where they shipped the soldiers to France.  No German submarines took the risk of going there.  The Germans said they would sink the American soldiers to the bottom of the sea before they got to France.  It did not happen.  The war is over.