Thoreau's Walden: what a house really costs
The short answer
In Walden, Thoreau defines the cost of a thing as the amount of life exchanged for it. An average house cost perhaps $800, 800 days of work at a dollar a day, while the cabin he built by Walden Pond cost $28.12½ in materials, about 28 days of wages and less than a year's rent for a Cambridge student's room. About six weeks of work a year met all his expenses of living.
Chapters and transcript
- 0:00
The cost of a thing is the amount of life you exchange for it, Thoreau wrote.
In the first chapter of Walden, “Economy”, Thoreau defines the cost of a thing as the amount of what he calls life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
- 0:11
An average house near him cost perhaps $800: at $1 a day, 800 days of work.
An average house in his neighbourhood cost perhaps eight hundred dollars, and he values a man's labour at one dollar a day: 800 days of wages, computed in the film.
- 0:20
Saving it, he reckoned, took ten to fifteen years of a laborer's life.
To lay up that sum, he writes, takes from ten to fifteen years of the laborer's life.
- 0:29
On 4 July 1845 he moved into a cabin he built by Walden Pond.
He took up his abode in the woods on the Fourth of July, 1845, in a house he had built himself.
- 0:36
Ten feet by fifteen. He listed every material he paid for.
The house was ten feet wide by fifteen long. He did all the work himself and listed the cost of every material: boards, shingles, laths, two second-hand windows, a thousand old bricks, lime, hair, iron, nails, hinges, a latch, chalk and transport.
- 0:46
In all, $28.12½: about 28 days' wages at $1 a day.
In all, $28.12½. At a dollar a day, that is about 28 days of wages, computed in the film.
- 0:55
A student's room at Cambridge College rented for $30 a year.
At Cambridge College, he notes, the mere rent of a student's room only a little larger than his house was thirty dollars a year.
- 1:02
His whole house cost less than one year's rent.
So his whole house cost about 94% of one year's rent for that room.
- 1:09
His food cost about 27 cents a week.
By his accounts, his food alone cost him in money about twenty-seven cents a week.
- 1:16
By working about six weeks a year, he met all the expenses of living.
For more than five years he lived by the labour of his hands, and found that about six weeks of work a year met all the expenses of living.
- 1:27
His winters, and most of his summers, were free and clear for study.
The whole of his winters, and most of his summers, he had free and clear for study.
Sources
Every figure in the film comes from these. The animation is illustrative.